Three influences and..

[UsuallyPresent]

Dragonriders of Pern, is the only set of fantasy novels I have ever read, yet they weren't really fantasy stories. It was futurist, sci-fi with gene modification of a native species of animal on another planet.

Loved those stories.

Kinda like Lovecraft's mythos tales, just at a lower power level.

 

[Haulover]

1). James Lee Burke. I love his prose, and his filmic descriptions of the background to every scene. He tends to be a bit long-winded sometimes, so to balance that out...

2). Dick Francis. In contrast to Burke - his pacing is always fast-moving, and his simple prose always leads to a quick but gripping read. He always writes in the first person. I only started doing that here in Lit, and have been using Francis as a guide.

3). Frederick Forsythe. I haven't needed to fall back on his influences here in Lit, but he's a strong influence in my other writing. If you're going to write about something that's relatively foreign to your readers, research the hell out of it and find a way to describe it that fits into the narrative, but holds the reader's attention.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I can certainly say that two of my influences are:

1. D&D. Writing stories is world building and D&D certainly honed my skills at world building when you design a dungeon and populate it with creatures that have a developed reason for existing.

2. Software coding. Good writing needs to be organized and coding software is a great way to organize and lay out what needs to be accomplished. I love programming in java where you can build classes and instantiate them as needed, just like developing characters and using them.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is very difficult for me. I can't name three without leaving off others that, if given a little time to think about, I'd probably decide were just as influential. But I'll give it a go.

1. I'll start with Roald Dahl, whose books, and especially James and the Giant Peach, played a big role in influencing not just my literary tastes but my outlook generally -- one of dark humor, laced with humanity and optimism. The world stinks, but it can get better, and in the meantime we can laugh about it.

2. James Joyce, and particularly Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, for all that his work revealed about the potential of the language, and the virtue of paying very close attention to words, their meaning, and their beauty, and also for the themes of artistic liberation and independence and resistance to orthodoxy, themes that have always been important to me.

3. Mark Twain, for his mordant humor, and good sense, and great care with words.

 

[SamScribble]

2. James Joyce, and particularly Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, for all that his work revealed about the potential of the language, and the virtue of paying very close attention to words, their meaning, and their beauty, and also for the themes of artistic liberation and independence and resistance to orthodoxy, themes that have always been important to me.

If I had a fourth it would probably be James Joyce, but Ulysses - although Portrait of An Artist also made an impression.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

......

 

[VermillionVenusian]

It’s aggravating how difficult this is for me. I can definitely name authors who I have read extensively, but I can’t say I really see the effects of them on my prose. Sure, I read a lot of Redwall, Dave Barry and Wheel of Time in my formative years. But I can’t detect their effects on me now. I think there is a writing analyzer website out there—if I recall correctly, it matched a writing sample of mine to Margaret Atwood. I’m not sure I see it, but whatever.

I guess reading every short story ever written by Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick taught me a thing or two about how to craft short-form fiction.

As far as erotic inspiration goes, I feel like I’m in a weird position. I started writing erotica before I started reading it. Sure, I had read a lot of other fiction and I certainly had watched a lot of porn and read a lot of (mostly bad) H dojins. But I didn’t have a background of being a LitE reader prior to writing. I guess my biggest inspiration in this aspect of things is, like TheStoryYeller said, a slowing down of action between my partner and I. Writing erotica has been a very cathartic experience for me and I find inspiration in everyday situations around me.

 

[Damoiselle]

Good thread

Oh god, just three?

Okay.

1. Jacqueline Carey, who wrote the Kushiel's Legacy series and finally gave me a heroine who experiences victimhood and is still able to demonstrate behavior I find empowering and heroic.
"That which yields is not always weak."

2. Labyrinth, the beginning of my crippling addiction to sexy villains.

3. Sierra Simone, particular the American Queen/American Prince/American King trilogy, which helped me realize that my sexuality is way more angst ridden than I ever previously understood.


...I kind of a need to give an honorable mention to Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series. It annoyed me as much as it fascinated me, but for better or for worse, it had an effect.

 

[KeithD]

C. P. Snow
Thomas Costain
John LeCarré
Lawrence Durrell
Graham Greene

Couldn't distill it down to just three. These showed me the way to transmit the life I was in to stories.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

C. P. Snow
Thomas Costain
John LeCarré
Lawrence Durrell
Graham Greene

Couldn't distill it down to just three. These showed me the way to transmit the life I was in to stories.

I'm curious. Why John LeCarré? And for Greene, which type of work? (Or both?)

 

[ElectricBlue]

Mervyn Peake with his Gormenghast series: fantastic imagery, brilliant characterisations of exaggerated and fantastic people, grounded with evocative and powerful images. I first read him when I was sixteen, and the image of the young Fuschia (also sixteen when the novel opens, so there's that) diving to her death in the flood in her flowing red dress - sticks in my mind's eye to this day.

John Banville, for his exquisite and perfect sentences, his self aware and completely unreliable narrators.

John le Carré, in particular his Smiley era novels, for his crisp and precise prose, and his astonishing ability to progress the plot with straightforward set pieces, interrogation scenes mostly, where every sentence works "just right".

In terms of erotica, Anais Nin and an Australian writer, Tobsha Learner, who has three amazing collections of short stories: Quiver, Tremble, and Yearn.

 

[KeithD]

I'm curious. Why John LeCarré? And for Greene, which type of work? (Or both?)

I worked in intelligence. Greene and LeCarré got the mood right of a spy/foreign service novel. They also were/are excellent storytellers.

 

[SimonDoom]

I worked in intelligence. Greene and LeCarré got the mood right of a spy/foreign service novel. They also were/are excellent storytellers.

If I were to prepare a short list of writers you should read carefully to see what good prose combined with good storytelling look like, I'd put both on that list. Both are masters of their craft.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I can certainly say that two of my influences are:

1. D&D. Writing stories is world building and D&D certainly honed my skills at world building when you design a dungeon and populate it with creatures that have a developed reason for existing.

2. Software coding. Good writing needs to be organized and coding software is a great way to organize and lay out what needs to be accomplished. I love programming in java where you can build classes and instantiate them as needed, just like developing characters and using them.

As far as authors, I would start with Zenna Henderson who, with just a turn of a phrase, could make you laugh or cry. I would only consider myself a successful author if I could do something similar to that.

 

[LexxRuthless]

As far as authors, I would start with Zenna Henderson who, with just a turn of a phrase, could make you laugh or cry. I would only consider myself a successful author if I could do something similar to that.

I would consider myself a GREAT author if I could do that.

I can't boil my own influences down to three. Each time I've sat down to post a reply to this thread, I have had three completely different answers. I think I could state the top three influences on what I'm writing at the moment, but that will change as soon as I start writing something else.

I will throw this one out there, because I haven't seen it on anyone else's list:

Stand-up comedians. When I am writing a character, I often think, "What would George Carlin/Bill Engvall/Don Rickles say in that situation?"

 

[Rustyoznail]

1) The Goon Show - my introduction the the absurd

2) Isaac Asimov - Plus many more.

3) Erogenesis - He's a digital artist and comic writer over on Renderotica and other places. I found his work while looking for digital artists that our niece could gain inspiration from for her work.

He's got a great eye for detail, writes a great plot, and puts a bit of humour in to his stories. I flicked him a brief SFW plot for him to consider and he was kind enough to reply that he liked it. That was my first piece of fiction.

And now, here I am.