What Influenced your Writing Style? OOC

I think, for sure, I was influenced by many people online. Being online and seeing people's writing was really what triggered most of my inspiration and my love for writing. My writing always evolves the more people I am exposed to. HiO, honestly, has influenced a lot of my writing now and definitely unlocked a new side to my style that I didn't think I had before.

But when I was in about 4th and 5th grade, I was reading a lot of S.E. Hinton at the time and was heavily influenced by her. A lot of my writing at that time derived from her general themes. As I got older, my style I think morphed into its own being, finally becoming a separate entity in the world. But I do owe a lot of my writing career to her, as I don't think I would still be writing today if I hadn't discovered her.

Really, it's hard to pinpoint a direct source that really influenced me. I'm constantly inspired by many people and many stories, it's hard to really say which started it. It fluctuates, I guess. But I can say that I would not be the writer I am today had it not been for the internet, as, like I said, many online writers influenced 'lil me.

Apparently, the "I Write Like" site said that I write like J.K. Rowling. WELL, I WONDER WHY?!

I love this topic! It really makes you think about your childhood and how my writing came to be! First off, I will say that I hated writing and everything that goes with it: spelling, essays, summaries, reports, you name it! It was the most difficult for me to truly take on in school.

There was a glimpse of hope during my fourth grade class where my teacher really helped me with spelling. He would stay with me after school and tutor me (free) knowing that my parents were always late in picking me up. He would give me tips and hints and even give me candy at the end. (I guess, now thinking back, I was kind of influenced by food! ) But the "like" for spelling only lasted until the end of the academic year. The following year, we had to do "Wordly Wise" and that was the bane of my existence!

Honestly, I did not receive confidence in my writing until my sophomore year of high school. In my European History class, we had to write a 4-5 page essay about anything related to the class' curriculum. I remember choosing it on WWII. WELL... It was two days before it was due and I remember going to my mom and asking her to write it for me because I couldn't do it. Do you know what she said? She said, "yes!" I remember being so excited-- no work and I get an A. I turned in the assignment and when it was graded, my professor asked me if I know what proofreading was, giving me a D. I was SO confused and literally, I looked at the essay and I saw that it was a disaster. Indents, spaces, punctuation, EVERYTHING was in the wrong places and just looked like a tornado hit the words and dropped them in random places. I remember going to my mom and yelling at her at how a terrible writer she was and that I could do better than her and when the next essay is given, I'll show her. Since then, I've grown a new confidence in my writing because I felt I could do a lot better (and for the record, my mother is a beautiful writer, she made those mistakes on purpose!).

So far, my writing has been influenced on confidence. Though it is also influenced on practice. In high school, I also joined my first Harry Potter roleplay: Welcom2Hogwarts. In the beginning, my writing was terrible but as time permitted, it began to get more detailed and creative. But, man, I was such a newb. The biggest thing I've learned when writing is to take the emotion out of the words and let the words, themselves, express the emotions. It was a difficult switch, but it definitely made a difference and it also makes a huge difference when writing work proposals, emails and other important assignments.

Lastly, reading. I read a lot of books and that is what influences my writing greatly. I remember being on a Shakespeare crave for a few months and literally, when I was RPing, my writing would be written as though it was in Old English. It was quite hilarious actually!

For the record, I am not blind, nor am I deaf. I've seen how people react to my writing, and it is to my understanding that, in general, people enjoy it. (Wow, conceited, much?) However, I would beg to differ, because unlike a lot of writers on this site, I don't actually like to read. I know, shocking, but it's true. I am not a visual learner, which is why I'd rather pick up a football and go outside than to sit down and absorb a massive chunk of information from a textbook. Plays are learned better through practice than staring at a whiteboard, and I have always preferred audio to visuals (hence the text-to-speech and speech-to-text on my laptop).

Not that I don't read! Because I do! I've, er, listened to the entire Harry Potter series and several other popular ones, and there are some classics out there that I truly enjoy (such as Ender's Game, Sabriel, or Phule's Company). However, reading has lost its appeal and charm over the years, and I'd just... rather... do other things. Like play football.

Because of this, I really can't tell you who influenced my writing style (I know, helpful, right?). My teachers, obviously- they've been imperative in telling me what sucks and what doesn't. I find myself mostly drawing inspiration from BBC Sherlock, actually, what with Elijah's analytical attitude and cynical disposition. The way you find yourself captivated as Sherlock walks through his deductions is something I try to infuse into my writing, although I've always found my interpretation a bit too naïve and childish. To remedy that, I eagerly pull up a thesaurus and start Googling my heart out- verbiage covers up most of my ignorance and immaturity.

As someone who is still in school, I won't lie; there are days when I want to delete my account and just bury myself in my homework. However, the site provides a unique outlet that makes writing and literature fun again, rather than just having to repeatedly spout out essay after essay, summary after summary, lab report after lab report. There's something so self-satisfying in knowing that you're writing for you, and not for anyone else.

Music always reflects in my writing, too. I can't stand a silent room, so I'm usually blasting something in the background to keep my mind busy while I think. If I'm listening to angry, loud music, Elijah tends to be meaner and moodier (enter FOB, P!ATD, and Macklemore). If I'm listening to Lana Del Rey, that tends to hit closest to what Elijah is supposed to be- strange, ethereal, and a little bit sociopathic. I find myself listening to Dodie, Tessa Violet, and Chloe Moriondo a lot, to be completely honest, so that's why he's a little bit soft it's not that he's actually soft it's that the music I listen to is soft. Etcetera, etcetera, you get the general idea.

Something I'm trying to improve upon as a writer is not writing so much extra crap. Crap? Maybe that's not the right word? I want to learn to cut down on the useless fluff that's usually just me repeating myself over and over again in 30 different ways just to get my word count up. I want to be able to describe things succintly in a way that's not repetitive while still keeping my word count up- and while I know that quantity should not be held over quality, I find that pushing for 700 or 800 words motivates you to be more descriptive. However, I've also found that this has backfired harshly, instead making me so over-obsessed with writing enough that I forget to look for little details, little descriptions that can just enhance my writing that much more.

People on site motivate me to do better, too. Paired alongside with the fact that my writing is on the internet holy cow, I guess there's a subtle pressure to always put your best foot forward. I'm always taking inspiration from the way other people write, or the way they play their characters as these 11-year-olds in a world of magic. I'm not 11 at all, and sometimes, it's hard to remember that 11-year-olds don't use words like "irk" or "exude".

Oh! Fun lil' side note, I guess- on the "I Write Like" site, after taking several samples of my writing, I got Anne Rice consistently, time after time. I also haven't read anything by her so I don't know if that's a good thing or not...

I really can be influenced by the stuff I read. Obviously, JK Rowling inspired much of my writing style, and I just love how she can explain everything and draw the reader in as if they were there. You can really imagine what the world must have been like by using her writing style in my opinion. 

It's a bit embarrassing, but most of my super influential years were spent reading prose-heavy fanfiction, and I think that stuck with me. In my creative writing class freshman year, I really got caught up in trying to focus on making my writing feel visceral with heavy descriptions of surroundings, because Really I would be happy with writing pure dialogue, all the time haha. I forget to flesh out the world around my characters a LOT and focus on their words/feelings/body language, and I think that's because of what I read.
Outside of that, Maggie Steifvater is my biggest inspiration. I hope to someday be a fraction of the writer she is lol.

I normally don't write in English, which is why most of the time my sentences come out a little clumsy. I know how I want them to sound in my first languages but most of the time it doesn't come out right.

In my native language the biggest influence were probably the translated pieces by Morton Rhue (i read the wave, bootcamp, ghetto kidz & dschihad online) and some other authors, mostly from my earlier childhood.
Another book that i think influenced me was blood & ink by Steven Davies and some star wars books like ahsoka.

Hello hello!

I've been thinking about this topic for quite some time and wanted to add some of my rough (and quite incomplete) thoughts to it. I read fairly constantly and would much rather read a book than watch TV or movies. I find my attention span is much better for the written word. I think in order to be passionate about writing (although there are always variables) you need some love of reading.

I'm not entirely certain where my verbose use of language came from, but I find it is very helpful for assignments that have minimums. I also really do not know why I am so into semicolons, dashes, and parentheses. My assumption is that I feel I have way too much to say and worry about getting it all out. Obviously, all this is to say that I could benefit from being a lot more succinct, ha. I do think, however, that a lot of my writing is based on my obsession with emotions and human behavior. I am quite fascinated with people's mental decisions and will often try to justify why people make the decisions they do. I don't really know how people write without including their character's thoughts, either, as I am constantly inside my head! Whether authors include a lot of internal thoughts or not, however, what I get most out of text is ways to empathize with/understand other people, which is in reality what I would like my career to shape up to be. Although, I am human, so of course I am not an expert at this. I am quite unobservant in regards to clothing and such, which is why I rarely mention outfits and appearances. It's something that I recognize would add to my writing quite a bit, so I'm (slowly) working on adding more physical detail in my writing.

I grew up with the sole goal of wanting to become an author. A relative of mine recently commented that she wondered how many books I had read in my life time; I think, especially in youth, I was greatly associated with reading and, by association, writing. Growing up, I was often encouraged to write and told that I had some talent. When I was in high school, however, I had a teacher essentially tell me I was an awful writer...I went from getting pretty solid grade in English to getting many, many, many D's. And F's. It was a really great time in my life. As a person who internalizes most everything, I really took that to heart and decided that I was a useless writer and needed to pursue another passion. I did lose my identity for a bit and a lot of creativity. It's been quite a few years since I've found joy in writing, and I am quite grateful for it being rekindled by this site. I look back on that period of my life and sometimes wish that I had not let these comments shut me down as much as they had, for now I am with a STEM degree that I find quite useless, wishing to pursue something more in the Humanities. I guess this is me saying to all the younger folks to follow your dreams, or something like that.

Something I did get from this teacher, however, is a desire to improve my vocabulary. My vocabulary is still quite weak, but I'm trying to speckle my writing with words that I wouldn't normally think of using.

Final thought - I'm also attempting to play around with using different voices and such, which has been loads of fun. I do like sticking to a specific character for the sake of development, but doing writing stuff for the newspaper and homeworks have been a great way for me to get out these other voices that are stuck in my head and I'm longing to use. I've been internally developing a character for no reason at all that has stemmed from some of my homework roleplays. It's been quite exciting for me.

I want to thank you for this topic because I've spent some time really thinking carefully about authors' word choices. Thanks to going through this writing spree, I haven't been reading as much at the moment, but I've been on a weird Harry Potter binge lately and listen to it when I drive. I've noticed that Jo definitely has a clear voice in her writing. She doesn't vary her use of "speech" words, often saying "said (adverb)," which I find interesting. She uses chortled quite a bit. I think her sentence structure somewhat resembles mine - lots of commas. By analyzing her writing, I've also been trying to be okay with starting sentences with conjunctions, though I kind of hate myself when I do it, haha. Old habits die hard.

This topic isn't the most active, so if I think of anything else, I'll likely edit this post. Again, though: thank you!

I've noticed that my writing tends to be a lot less... 'poetic' or dense than a lot of the people here, and I think that's due to the fact that my biggest guilty pleasure is reading young adult romance novels... Think like, John Green, and stuff. It's been a long time since I've read anything that takes a lot of thought to decipher (I haven't read any of the classics or anything like that) and I think my writing reflects that.

It also makes it so everyone's writing on here seems so incredibly impressive and beautiful to me, and I love reading everyone's posts.

I guess what is for me: The time I have, the inspiration, the music and or mood I guess? XD

I mean.. I can force post kinds of stuff easily. Do not get me wrong, but I write the best once I have a bit of time and am in the mood. 

It's probably a mix of Harry Potter, Lorien Legacies, and Captain America comics/movies. I find inspiration from there because I have written things based off those. It makes sense that my writing style would come from there.