Stephen King’s On Writing and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well both focus on writing. King through his passage explains to his audience that writing is not an everyday task rather it takes serious thought and effort. Zinsser through his passage explains how to declutter your writing by avoiding and deleting unnecessary details. King and Zinsser both focus on writing and targets the same audience, aspiring writers, but both authors approach the subject differently.
Both passages have a similar purpose, to introduce writing to aspiring writers. Zinsser focuses on a rule for good writing. His message is to ‘declutter’, he believes “clutter is the disease of American writing” (Zinsser). King believes that writing isn’t just a task like washing
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King uses a much more casual and non-chalant tone and believes writing has a magical power. He believes books are “uniquely portable magic” (King) and reveals the telepathic power of writing by doing a demonstration of telepathy in action. He effectively engages with the audience much more than Zinsser due to his use of 2nd person point of view. He begins his passage by revealing the telepathic powers of writing and introduces the audience into his mind set and sets a scene for his writing. In contrast, Zinsser’s passage is like a how-to guide for writing. His use of 1st person point of view makes it less engaging than King’s. Zinsser begins his passage by stating his purpose and its repeated throughout the passage, “clutter is the disease of American writing” (Zinsser) and “the secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest component” (Zinsser). He teaches his audience how to avoid cluttered writing by avoiding unnecessary adjectives and phrases. He gives examples about decluttering just like a writing guide. Zinsser doesn’t try to engage with audience because his method, to teaching more about writing, is providing rules and methods. King on the other hand only states his purpose on the second to last paragraph because he spends a lot of time providing examples about the power of writing prior to blatantly stating out that it is an important and powerful process. King has to create