# What book has most inspired your writing?



## PockyPokolro

Do you have a book that inspired or helped change/improve your writing style in some way? 

In my case, that would be '_Johannes Cabal the Necromancer' _by Jonathan L.Howard - it affected the way in which I describe things quite a bit, and made me come up with more obscure and unique similes/metaphors, rather than relying on the obvious choices.  ^u^


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## PrinzeCharming

I believe mostly all the YA fiction I have read in high school has influenced my writing to some degree. Alex Flinn has definitely given me some insight to teenage drama. I grew closer to modern teenage drama when I started teaching in the public school district. The most significant change in my writing comes with relationships. I write from experience. My current novel takes place in the New York metro area. I live in Connecticut. The New England foliage is not a matter of memory or dream, but constant seasonal reality. I believe geographical location guides writers into different methods of writing. My undergraduate years has influenced a lot of my writing as well. I often incorporate my thematic focus or degree into my writing.  I can't really say a specific book has changed my writing, but I know a lot of them contribute to the way I write.


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## InstituteMan

Slaughterhouse-Five. I read it the first time as a teen, and it was the most beautiful book I had ever experienced. It's held up for me over the years. The story is thought provoking. The prose is both vulgar and sweet in turn, which still captivates me. If I could write like that . . .


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## escorial

inspired but never changed a thing....so many books to list


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## nathan sturley

A book I loved as a kid was Time Bandits. I had flu and was really ill and made a nest in my bed where i was for about 2 and half weeks. I read Time Bandits and I was so into it with my imagination. I think having flu made me feel a bit dreamlike and away with the fairies anyway and I was so deeply engrossed in the book. My imagination was so transported. I could read at a very young age and loved fairy tales. I had a huge collection of ladybird books and would stare at the pictures and feel I was there. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=l...X&ved=0ahUKEwiGkr6YqdzMAhUB7hoKHb-mDl0QsAQIQQ
in one of the fairy tale books I think it was cinderalla as about 3 years old there was a picture of her and i thought she was the most beautiful girl ever and I kept looking at the picture thinking how so incredibly beautiful she was. The artist of these books was simply a genius in my opinion and his art is priceless.

this is a link to images of the books. I always thought if I had kids one day I would get them all these books as it fires the imagination and once that has happened it is always in your minds eye. As I got older I loved the doors of perception by Huxley as I experimented big time with lsd. Huxley like me beleived in keeping your mind youthful and not be constrained by the adult restrictions people place on themselves and I follow that. He argued this was harder to do but well worth it. 
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/aldous_huxley.html
I feel happiest when I am in the countryside and listening to the birds and insects and watching them go about their business and i think how to them that is the most important thing and they are totally unaware of me just as I feel we are preoccupied by our life's when viewed from above they are not that big a deal and it is due to my imagination it really transports me to a bygone age and I feel specially wonderful at these times in the countryside people say I become animated and full of joy
Reading to me along with music are the greatest of human acheivements and pleasures.


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## Grim_L

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. No books have ever spoken as deeply about society as they did to me.


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## ppsage

When I was in fourth or fifth grade a teachers' edition of a junior high reader called Panoramas came into my possession during an extended illness and I figured out that my instructors were all cheating. If you have the right book, everything you need to know is in there.


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## moderan

Comic books.
The Avengers and the Fantastic Four led me to science fiction. Dr. Strange led me to Lovecraft and horror. My first writings were comic books, which I printed on loose-leaf paper and sold to other kids.

For print matter-*Dangerous Visions* is the book that inspired me to learn how to write fiction. I _still_ want to have written "Gonna Roll the Bones". The book is _still_ dangerous.


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## Finn Hicks

escorial said:


> inspired but never changed a thing....so many books to list



I am of the same mind.


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## C.Gholy

Too many to list but I will give it a try. 
50 Shades and Twilight whilst I didn't enjoy reading them taught me things to avoid in my writings. 
Harry Potter taught me about wonderful characteration and multiple layers of characters. 
Many manga such as Battle Royal, Naruto, Bleach to name a threw inspired action and romance.


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## epimetheus

I forget the name: a YA book set in post apocalyptic England in which those left to fend for themselves evolved to the new environment while those hiding in bunkers, thinking they were the lucky ones, stagnated. If anyone recognises it please let me know the title.

It was a decent book without being fantastic, but i remember thinking i could actually write something as good. The first time i ever thought i could (i haven't - yet).


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## Ralph Rotten

There are prolly about 100 or more books that specifically inspired me to write.
But the ones that most inspired me to write the way I do would be: Catch 22, Giant Under the Snow, Creatures from Beyond, and Heinlein.
Sure, Beverly Cleary was my earliest motivator, but she only inspired me TO WRITE, not HOW I WRITE.


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## moderan




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## Hill.T.Manner

Definately would have to be Stephen Hunts "Court of the Air". The entire Jackelian series actually.


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## Ralph Rotten

Playboy too. The articles were always so fascinating.


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## moderan

Ralph Rotten said:


> Playboy too. The articles were always so fascinating.


I actually have six books from Playboy Press...their fiction was outstanding and so were the interviews. Never did subscribe to the 'lifestyle'.


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## meteormeg

Probably _The Lord of the Rings _series. It's helped to deepen the imagery that I create within my fantasy writing


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## NicaNieves

The very first book that inspired me to become a writer was Eragon by Christopher Paolina which I read in the fifth grade (I believe). But my taste in books has since expanded tremendously. I tend to focus on books that are some how connected to something I’m working on so setting, genre, strong female characters.
So right now my writing is based in Charleston, SC in 1830s and so I have been listening to the book 12 Years A Slave which offers insight on the subject. 
Anything that fits like an anchor to my writing, really helps me immerse myself. Good luck!


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## Olly Buckle

I was reckoning up the other day, I must have read an average of about fifty books a year for the last sixty years, and I suppose most of them left some trace behind. The one that most affected my writing though was Rudyard Kipling's 'Plain tales from the hills'. I was introduced to Kipling as a child with 'Puck of Pook's hill' and 'Rewards and fairies', my mother read them to me as bedtime stories. He really is a master at telling a short story, I went through one of his stories about a young officer and two widows and copied the story in detail, changing the setting and characters, I learned a lot from that. If you want to read the result go to my web site (Link in my signature) and look for 'The Lion'.


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## Megan Pearson

Jack London's _White Fang_. More than any other book, it seems to me an allegory for what it means to become someone and find happiness--a theme I think is present in much of my work today.

Steinbeck, too, challenged me to write about people as they are, where they are, in such an honest way as to elevate the ordinary into art.


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## Olly Buckle

I have just finished 'White fang', yes it struck me as allegorical, but there were also times when I felt pandered to, as though he was writing more what he thought his audience wanted to hear than what he necessarily believed himself.


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## Megan Pearson

Olly Buckle said:


> I have just finished 'White fang', yes it struck me as allegorical, but there were also times when I felt pandered to, as though he was writing more what he thought his audience wanted to hear than what he necessarily believed himself.



Quite possibly true. He wrote his dog stories in ten-minute spurts with gallons of coffee trying to raise the money to get of Alaska, or so I seem to remember. I don't think he liked doing what he did for a living. I last read it...fifteen years ago? I don't like mushy stories but twice I've read _White Fang_ and neither time did I escape the ending without bawling. (How embarrassing!) Whether or not he believed what he wrote, the essence of that story really spoke to me. I'd like the essence of what I write to really speak to people too, although I'm okay if they don't end up sobbing. (It was a happy sort-of thing and is kind-of difficult to explain.)


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## JustRob

I think life, not books, inspired my writing. As for my style of writing, if I could identify one then I might be able to guess how I acquired it, but no conscious process has ever been involved to my knowledge, so equally I can't identify any conscious influences. In fact the one clear characteristic of my writing lies in its essentially unconscious origins apparently.

A well written book is so transparent that the reader only experiences the story within it without noticing how it got into their mind. Therefore I wouldn't want to write in a style that I could remember ever reading because to remember that style would imply that that book had failed in its objective of being transparent. It's like asking someone what the most inspiring window was that they ever looked through. 

In fact I know the most inspiring window that I ever looked through because it was curved and set out in such a way that it showed no reflections at all and therefore appeared not to be there. I could see how it was constructed and so understood how it worked, but I don't have sufficient skill yet to understand how an entirely transparent book that doesn't reflect distracting images, especially of the writer, can be constructed and if I have read any such then I simply wouldn't know. The characteristic of that window that impressed me was that I simply couldn't see it in the way that one can see conventional windows, as a consequence of their shortcomings. That is how I would want to write if I ever took my writing seriously, absolutely transparently. The story is everything and every one should be quite unique. Analysis is for window-cleaners.


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## Guard Dog

What booK? You've gotta have just _one_?

I can't do it. I've gotten too much from too many sources. 

In fact, giving a complete list of what's influenced me would be lengthy and time consuming.


G.D.


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## Olly Buckle

Not all the ones that influenced you, G D , just the one that influenced you _*most*_. I guess all of us were influenced in some way by every book we ever read, but some were more significant than others, and for an awful lot of people there is one that stands out. That, of course, might mean they need to read more


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## Guard Dog

That's the problem, Olly; I can't pick one out of the lot that had any more or less influence than the others.

...there might very well be one, but I damn sure don't know what it would be any more. :|


G.D.


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## Megan Pearson

Olly Buckle said:


> Not all the ones that influenced you, G D , just the one that influenced you _*most*_. I guess all of us were influenced in some way by every book we ever read, but some were more significant than others, and for an awful lot of people there is one that stands out. That, of course, might mean they need to read more



I went with category, length of influence (for how long), & first thing that came to mind. A different category & more thought would have yielded a different fave.


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## Olly Buckle

Guard Dog said:


> That's the problem, Olly; I can't pick one out of the lot that had any more or less influence than the others.
> 
> ...there might very well be one, but I damn sure don't know what it would be any more. :|
> 
> 
> G.D.



Try 'Plain tales from the hills' by Rudyard Kipling, and look at it from the point of view of short story construction. That influenced my writing quite a bit, he is a master at it. Then again, this whole thread could make not a bad reading list, so I can see where you are coming from.


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## Cunningstuff

I read Ender's Game as a short story, then a novella, then a novel, then a series. I adore Gene Wolfe, Tolkien and Glen Cook. But.. probably... House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, incredible, just incredible to take all the rules and break them, do it in a new way. It still sticks in my mind, that story. Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" is the other one, and to be honest, it's all about the Freudians! Oh what a grand interest and compelling conspiracy.


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## Theglasshouse

Cunningstuff said:


> I read Ender's Game as a short story, then a novella, then a novel, then a series. I adore Gene Wolfe, Tolkien and Glen Cook. But.. probably... House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, incredible, just incredible to take all the rules and break them, do it in a new way. It still sticks in my mind, that story. Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" is the other one, and to be honest, it's all about the Freudians! Oh what a grand interest and compelling conspiracy.


Sounds like a good and interesting selection of authors and works. My brother who doesn't like mass science fiction produced nowadays favorites were enders game and 1984.

As for me tolkien's most famous works, alfred bester's best works, and short story collections. I want to read James Blish as my next pick as he wrote first I think about airships in science fiction. Tolkien created one of the popular books of all time. One day someone commented on it being the best book they had read. So I had to read it.


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## Olly Buckle

> Tolkien created one of the popular books of all time.



It is always a matter of opinion/taste, to my mind he is longwinded at times, and the ending is lousy. I have read it three times, once to myself and twice aloud to children, I found myself getting more critical.

Presently on Graham Green, 'The Human Factor'. Not about a slave trader, but MI5 and international politics, on a human level.


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## Arseny

Hi PockyPokolro! 
That's a very good question! 
For me personally, these are ray Bradbury's books.
His imagination sometimes makes you look at an ordinary object (like a sea shell) in a different way, and then try to transfer the freshness of this experience in your own writing.


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## Theglasshouse

Agreed with the ending oily buckle which was very underwhelming and disappointing. That is where ironically after getting there I stopped reading it. I skipped the ending but the rest of the story was very atmospheric, compelling, intriguing, and emotionally charged. I saw it as an allegory between greed influenced by Christian values (I did read some of its influences).  I even looked up in a dictionary words in a summer vacation of reading it in its entirety (words such as cloven, hillock). Even though foundation by Issac Asimov won that year the nebula, this deserved to win over it (because it was in the final nomination). It regularly gets voted, sometimes in important polls as a clear favorite of readers. When it was first released no one knew what to make of it. Because it changed the genre drastically. I'll be honest and say I haven't read the foundation. I read the hobbit afterwards, and that was a good read. However, I understand why people would not consider it their favorite choice of all of the fantasy genre.


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## Olly Buckle

> When it was first released no one knew what to make of it. Because it changed the genre drastically


.This may be true in the literary world, I don't know, but just about everything he used is to be found in traditional stories, from the underlying theme of a hero on a quest and the wise old advisor who comes and goes, to the individual mythical beings, like dwarves, elves, or trolls. He put them all together in a written story, that's what a good education gives you, the information and the ability to present it in new and useful forms


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## rayhensley

Can I put two? Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Forrest Gump.


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## willowarc

I do not think that I could possibly identify any singular book that has influenced my writing. Television and music, maybe, but not really anything literary.


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## Skeleton Crew Inc.

It's a two-way tie:

*A Catcher in the Rye (boring and predictable, I know)
*The Devil and Sonny Liston (Nick Tosches)

Each speak to my insane, often profane, sensibilities.


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## ppsage

The author who originally made me believe that writing might be a worthwhile expenditure of my effort was Faulkner, with an assist to Ross MacDonald. Remember doing a piece to that effect back in the nineties. Wasted a few decades on that illusion but I'm better now.


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## Jing Joy

too many to list..


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## TL Murphy

Huckleberry Fynn, Mark Twain
Riddley Walker, Russel Hoban
Tao Te Ching, Lao Tsu
Collected Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway
Catcher in the Rye, J.D.Salinger
Cold Mountain, Charles Frasier
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Conner
In Parenthesis, David Jones
Plainsong, Kent Haruf
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Deliverence, James Dickey
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The Road, Cormac MacCarthy
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
1984, George Orwell
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Keasy
The Alienist, Caleb Carr
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy 
The Trial, Franz Kafka 
A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin


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## Darren White

Most of all:
"La vie devant soi" (The Life Before Us), Romain Gary (aka Emile Ajar)
Also:
"Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe", Benjamin Alire Saenz

Both because of their very poetic prose, which I greatly admire.


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## Bard_Daniel

Darren White said:


> Most of all:
> "La vie devant soi" (The Life Before Us), Romain Gary (aka Emile Ajar)
> Also:
> "Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe", Benjamin Alire Saenz
> 
> Both because of their very poetic prose, which I greatly admire.



Oooooo, I love poetic prose. I'll be sure to check these out!


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## Amnesiac

Ray Bradbury, Chuck Palahniuk, Tim Dorsey, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Mary Shelley, William Gibson, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Karin Slaughter


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## Amnesiac

Bard_Daniel said:


> Oooooo, I love poetic prose. I'll be sure to check these out!



Antoine de Saint-Expery's, "Wind, Sand, and Stars," is terrific for this.


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## San Antone

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy


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## Taylor

Grim_L said:


> The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. No books have ever spoken as deeply about society as they did to me.



I concur!


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## Joker

Definitely the Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski, if that wasn't obvious.

The cyberpunk elements of my novel come from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Neuromancer by William Gibson. The horror is mostly inspired by the myriad works of HP Lovecraft.

Movie influences include Alien, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Akira and The Thing.

Video games influences include The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Resident Evil and Condemned: Criminal Origins.


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## Deleted member 64995

Writers Influence
Stephen King, Gutierrez, Asimov, Poe, Irvine Welsh

Movie influences
Roddenberry, Cronenberg, Tarantino


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## TWErvin2

Roger Zelazny's books, but I would have to say the one that inspired my writing the most, especially initially, was *The Guns of Avalon* in the *Chronicles of Amber*​.


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## Matchu

Probably Robert Tressel.  Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

I'm always searching for pithy Tressel quotes but they don't seem to be around on-line so much:  my life would be enhanced if only I might have a couple of 'the thing about management, as Tressel said, blah blah blah blah...'  or 'Priests & Vicars, Robert has a thing or two to say about those parasites...'

More recently 'The Penguin book of short stories' allowed me to re-visit Hardy on the lavatory, Mary Lamb, my God, and yawn along to Trollope etc gaining a huge sense of worthiness.

Guy Sajer for my men, and as a woman I read Simone de Beauvoir on a beach once, like some kind of intellectual giant.


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## Hector

Goosebumps.


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## Paularo

Lol, but  don't read any books.


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## BrandonTheWriter

Misery by Stephen King.

I love the way King makes his characters feel so real and relatable. I also was very impressed at how well he brought Annie Wilkes to life. I love King's ability to make normal people seem like terrifying monsters. It has definitely influenced my work. I prefer to explore that avenue rather than ghosts etc.


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## The-90's-Sucked

The novels by Bret Easton Ellis. All of them.


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## Galactic Goomba

Good question. Have to think about specific books. I’ve mostly read fantasy, science fiction, and nonfiction.

_Snow Crash_ by Neal Stephenson is one cyberpunk novel that made an impact on me.


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