Hatrack River Writers Workshop: What books/authors inspire you to write?

This is topic What books/authors inspire you to write? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Lullaby Lady (Member # 1840) on :

I just finished reading Diana Wynn Jones' "Howl's Moving Castle" again this morning, and I closed the book with the overwhelming desire to sit down and WRITE! Her creative ideas about magic, the playful tone in which she writes, her unique characters, all get my creative juices going like mad. (Now if I can just ignore my hideous inner-editor and get an actual story down on paper without ripping it to shreds, I'll be good...)

So now I'm curious. What books or authors put a fire under YOU? And why?

~LL

Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :

George R. R. Martin absolutely without doubt. Even when he does things I dislike I admire his writing beyond description.

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

You know, I started to list a bunch of books then scratched it because I realize pretty much any book I read inspires me to write, either by being terrible (and making me believe I can do better!) or by being fantastic and inspiring me to strive for more than I feel I am capable of at the moment.

[This message has been edited by annepin (edited August 04, 2008).]

Posted by Devnal (Member # 6724) on :

stephen king...i know i know very anti climatic....

Posted by dee_boncci (Member # 2733) on :

Stephen King and JRR Tolkein were the two writers from way back that inspired me initially.

George RR Martin is the leading influence to keep it going now.

Posted by Rhaythe (Member # 7857) on :

My first novel was pretty much directly Lovecraft-inspired. My current one is an amalgam of ideas I've drawn from authors like James Rollins, Clive Cussler, and a few others. A few of the short stories I'm working on I can point directly at Tess Gerritsen for. I'm lucky at the moment to have a fairly-diverse set of WIP's I'm focusing on.

Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :

Actually... what first got me into writing at a very small age was admiring my older brothers Star Wars fan fiction. So inspiration can come from anywhere.

Posted by Rhaythe (Member # 7857) on :

quote:
Actually... what first got me into writing at a very small age was admiring my older brothers Star Wars fan fiction. So inspiration can come from anywhere.

There are several websites you can roleplay online with, and that's one of the things that started getting me in a regular writing mindset. I liked to treat the roleplaying stories in a very novel-esque fashion, and it was popular with the players to see their characters being treated as though they were the stars of a book.

You're right, though. Anywhere.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

What set me off---what gave me the idea of getting a typewriter, then sitting down at it and turning out stories and sending them out for possible sale---was The Early Asimov, where Isaac Asimov laid out his early literary career. I'd fiddled with this or that before this point, like doodling out a story in school classes and moving it along by erasing and redrawing, or acting out a story with inaminate non-doll objects...but the fixed idea of writing them down and sending them off comes right from this.

In fact, I'd fiddle a little longer before doing it. It took me about a year to acquire a typewriter, and a little while after to learn how to use it. In the meantime, I tried writing things out by hand a couple of times, but those efforts are lost for good and forgotten by me.

Posted by TaleSpinner (Member # 5638) on :

Most recently, China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station". His menagerie of colourful creatures--some engaging and passionate about doing the right thing, others revolting and doing wrong with gusto, many just getting by in Mieville's anarchistic world--just ooze and crawl and fly off the page and around his organic city. His vocabulary is wonderful.

Before that:

Some 007 books by Ian Fleming, who does action really well. (In some ways, the books are better than the movies, because we're in Bond's head. Sometimes he doesn't like the killing. "The Spy that Loved Me", for example, is a totally different story with a maiden in distress, alone in a remote hotel with some truly chilling bad guys.)

"Carter Beats the Devil" by Glen David Gold, an evocative portrait of life in the magician's trade in San Francisco at the turn of the century. I learned that historical fiction could be fun. He's especially clever in the way he entwines a murder mystery with the sleight of hand of magic.

Several "The Year's Best SF" short story anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois--he is such a tasteful editor. Rarely do I see so many shorts in one volume that I like.

Melissa Scott and her "Dreaming Metal", cyberpunk that, unusually for this ex-software engineer, doesn't make me groan in disbelief at its artificial intelligence and virtual worlds. She draws on her knowledge of history and the arts to write richly textured, vividly colourful SF.

Also, from the writerly shelf, OSC's "How to Write SF&F", Ben Bova's "The Craft of Writing SF" and Ray Bradbury's "Zen and the Art of Writing."

Cheers,
Pat

[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited August 05, 2008).]

Posted by Corin224 (Member # 2513) on :

My original inspiration was OSC. That's why I'm here, why I've gone through literary boot camp, and why I keep coming back to the writing thing no matter where my career goes. Every time I read an OSC book (again), it reminds me how badly I want to write stories.

Lately, however, my inspiration has been Brandon Sanderson. Not only are his books inspiring, but he talks in depth about his books on his web site. (chapter by chapter notes . . . it's amazing) It's been an eye opening experience going through his book notes, looking at drafts of Warbreaker as he's writing it, and just having such a detailed glimpse into how a professional writer goes about writing from day to day. It's kind of changed my perspective on writing. I get the 'craft' side of it, now I need the discipline side, which I've never really fully grasped until I could watch somebody else's 'progress bar' move along, and hear his commentary about how his process works.

It's got me back in front of the keyboard in those spare moments of time when I'm feeling particularly masochistic, and not entirely distracted by my career or family.

-Falken (posing as Corin)

[This message has been edited by Corin224 (edited August 05, 2008).]

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Good to have you back, Falken/Corin.

I have to say that right now, reading how-to-write books are what inspires me the most to write. I can't seem to finish one because I keep getting ideas from them on how to do this or fix that in a story, and I have to put them down and go write.

As for writers I wanted to emulate (sort of what this topic is on), I started with Andre Norton, moved to Orson Scott Card, and then to C.J. Cherryh. And then I decided I wanted to write like myself.

So the how-to-write books are the ones that do it for me now.

Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :

Many books inspire me to write, but I don't want to write like any of the authors--or, more to the point, to write a little like all of them.

I love Ludlum's ability to plot, Bernard Cornwell's ability to trickle his research into a story so that it is completely accurate and not an info-dump, King's grip on realistic dialect and quirky characters, Jordan's detail, Heinlein's PoV mastery leaves me in awe, Tolkien's brilliance of simplicity, Harper Lee's empathy through PoV, the smoothness of OSC's prose, the grandiose vision of Frank Herbert, John Saul for his mastery of milieu, Puzo for the complication of his villians, David Gemmell for his themes and humor, and Martin for his ability to merge many of these. Now if only I could master each and merge them...

Posted by marchpane (Member # 8021) on :

quote:
Many books inspire me to write, but I don't want to write like any of the authors--or, more to the point, to write a little like all of them.

Yep, that sounds familiar.

Everything I read (and experience) inspires me, to the extent that my style wants to change itself depending on which books I'm reading, and I end up being frustrated that I'm not Mervyn Peake, Terry Pratchett, GRRM, Tolkien, Gaiman and Bernard Cornwell all that the same time, with a dash of Philippa Gregory. Would be nice.

The books that inspired me to write my current novel (which I'm pretty sure will one day kill me) are the Obernewtyn chronicles, post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy novels by a little-known Australian author called Isobelle Carmody. I discovered them in school. My writing's changed a lot since then, but I owe plenty to those books...

Posted by snapper (Member # 7299) on :

My favorite authors, Harry Turtledove, Mike Resnick, and a couple of others, I find so good that they have the opposite effect on me; I'll never put out anything that good.

It's the other novels that I buy, and the short stories that I read in todays magazines that inspire me. So many of them of i find the writing to be cliche, the characters transparent, and the plot ridiculous. Those are the ones that make me think that I can do better than whats out there.

Posted by satate (Member # 8082) on :

I find any art inspires me to write. I even feel inspired to write after watching So You Think You Can Dance. Some of the choreography is really moving. It's the same with music, art, reading, nature, anything that moves me makes me want to write.

Posted by RobertB (Member # 6722) on :

When I was at university I was very inspired by LOTR, Lovecraft (who I find hard going these days; the visions are wonderful, the execution dreadful) and Moorcock, who I really need to read again. Dune I loved, and still do, despite the cardboard cutout villain. Anne McCaffrey's 'Dragonflight' series is another one that's stayed with me, despite the conveniently reanimated computer, which is a bit too implausible. I'd have liked it better as pure fantasy.

I like historical fiction as well; I loved Hornbower as a teenager, though he's really a bit too good to be true. Sharpe is better, though I don't like the setpiece killing of the villain at the end of most of them, which is a right cliche. I just wish I could write battle scenes as good as those!

When it comes to modern fantasy, GRRM is a favourite, and I liked 'The Lies of Locke Lamora'. Let's hope he maintains the standard.

[This message has been edited by RobertB (edited August 07, 2008).]