When I was 14, I took an intro to journalism class, where the teacher taught from Roy Peter Clark's 50 Writing Tools. That covered a lot of different things, from prose to structure to character writing to work ethic. It contained snippets out of other people's writing as examples. I remember an except from Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird that extolled the virtue of writing shitty first drafts to clean up later. Changed my life. 50 Writing Tools has been revised to be 55 Writing Tools, which I haven't read, and the journalism angle means that not everything applies, but that was a big thing for me when I was younger.
Brandon Sanderson was extremely formative of the way that I think of magic powers and use of foreshadowing in stories. He's also really good at creating distinct character voices, which is something I try to do when creating more high effort writing. I haven't really written anything novel length start to finish outside of RP, so a lot of the things he says about plot are still more theoretical than put into practice. I carried that influence hard into OMO... and ran into a wall because Practice is very soft at times, and writing Practitioner fights was very different from writing Sanderson style fights. That led to some recalibration.
Tamora Pierce's and Seth Dickinson's works have influenced my worldview a lot. Destiny lore has unironically changed my view on the role of (implied, potential) violence as a means of protection / enforcement / survival.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is nonfiction, but an interesting look at how trauma affects people. It's quite useful for figuring out how to write people who've been through difficult life experiences, including just about every main character in genre fiction.
Beyond the official stuff, there's a lot of different fanfiction that has influenced me as well. Some Twilight fic I don't remember made me write narration as being more reflective of a character's worldview. Dirgewithoutmusic's Boy with a Scar series has a particular way of doing AUs with a repeating catchphrase that relates to the theme that I have spent a long time chasing, whenever I try to do a montage-style AU. Very recently, Dwellordream's Bigger Fish to Fry has had me taking notes on portraying female characters being affected by misogyny without necessarily taking away their agency in doing so. While having the audacity to post such a story on Spacebattles, too.
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Re: Writing Influences
Date: 2023-10-27 03:08 am (UTC)When I was 14, I took an intro to journalism class, where the teacher taught from Roy Peter Clark's 50 Writing Tools. That covered a lot of different things, from prose to structure to character writing to work ethic. It contained snippets out of other people's writing as examples. I remember an except from Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird that extolled the virtue of writing shitty first drafts to clean up later. Changed my life. 50 Writing Tools has been revised to be 55 Writing Tools, which I haven't read, and the journalism angle means that not everything applies, but that was a big thing for me when I was younger.
Brandon Sanderson was extremely formative of the way that I think of magic powers and use of foreshadowing in stories. He's also really good at creating distinct character voices, which is something I try to do when creating more high effort writing. I haven't really written anything novel length start to finish outside of RP, so a lot of the things he says about plot are still more theoretical than put into practice. I carried that influence hard into OMO... and ran into a wall because Practice is very soft at times, and writing Practitioner fights was very different from writing Sanderson style fights. That led to some recalibration.
Tamora Pierce's and Seth Dickinson's works have influenced my worldview a lot. Destiny lore has unironically changed my view on the role of (implied, potential) violence as a means of protection / enforcement / survival.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is nonfiction, but an interesting look at how trauma affects people. It's quite useful for figuring out how to write people who've been through difficult life experiences, including just about every main character in genre fiction.
Beyond the official stuff, there's a lot of different fanfiction that has influenced me as well. Some Twilight fic I don't remember made me write narration as being more reflective of a character's worldview. Dirgewithoutmusic's Boy with a Scar series has a particular way of doing AUs with a repeating catchphrase that relates to the theme that I have spent a long time chasing, whenever I try to do a montage-style AU. Very recently, Dwellordream's Bigger Fish to Fry has had me taking notes on portraying female characters being affected by misogyny without necessarily taking away their agency in doing so. While having the audacity to post such a story on Spacebattles, too.