Stories That Change How You Write

[The Big Peat]

Semi-idle topic. Any of you had that moment where you read a book or author and go "That's what I want to do!"? If so, do you have them regularly? Is there some particular thing about the experience(s) you remember, or that inks them? Do you actually change how you write?

Or do you never really have that?

Maybe brought to you by Cowboy Bebop.

 

[ckatt]

Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh. Not science fiction or fantasy but it has a great avant-garde quilty I appreciate.
I thought the first story in the collection was so brilliant that I immediately tried writing like that. Everyone hated it.

 

[HareBrain]

Seeing how David Mitchell handled first-person present tense in Number9Dream made me want to have a go at doing it as well as him. Certain elements of the Fire Stealers books were inspired by the anime Fullmetal Alchemist (1900-ish setting, central duo on a personal mission and also being manipulated in a wider scheme, military involvement, shady magic users behind everything). There have been a few other individual aspects of other works I've wanted to emulate, but never for long enough to really put them into practice.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think I've reached a point where my own style (or lack of it, as I don't really think I have a very strong style) is too entrenched to be changed hugely by another book, although I might be wrong about that. There are still writers whose prose deeply impresses me, but it's more often a matter of seeing a picture, or a scene of a film, or even hearing a piece of music, and thinking "I want to evoke that".

The closest thing I've had recently was reading Neuromancer again, and thinking "There's a lot wrong with this, but there's something I'd like to be able to evoke here". I think it was a feeling of restlessness and travel, of having no roots, and somehow that ended up in The Imposters. I doubt it's at all apparent in the finished book though!

 

[Wayne Mack]

There was an Alistair MacLean novel that I read in my youth, whose title escapes me. Mr. Maclean used an unreliable first person technique where the protagonist seemed to betray his comrades to the Nazis (before reverting to save the day). I think this may have been the first time that I was exposed to this technique, but I now embrace having characters whose motivations are ambiguous and leave the reader guessing throughout the story whose side that they are on.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

When I started out, Mary Gentle's Rats & Gargoyles was a huge influence. She used a lot of semi colons however, which were pruned out when I was professionally edited...

 

[GeorgeL]

Reading anthologies of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories certaintly forced me to perceive the world around me differently.
Also inspired me to write my own short stories who have many Lovecraftian elements such as the humanity's insignificance against the Cosmos of the universe, the symbolization of large bodies of water (sea) or the vastness of the universe (stars/space) as the horrific unknown, the argument that ignorant is really bliss when you realize that too much knowledge could make someone question his own sanity and that humans are best left ignorant and happy, rather than having too much insight of things that are best left unknown.
A very influencial author with a certain philosophy that influenced me in a horrificly beautiful way.

 

[sknox]

There's nothing that has made me want to imitate in toto, but certainly various authors have influence me in particular ways. For example, whenever I contemplate a set-piece battle, I go back to Tolstoy, who showed us all how to do it right. When thinking about how to balance setting a scene with writing dialogue, the models are Hammett and Chandler. When it comes to writing dated dialog to evoke a time period, there's no one better than O'Brian.

So it's that sort of thing. Specifics.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Yep. I wanted to have written the Time travellers wife and to have half Carlos ruiz zafron‘s ability to capture a place.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Wanted to have written, you note. I am now at peace with myself

 

[Steve Harrison]

I intentionally modelled my first novel, a time travel thriller, on the styles of seafaring novelists like CS Forester, Alexander Kent, Dudley Pope and, to a lesser extent, Patrick O'Brian, hoping to capture their grasp of old-fashioned, larger-than-life high adventure, mixed with an air of duty and honour. At least this is what I constantly told myself during the writing to keep myself on track.

How much I succeeded - or even if people noticed - is not my call, although it was gratifying when one reader said the writing reminded them of O'Brian.

My later novels are in my own style, which is hard to define, but which is instantly recognisable to - and as - me.