What Author Influenced You.

[Nova]

Where we are all writers i was wondering what authors have influenced everyone in there writing. What authors and there books influenced your writing and stories the most. Me personally there two i can easily note, when i was 17 i read Tad Williams fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Filled with the most amazing cast of characters Ive ever seen, and a detailed life like world. Looking at my own writing those books have influenced me greatly, Ive without knowing adopted a similar style. Secondly on a Christian level i have also been heavily influenced by LB Graham Binding of the Blade series. He writes an amazing story and involves faith Christian themes in a subtle yet strong way that i seek to find in my own writing.

[morganlbusse]

Great question Nova!

A couple authors have influenced me:
Francine Rivers for her deep characters and courage to write about topics that until recently others would not come near with a ten foot pole.

Although his worldview saddens me, I still see Terry Brooks as a wonderful world builder when it comes to fantasy.

And Timothy Zahn's ability to place vast amounts of technical information into dialogue between his characters so that technical deficient people like me can actually understand it without reading pages of technical description (and put the book down in boredom).

[veryblessedmom]

I'm a classics girl. I love the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen.

TV and movies made me fall in love with story telling. When I was a kid, I loved a show called Forever Knight. It was about a vampire cop who hated what he was and wanted to help people. I remember the episode when he gazed longingly at a cross and explained it's power to burn him like the sun. It was a symbol of the One True Light. I became a vampire fan.

I never read Rice or any other vampire books because good Christians didn't do that. Then I read Twilight.. She broke all the writing rules-- over wrote, told, explained too much, etc and yet I loved the story. I kept thinking, "If only she were a Christian, this story could be so much more."

[Teskas]

It is hard to point to one author. Certainly Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe was a big influence, as well as Sir Thomas Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. Those two got me into fantastical images woven among true-to-life characters. They gave me the idea that good writing could be more than a good story (like a satisfying Zane Grey novel), but stories could be epic, huge, larger than real life, but in some strange way, true.

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series, and Frank Herbert's Dune developed my taste for sci-fi. Even so, I never totally locked onto sci-fi literature because its world-view (at least of the novels I read) was pretty much based on a atheistic, materialist view of nature. When I'd finish them, and put them down, I'd have a sense that something was missing somehow.

When I look up at the starfield, especially away from the light pollution of the cities, I am filled with wonder. It is the same wonder I have felt all my life. I must have heard Psalm19 read to me before I even went to school--four or five years of age. It starts like this.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge."

That repeated in my head when I would look up at the night sky. I cannot but help think of those words when I look at the stars even now. But when I was young, I wanted to rise from the grass and fly bodily among the stars. (I was too young to understand the physics of atmosphere and vacuum, and the necessity of space craft and space suits for human travelers.) Even after all these years, I still feel the dew on the grass, and the contrasting mystery of the sky where stars twinkle and angels dwell.

So, come to think of it, I'd say the Word Himself is my most influential author.

[Spokane Flyboy]

For me, it would be R.A. Salvatore and C.S. Forester, and perhaps a touch of C.S. Lewis. Perhaps I just have a thing for authors with two initials? I've also been greatly influenced by fellow role-players.

[torainfor]

For the last several years, it's been all about Elizabeth Moon. I just checked out her book of short stories. She makes it look so effortless and her knowledge of different fields is amazing.

[Nova]

I remember not knowing how much i had been influenced by Tad Williams trilogy, until i re-read the first book and realized how many small elements i had used from it in my own story. This isn't to say that i copied but there were small things that had obviously been influenced. It amazed in that i did this without realizing it.

[metalikhan]

I'm not sure that I can point to any one or two that directly inspired me. Maybe influenced is a better word. These are the books and authors I return to periodically for re-reading.

I followed Frank Herbert's Dune series, loved the complexity and multilayered storylines as well as the immense detail about the worlds he created. I liked Stephen King's Dark Tower series for many of the same reasons and Louise Cooper's Indigo series as well. Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy fascinated me but part of that had to do with my love for sailing. Charles Grant's Millennium Quartet was eerie and elegant; but his stand-alone novel Raven was chilling, claustrophobic — I look at them as examples of how easily the normal can skew into the unnerving.

The Book of the Dun Cow is an individual book I return to annually; deceptively simple, it's the first allegorical story I really enjoyed. I also love humor and read every Discworld novel Terry Pratchett writes. The Bridge of Birds was another that I laughed most of the way through. Up to the time I read Bridge and the first Pratchett book, I had the notion that SFF was incompatible with humor. I was glad to learn that's not the case.

I had a liking for westerns, especially Louis L'Amour, when I was younger; I can't help but think there was another influence, possibly in how I handle action scenes. Western humor caught me here, too, in The Legend of Blackjack Sam.

Beyond that, my reading goes to old classics, many dealing with the Trojan War, Beowulf, or King Arthur. (One recent treasure I got at a used bookstore is a poetic translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey by Alexander Pope, dated 1876. Sweet!) For sheer surrealism, Finnegan's Wake draws me repeatedly; it's one that taught me much about experimentally manipulating language and multiple mythos.

I also like some poetry and have learned a lot about making words work harder to earn their place in a sentence. That's not to say I always accomplish it.

[metalikhan]

BTW, I was recently involved in a conversation about this same topic; but some of it involved the difference between being inspired by other authors and being influenced by them. I'm still not sure if we ever agreed on what the difference was and how it applied to our writing; but I still think "influenced" is the better word.

[Spokane Flyboy]

Well, the title of the topic is "What Author Influenced You". Though, to go with your mention of inspiration, I would say that authors influence your writing style and inspire your ideas. They're similar words though as inspire literally means "to breath in" and influence means "to flow in". However, given the connotations on them these days, influence seems to indicate a slow rubbing off of attitudes and behavior, whereas inspire seems to indicate a sudden spark of an idea or sudden push to action.

[metalikhan]

Flyboy, you're way more succinct than I was in my conversation!

[Spokane Flyboy]

I took English 209: Technical English a few years ago in college, and it's influenced me to say the most with the least amount of words. I still can get a little verbose at times, though.

[jinn]

I'll try to get this down before I pass out...

-Springtime of Khan by Marian Flandrick Bray. I don't know...she wrote a really great story (I was tired of Christy Miller).
-Stephen Lawhead with his Song of Albion series, particularly The Silver Hand. I happened upon him at 13 years of age, and hold him responsible for my fettish with Celtic mythology, exquisite bloody battles and Gaelic swearing. Which looks so much cooler on a page than regular swearing. Also saved me from limp-wristed romance (not true romance, mind) that runs rampant nowadays.
-Sigmund Brouwer's Accidental Detective series, and Magnus. He puts pieces together like nobody's business, and his characters are real people. When I write in first person I tend to echo his rhythm.
-Bill Meyer's Journeys to Fayrah series. His unpacking of Christ's sovereignty and his sacrifice are forever burned into my paradigm, and I will never forget them. This is basically a kid's series, and it influences everything I do because it changed the way I think. C. S. Lewis is another one who added to my paradigms.
-Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Epic. His imagination actually stretched mine, and I learned how to manage a large cast of characters through studying his style.
-Ted Dekker's Red/White/Black series more resonated than inspired. I feel like we write from the same place even though we tell different stories. It's very encouraging; sometimes I feel like an alien even among other writers.

Oh, and I second that part about fellow roleplayers, even though none of the ones I know are authors. One of them will be soon. He taught me the most about villains, and how to write good dialogue. Also about the story value of anime. There is no speculative fiction quite like anime.

[J Jack]

I have been heavily influenced by a lot of end of the world and doomsday authors, anything I write seems to rotate around that concept mostly because it intrigues me, um William...something or other, his book is around here somewhere...was a big one.

[The Blue Collared Philosopher]

There are plenty of authors out there that have influenced me, but Ted Dekker is the author that influences me the most. I love his stuff. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R Tolkien, Brian Davis, Christopher Paolini, Calvin Miller, and others have also played a great role in influencing me and inspiring me.