Remember Your First...

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GreenKidx

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... great inspirations? The novels, poems or authors (or anything!) that initially made you want to write? What/who were they? Do they still affect your writing to this day?

For me it was 'The Giver' by Lois Lowry-it was so original and socially aware (at least to a 12 year old). The memory magic also grabbed my imagination and refused to let go.

And

'The Yearling' by Marjorie Kinnans Rawlings- just because it was such a simple, gripping, character driven tale that did not rely on literary pyrotechnics, intricate plots or epic scenery. Just raw, honest emotions and relationships.

Both those works still influence the way I write. Not saying they touched those themes/techniques first or best, just that they are the writers who first showed them to me. Later, 'The Golden Compass', Robert Frost, 'The Belgariad' and Orson Scott Card would influence my works in other ways, but ill never forget my firsts...
 
Funnily enough I had to go on local radio recently, and the presenter asked me just this. My mind went blank, and after a while I suggested George Orwell and Raymond Chandler - two obvious inspirations for writing SF comedy. But I would add to these Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels and The Acts of King Arthur by John Steinbeck, which between them had the same effect on me that Tolkien seems to have had on a lot of other people. I also loved The Cruel Sea by Nicolas Monsarrat, which was both epic and very small-scale.
 
Very first was The Nargun and the Stars by Patrician Wrightson. It was read on Jackanory on TV when I was nine, and inspired me to write a six-page "novel" in my school exercise book.

But I started writing "properly" partly because I couldn't find anything that did for me as an adult what Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising and The Grey King had done for me as an eleven-year-old, and which had stuck with me ever since.
 
The first inspiration to write that I can recall was actually "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" by Alvin Schwartz. Of course, I was only 11 or so at the time, but it drove my early on to write some stories of my own. Then in 6th grade I read "The Druid of Shannara" by Terry Brooks, realized that there were four books worth of backstory, and fell in love with the entire experience. I wanted to make something similar, something that would draw someone in the way I had been.

As a side note, that same year I won a contest at my school to go to a Young Author's conference in Memphis, TN with a short story I called "The Journal of Admiral Cadwilliam". Unfortunately, I don't have the story anymore, but I have a decent memory of it. It read like a journal (obviously ha ha) of an Admiral at sea whose voyage becomes doomed when a sailor observes an ill omen (I can't remember what that was), then a series of strange accidents takes the crew one at a time until only the Admiral is left and he ends up losing his mind.

And that, as they say, was all she wrote.
 
Well honestyly, I wasn't inspired to write by great writers but by very poor writers. I was intimidate by the greats, Shakespeare, Dickens, Harper Lee, Harlan Ellison etc. I don't recall what sf book I read, but it wasn't the first where I thought (sigh): Even I could write better than this )(*&^%$%$#.
In the words of Arnie: Big mistake. But being naive I thought I would give it a go. Ten years later I have, ahh, reassessed my initial opinion of so called *%$(*&%$ writers.
 
Very interesting replies! Ill have to look some of these books up. A couple I've never heard of.

RoninJedi:I think you should revisit that tale. It sounds intriguing!

Telford: Funny you should say that. That was sort of my reaction to Dr. Suess! I thought "Anyone can write a book full of fake words and gibberish!" If your wondering... I was wrong. Hahaha
 
I Loved Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game' books. But I started to write after reading a string of current Fantasy Fiction ( ie. M. Martin and Malazan Empire books :D) Strangly, my FIRST real inspiration was a sci-fi novel by Margaret Atwood titled 'Oryx and Crake: A Novel'.
 
Strangely enough, before registering here, I didn't write anything but translations for instruction manuals or record sleeves. It was when I started critiquing here that I felt it wasn't fair not to give those whose oeuvre I had mistreated at least a chance of revenge, and discovered that, not only did it save me masses of money in reading material, I actually enjoyed doing it.

And, even if my relative comprehension factor remains a bit on the low side, I am improving.
 
I have absolutely no idea what made me want to write. Just know that I've been doing it since primary school. I guess I used to read Colin Dann and Dick King Smith, so I started writing silly little animal stories. Probably those guys who inspired me!

Then it was Brian Jacques. Now it's Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman made me want to write short stories.
 
My early inspiration came from (gulp) films -Jason and the Argonauts and especially 'Clash of the Titans' - properly exciting for a young boy, they led me to greek mythology and beyond ... the Odyssey and Beowulf amongst my favourites.
It was only a matter of time before someone bought me a copy of 'The Hobbit' and that was it, hooked for life....

HareBrain said:
But I started writing "properly" partly because I couldn't find anything that did for me as an adult what Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising and The Grey King had done for me as an eleven-year-old, and which had stuck with me ever since.
Click to expand...

And I loved those ...
 
IT by Stephen King, the first 'grown up' book I read, when I was about eleven or twelve. Up until then my reading had been teen and YA as I tore through the school library at a speed of at least two novels a week, but when I finished that behemoth, that was when I thought 'man, I really want to do this.' Subsequently tore through his catalogue, then got onto Dragonlance (and every other fantasy under the sun), Lovecraft, Feist, Eddings, Donaldson, Poe, blended the two passions, and here I am with a fantasy horror wip.

I confess I kind of missed the Terry Brooks train. By the time I got to it I'd read so much fantasy that it seemed cliched (of course, that's only because I had read a lot of others that had ripped him off, much like Dragonlance with its Lord of the Rings similarities I suppose).
 
The first thing that inspired me to write was... Lego. I had my own "comic" , 6 or more white pages taped up with a story and with drawings that were poor even for my age (I was about 10-11)
Then I started playing videogames, and I wanted to write my very own game-script. It took a couple of trials but nothing much happened. I went to the library for more inspiration and ended up with a book that I thought wasn't good. It was about a noble swordsman who travelled along with a wizard. Every thief he met picked a fight, every fight was about how "elegant" the noble swordsman fought and how bad the thieves/peasants/... looked and smelled and fought.

I picked up writing tho, had a fairly decent first 5 pages (on paper, written with a pencil) but I had to throw those away (My mother thought it was going to affect my studies). I picked writing up again tho, and I was about 50 pages into a story when my sister brought "The Lord of the Rings" home from the library. Prisma Pocket versions. Worst covers I've ever seen. But the story gripped me, some things were frustrating in the ending and I had troubles picking up Fantasy after that.


spoilers for those who haven't read Lord of the rings!!!



I 've warned you!


Seriously, spoilers! (Select them when you wish to read them)




- Gollum bites off a finger, takes ring, falls down mount doom. WHAT??
- Frodo's heroic name is "Frodo with the nine fingers"
- Frodo doesn't fight Sauron (the cover featured a hobbit and a "dark lord", probably was the Witch King)

Other frustration with LOTR: I thought I was being original... BIG MISTAKE

My arch villan was named Morogoth... Morgoth?
City: Osgoroth... Osgilliath? (kept the name though)
Orcs and Day-orcs (took them from Warcraft III and other games, kept those too, with my own back story)



Now, later I did learn how to appreciate endings like that. I started reading some books like Shannara series and Belgariad then I got into Feist, Goodkind, Gemmel, Hobb, GRR Martin, up to Erikson today.

The more I read, the more I was inspired but also the more I've found it's very very hard to be original. Now I just write and hope that some day, some one will say "He (being me) is the one who inspired me to read and/or write fantasy because I loved it"

Did I get a bit carried away? :eek:
 
My first inspiration was Dean Koontz. I read mystery, supernatural, and light horror almost exclusively when I was younger, gobbling up stories by Christopher Pike (good god, what was I thinking?! I was six. I can't be held responsible.) and R.L. Stein, and writing my own knock-off versions. There was never really a thought process for me that made me say "This is what I want to do." At least not at the time. That young, it seemed like the natural thing to do; I read a book, I liked the story, I wrote my version of that story.

Later, around high school, I was reading the Goodkind and Jordan, and Tolkien. They had an affect on me. Goodkind and Jordan, to me, had the unique ability to draw a reader into the story and make them feel for the characters. The problem was that Goodkind then strung the reader a long for what I felt was a minimal payout, and Jordan head hopped with such frustrating irregularity that half the time I forgot where we were going by the time we got there. Jordan probably inspired me the most, of the two, since I greatly admired what he was doing to illustrate how lives that diverge so dramatically can all contribute toward one ultimate goal. I then thought "I want to do that, only better."

Tolkien. He inspired me in the traditional ways, with his magic and grand adventure, and of course elves. And then I looked deeper. It wasn't about the elves and Sauron and Mordor, or about the orcs, and goblins, and worg, and humans, and halflings. It was about the mythopoeia. It was about creating a world that inspired people to want to delve deeper, a world that had enough facets as to make it feel real. It inspired me to really dedicate myself to fleshing out the world in which I set my stories, and as the world takes shape, the stories fill themselves in, each piece evolving organically and helping the other pieces support each other.

What I find amusing, though, was that I switched to fantasy because I didn't want to have to research something just so I could finish a sentence. What do I do now? Research. I research people, history, plumbing, writing forms, linguistics, tribal dynamics, animal behaviors, human behaviors, psychology, evolution, physics, anything and everything, because the better I understand our own world, the easier it is to present something familiar enough to be believable, but different enough to seem independent. And I love every second of it.
 
For me it started with Roald Dahl. His books were amazing and I always found myself so immersed in every single one that I read. They were the first books to bring out real emotions in me.
His works are so original and different, I don't know anyone who doesn't like his books.
After Dahl it was J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out when I was about 11. Although they may not have the originality of Roald Dahl, they definitely had the ability to pull me in. I don't think many of her idea's are completely original, but I find the whole experience that I get from any of the Harry Potter books amazing.
 
Harry Potter is a train I nearly missed entirely. I know, I know...don't judge a book by it's cover. Well, I did and just figured it wasn't my kind of fantasy. A few years ago, my wife talked me into renting the first movie, which I of course did to avoid being in the dog house. ;) We watched the movie and I actually enjoyed, more than she did, in fact. Though I didn't get around to reading The Sorcerer's Stone until after watching The Goblet of Fire. So yeah, I watched four Harry Potter movies before reading the first book, but finally reading it made me a bigger fan to the point that when the Deathly Hallows came out, I bought two copies so I wouldn't have to wait for my wife to finish it. As it is, I beat her to the end by about 15 minutes. Muahahahaha!
 
RoninJedi84 said:
Harry Potter is a train I nearly missed entirely. I know, I know...don't judge a book by it's cover. Well, I did and just figured it wasn't my kind of fantasy. A few years ago, my wife talked me into renting the first movie, which I of course did to avoid being in the dog house. ;) We watched the movie and I actually enjoyed, more than she did, in fact. Though I didn't get around to reading The Sorcerer's Stone until after watching The Goblet of Fire. So yeah, I watched four Harry Potter movies before reading the first book, but finally reading it made me a bigger fan to the point that when the Deathly Hallows came out, I bought two copies so I wouldn't have to wait for my wife to finish it. As it is, I beat her to the end by about 15 minutes. Muahahahaha!
Click to expand...
I got 3,4,5,6 and 7 on pre-order. I wasn't much of a reader during my secondary school years, but I read them over and over again. A train I imagine you are glad about getting on at the penultimate station?
 
flickimp said:
The Hobbit and The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe

Back then...1985, 7 years old, they were little known by other kids and changed my life forever!
Click to expand...

Funnily enough, I am currently reading the Hobbit because, sacrilege, I was yet to read any of Tolkeins books.
 
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