How Stephen King’s Life and Work has Important Lessons to Teach Young Writers

For this activity, you will research and write a three page, properly documented, MLA formatted essay on a writer of your choice. Select an author whose work and life have, in your opinion, important lessons to teach young, novice writers about the writer’s craft. You are expected to use the author’s writing and/or incidents in their life that are instructive and/or inspirational. Feel free to use the first-person pronoun in this essay. However, rather than relying on personal stories about how the author has inspired and instructed you, look to their work and their life: show how they have mastered a poetic form, characterization, suspense narratives, tone, diction, catchy opening paragraphs, or some other aspect of style and craft. Find an interview where they discuss how they found their calling, their sources inspiration, how they keep their “bum in the chair,” strategies to combat writer’s block, or how they create (do they start in the middle of the story? do they create charts? do they create character dolls that sit on their desks and “speak” to them?). Be Sure to Include: a title (not just the author’s name; at the very least, “Author’s Name: An Essay”–even better? “Advice to Young Writers: An Essay on Rainier Maria Rilke” ) an introduction, body, and conclusion a thesis (examples: “The novels of Charles Dickens have many useful lessons to teach the writer-as-‘social critic,’” or “If you want to write like Shakespeare, immerse yourself in his sonnets,” or “The life and writings of Margaret Atwood function as excellent models for the contemporary career-oriented writer.”) three supporting arguments that analyse the work and/or life of the writer (example: “Margaret Atwood functions as an excellent model for the contemporary career-oriented writer because she is an extremely disciplined writer, she writes in a variety of forms and genres, and she is a master of the vivid, unforgettable metaphor.”) provide proof in the form of researched information (ex., an article on Atwood’s writing schedule), descriptions of the author’s work (ex., a list of all of the genres and forms Atwood has written, from poetry to librettos), and quotations (ex,. a few of Atwood’s most famous metaphors from a variety of texts with an explanation of context and impact). do paraphrase or quote: take care to avoid accidentally plagiarizing–essays submitted to D2L go through “Turnitin”