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Influences

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
I want to write like Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler.
I love their sparse use-one-word-instead-of-two prose that still manages to cram everything into it.
[ The Maltese Falcon is probably the best written book I've read, as well as being a great tale ]
Why I want to write like that may be because I tend to write more like Mervyn Peake [but nowhere on the same level as him]. I love his complex multi layered text. He takes the time to let you know everything you could want to know and then lets you sort it all out.
Beyond that there is Sir Terry Pratchett and Papa Tolkien. I've read so much by them over the years that I am probably influenced in ways I don't recognise and can't name.
 
M.L. Forman (Adventurer's Wanted Series) - Got me to write/want to be a writer and develop the goal that each story I write should be an adventure.
J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings Trilogy)/John Flanagan (Ranger's Apprentice Series) - Influenced my interest and goals for sheer scale and depth of worldbuilding. And cartography. Map-making is insanely fun and a fantastic way to keep track of a lot of things!
Mercedes Lackey (Queen's Own Trilogy) - Recently influenced my writing style, specifically my use of Third Person Omniscient POV, and the blending of politics in a fantasy storyline.
Derek Landy (Skulduggery Pleasant Series) - Funny and engaging banter between characters. This was very, very helpful.
Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn Trilogy/Mistborn: Alloy of Law) - Hard Magic systems and very thought out plot lines/character arcs; overall influenced how in-depth and organized my worldbuilding and outlines are.

And everything else I developed on my own through a variety of other sources over time and with practice. I have worked out a writing process that works very well for myself and developed a writing style/voice that's very much my own.
 

Yora

Maester
Robert Howard, Karl Wagner, and Clark Ashton Smith.

They were all great at making a simple story interesting and keeping it to the point instead of meandering and dragging it out forever.
 

Malik

Auror
Literally everything I read influences my writing. It either helps me determine how I want to write, or how I don't.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
Fredrick Forsyth, Stefan Zweig, Richard Brautigan, Jack London, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Really the only fantasy writers who have had a big influence on me are Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock and maybe Ursula Le Guin.

I never aspired to write fantasy. I started with espionage thrillers and then gradually started doing fantasy later.
I think, as a result, I tend to be pretty critical of a lot of the fantasy out there. I use to dismiss all fantasy as pulling from a very small pool of influences (Mostly Tolkien and maybe Pratchett and George Martin). I still kind of believe that but I definitely have a lot more respect for fantasy that manages to break free of that small pool and do something different or pull influence from other genres.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I have no idea on influences as to “how” I write... I love Tolkien but don’t write like him. Same for Martin and others. Story-wise, the influences would be legion... everybody I’ve read and every movie I’ve watched, even if it was a negative influence, heh heh.

I’ve never tried to write like anybody, I hold no author in that sort of esteem. Now, who do I actually write like?

Well, that’s difficult to say, but according to one computer analysis which I did for squats and poodles, my writing most resembles Joe Abercrombie... which is funny, because I’ve never actually read a book by him, though I planned on it, LOL. In three categories of analysis Eve of Snows was about 97-99% match, and then in grammar only about 75% if I recall right. This isn’t shocking as I honed a voice with some nonstandard grammar, and the dialogue would throw that off as well. All three authors listed as top matches fell way off on grammar. It made me proud.
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
My writing style is mostly autodidactic, as I read little in the way of fiction. That said, Jack London without a doubt had an influence, as well as Hunter S Thompson, Lovecraft and René Goscinny of Asterix and Obelix fame. Different directors and writers for games should also be credited, but then I'll have to do a wikipedia search and... I'll just sum it up with Ridley Scott and Michael Kirkbride.
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Actually it was an interesting little company called... ummm... Scoreit! I was bored one day and just curious as hell as to what it’d say and paid to find out, LOL. My biggest fear was getting identified out of my genre, but all three authors it produced were SFF. In theory, it digs into a lot of little indicators which was fascinating, but I’d hope for more detail.

I have an answer for who I want to write like: My Ideal Self, whatever the hell that is, heh heh.

Frank Herbert all the way. I don't care what Grammerly says. You are Frank Herbert.

Me.... I've been told early Atwood and Anne Marie McDonald. I wish I was Neil Gaiman or Shirley Jackson.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Okay, I haven’t read much Abercrombie, but today someone posted a few paragraphs from one of his books on FB and on reading it... I was like, yeah, I could see myself having written it. The basic flow and style, word choice.
 

Miles Lacey

Archmage
I can't point to any specific writer and say they influenced me but I was very much into Stephen King, Graham Masterton, Sven Hassel, Kim Stanley Robinson, H G Wells, Suzanne Collins, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Heinlein, Philip Roth, Asterix, Tintin, Footrot Flats (a Kiwi cartoon strip), Virginia Andrews, Roald Dahl, Spike Milligan and Tom Wolfe. And there were many others whose writings rubbed off on me.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I'm pretty sure that I've been influenced in ways I do not recognize. I can say what books I like and admire, but it would take an outsider to spot influences. We should all be so fortunate as to get that sort of attention!

Authors I would like to pretend are my influences:
Hammett and Chandler and Moseley, the holy triad of detective writers
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
Albert Camus, who sees Hemingway's bid and raises him a thousand
Ray Bradbury, who stands pretty much alone
Joseph Conrad, who stands above them all
And winning the prize for breadth and depth of imagination, J.R.R. Tolkien.
 
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