Influences?

[caecilia]

I'm very much in the process of developing my own voice, and I probably always will be. Have you ever seen artists on tumblr posting their "influence maps"? I always wanted to do that with writing. Since I'm in a writing workshop for school right now, I've been experimenting with different styles. In general, I think a lot of my writing is influenced by media I consumed when I was little, most notably Goosebumps and Animorphs. But lately I've been consciously thinking about my influences.

The story for my 'beginners' workshop ended up having a very Night Vale (and writing it felt like pulling teeth, I hated that class.)

For the one I just wrote, I had The Sims and urban legends in mind and was listening to Ke$ha. A lot. Before that, I had been reading This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks and tried to go for the same gut-wrenching sadness that makes up a lot of her stories (didn't even come close, but it was fun). For the first story, I was thinking about Miranda July, so it was introspective, relationship-focused, and a little weird.

I don't mean that I've been copying them exactly and trying to be someone else. In all of those stories there is definitely something that's just me. My outlook on life, my sense of humor, my struggle with strong endings. I just seek out something that has a similar vibe to what I'm going for and keep it in mind as I'm writing. What I've noticed is that it keeps me focused, and I'm almost always satisfied with the end result, to the point that you can be satisfied with a rough draft, anyway.

Does anyone else have an "influence map"? Do you do anything similar?

Comments

[sarillia]

I'm not sure what my influences are since there are so many different styles of writing I love so I never know what to try to imitate. I've done some experimenting but I don't often have a particular writer in mind.

Usually when I have a writer in mind, it's because I'm writing something that is inspired by them. I wrote a story that was a sort of fantasy pastiche of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest and I was trying to imitate that hardboiled style of narration. That was a lot of fun actually. I want to go back to that and start writing others in that series I was going to turn that into. I had another one that was inspired by Alice in Wonderland and I was very happy when I put it through that I Write Like... test and I actually got Lewis Carrol.

I know I must have been influenced by a lot of different writers and I wish I could think of what they are because it would be interesting to think about, but I'm having trouble.

I started trying to think of whose work I've read a lot of, but there are some like Italo Calvino and Dostoyevsky and Kobo Abe and Franz Kafka that I've only read in translation. I don't know if I can say that I'm really familiar with their style or not. I guess it depends on how good the translators were.

Looking at some of the others, I suppose some of my influences could be Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Patricia Highsmith. As much as I love the writing of Jane Austen and Wilkie Collins and others, I don't tend to write as much like them.

I actually think I would like to try more experiments. I know some writers worry about having their own style but I'm not really one of them. I always remember the biggest compliment I ever got from an English professor at school (one that was considered tough by others) where he told me that I write with a strong voice that is all my own. Of course that wasn't something I worried too much about before that either.

[caecilia]

I feel like most of mine are things that I read when I was little. There was an ask meme on tumblr a little while ago about top ten childhood because and each one I named made me think "Oooh, that's why I love ___!"

I don't "worry" about having my own style, but I definitely think about it and I guess...try to analyze it? I think worrying too much would come out too try-hard.

[sarillia]

I didn't mean to say that you're worrying about it here but I have come across some people who do.

I feel like what I read when I was younger should have had a big influence on me but nothing much really sticks out in my mind. There's Animorphs, like you, and Little Women, and I'm having trouble even coming up with more that I read more than once. The Wayside School books maybe? I had a reputation for being a big reader but I don't think I really started reading all that much until high school.