Who/what Influenced Your Writing?

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Hemingway blamed newspaper reporting for his style.

I blame 1980s Information Technology. Back in 1985 the state's word processor allowed 300 words, total, so I learned to use short words, abbreviations, and headlines. Ten years later we had 850 words to play with, and in 2005 we had 40 pages of space available.

 

[DreamCloud]

I haven't written enough to have a style.

If I had to answer, I would say I was mostly influenced by software development. Phrases and ideas keep reappearing (subroutines?) and my characters keep responding to them in their own way (object oriented?).

I am also influenced strongly by other works. My stories will pick up style and verbiage from the novel I happen to be reading at the time. Whether it was good or not does not seem to matter.

 

[RoyceConnors]

My grade 10 English teacher was my biggest influence in getting me into writing. She saw something in me and helped me bring it out into words. I think during that year and the next, I wrote over thirty short stories and about twenty poems, one of which is posted here during that time and the hook was set firmly in me.

I started writing more seriously when I needed a creative outlet and the hook was still there in me. I just love putting words down and creating something worth reading. It's like being an artist and going from drawing stick figures to painting the Mona Lisa. Each story lets me try a new colour and brush stroke to create something unique and captivating.

Writing is like riding a motorcycle. You learn the basics of riding and develop a style and let your freedom of expression dictate how the ride turns out. The same with writing. You have no boundaries and restrictions to your words and what they say when you're finished writing. Some people just like to ride from A to B and feel good about it that they made it. Others like to make the ride far more interesting and make you hang on until the ride stops.

 

[LastLostIdols]

Terry Pratchett, Jeff Lindsay, David Gemmell & Hunter S. Thompson.

They're probably my favourite authors I've tried to emulate at some point or another.

 

[lovecraft68]

Lovecraft(of course) Robert Mccammon, Peter Straub and...I have to credit the man Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for creating amazing stories when I was a kid.

The main catalyst that got me writing recently and erotica was the role plays my wife and I do. She was away for weekend for work and I had a great idea and seeing she wasn't around something made me decide to sit and type it out and it turned into a story. Been going ever since.

 

[tanyachrs]

There's a lot of Stephen King in my writing and some Nora Roberts.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

No one, really. I remember seeing the movie Zerophilia, and thought I could do it better.

 

[SamScribble]

Possibly I'm just a tart. One of my earliest writing influences was Winston Churchill. I liked the way he made complex things seem simple. And then there was Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess, and J P Donleavy - three very different writers, but I learned something from each of them. Later, I picked up a few useful tips from Truman Capote, Mordecai Richler, and Graham Swift. E L Doctorow and Philip Roth were useful too. And how could I leave out the essayist Joseph Epstein? (See, we Brits are not really anti-American.) But my greatest influences have probably been some of my editors. In particular, one who was a great stylist; one who played a mean game of backgammon; and one who taught me more than I really needed to know about Bordeaux wines. Cheers, chaps.

 

[sr71plt]

Thomas Costain, Mary Renault, C. P. Snow, Graham Greene, John Le Carre, Lawrence Durrell

 

[49greg]

I haven't consciously emulated any style but I've been reading since grade school, usually starting one book as soon as I've finished another. So I've probably picked up a bunch of influences that I haven't realized, although I don't think I've got any particular style, still working on it.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I hate to admit it, but Gor is what got me writing erotica. I read some, decided it was poorly written but there were glimmers of hotness somewhere in there... years later I sat down and Becoming Marie poured out on the keyboard. I was moderately surprised, but I posted it and it rated well, so...

For style I have to blame Alistair MacLean. I devoured his stuff as a kid, and it taught me about describing action, the use of humor in action stories, and the power of sudden reveals. Action stories so often have cardboard characters - his generally weren't. Of course he never wrote an erotic scene in his life, but his stories didn't need them, and that's a useful lesson when writing anything, erotica included. If a story can't stand by itself, no sex scene will ever save it.

 

[49greg]

You all remind me of a lot of the books that I've read in years past.

 

[sr71plt]

If a story can't stand by itself, no sex scene will ever save it.

That sounds nice, but probably more than half of the readers coming to Literotica are coming for the sex scene(s) and can take or do without a story rapped around it. So the question for many here would be "save it for what?" Self-proclaimed literary snobs?

 

[JKendallDane]

My grade 10 English teacher was my biggest influence in getting me into writing. She saw something in me and helped me bring it out into words.

Little bit of a deja vu moment there, since it was also my tenth grade English teacher that woke up my Muse for me. My fourth grade teacher gets credit for being the first to challenge me as far as a creative writing assignment, but it was Mrs. Curtis in tenth that saw "something" in my scribblings that needed to be developed and gave me the nudge. If she were still alive, she would most likely be rolling her eyes more than a little at what genre my writing maturation and success ended up being based in, but at the same time she would also most likely be grinning from ear-to-ear at what I have cranked out and trying to figure out how to use it as examples in her classes.

I have to give real credit first to my late mother and the voracious reading habit she infected me with before I even started kindergarten. By the time I was formally tested in first grade, I was already reading on a sixth grade level thanks to her foresight of putting books in my hands at the age of three and teaching me how to read about Dick and Jane and Spot all on my own. When most of my third grade classmates were doing book reports on Dr. Suess and Winnie the Pooh books, I was turning ones in on Fletcher Knebel political thriller novels and Walter Lord's "A Night to Remember."

Those are just two of the authors that have influenced me. They are also fifty and sixty year old examples. Much more recently, the Muse seems to have a thing for getting motivation from such names as Grisham, Clancy, Gerritson, Cook, Crichton, and Girzone.

But none of those do much that delves into erotic scenes and themes, so I do have to nod my head at a few Lit authors that have been great influences on the directions I let my characters lead me. Robcub32, nomoretears00, Tx Tall Tales, kitten2010, reddirtrider, and TimothyM have all been tremendous mentors thanks to their stories. Even sr71plt...in his own very unique and very unintended way...has been a big influence on how and what I write.

Course the biggest influences would have to be an overly active mind and real life experiences that require the "Dragnet treatment" of "changing the names to protect the guilty."

 

[Carnal_Flower]

I could definitely say the biggest influence on me is bad, clichéd erotica. Just when I think eh, I don't feel like it, I'll see another Daddy's Little Cumslut story and go back to writing, gnashing my teeth. I cannot stand the incessant stream of bad D/d. It's the whole reason I started. In terms of style, the only one I'm aware of is JK Rowling.

 

[lovecraft68]

I could definitely say the biggest influence on me is bad, clichéd erotica. Just when I think eh, I don't feel like it, I'll see another Daddy's Little Cumslut story and go back to writing, gnashing my teeth. I cannot stand the incessant stream of bad D/d. It's the whole reason I started. In terms of style, the only one I'm aware of is JK Rowling.

I get that way with any incest pairing that is no more than "Hey, mom/sis/auntie/dad/brother etc...is hot, I want to do them!"

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Lol. Just read one like that the other day.

I get that way with any incest pairing that is no more than "Hey, mom/sis/auntie/dad/brother etc...is hot, I want to do them!"

 

[lovecraft68]

Lol. Just read one like that the other day.

The good thing about them is you can spot them quickly, they are usually fucking by paragraph three.

Of course I wrote a D/D that was kind of stroky recently, I write them for a friend and that's what she likes so...

 

[Carnal_Flower]

I have nothing at all against strokers. Plus you're not "18-22". It's the insta-slut the second they turn 18 that bugs me.

The good thing about them is you can spot them quickly, they are usually fucking by paragraph three.

Of course I wrote a D/D that was kind of stroky recently, I write them for a friend and that's what she likes so...

 

[legerdemer]

I'd love to write like Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, John Le Carré, Raymond Carver, Italo Calvino but I know I don't. They're a few of my heroes.

On this site, I've enjoyed and learned from the writing of Dr_Mabeuse, Pilot, LC, patientlee, AMoveableBeast (I love his imagination on some of his stories like A Mile and especially The Oldest Curse), TxTallTales., and Tio_Narratore, the last for his unique POV. Greenmountaineer and Angeline as awesome poets, along with a few others, like todski28 and Neoneurotic. I'd love to be as good as any of these on their best days.

We all have good and bad days. On good days, some of the writers here really ROCK the house. On others, meh...

 

[legerdemer]

Ps

JBJ, you're on my "to do" list. Don't get too excited, and don't vomit, either.