Stephen King Figurative Language

Creative writing would cease to be interesting without the use of figurative language to create vivid images in the minds of readers. It would be difficult to find depth in any story without the use of figurative images. In high schools, figurative language is used as an effective tool to teach students how to differentiate between perceived reality and the truth in everyday situations. The entire process of thinking is based on our ability to recognize similarity and difference, and figurative language allows one to exercise that particular depth of thinking. Incorporation of imagery also makes reading more enjoyable. However, figurative language is useful when incorporated appropriately into writing. According to Stephen King, “The
William G. Tapply advises strongly against extreme usage of fancy words. In the aforementioned article, he writes, “Readers should not be stopped by a word, whether it’s because they don’t know it or because it’s flowery and attention-getting…or because it’s just not quite the right word. Whenever that happens, you’ve yanked them out of the story” (21). This principle should be applied to figurative phrases as well. A metaphor or simile is not powerful due to its length or use of flowery words; it is instead the intended meaning behind it that creates significance. In his book Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation, Robert Allinson states there is a “cognitive content of the metaphor,” and “the mind has a ‘holistic’ or ‘intuitive’ cognitive capacity whose function is to capture [the metaphor’s] meaning” (Chong 371). When a writer inadvertently chooses to take away from the meaning of the metaphor by adding too much description, there is not any reason to incorporate the metaphor in the first place because it takes away the figurative value and, thus, the challenge of