Inspiration

No, I’m not going to be posting inspirational memes. At least not yet. No, I recently answered a question on Quora about what books gave me inspiration as a writer and helped me learn to write better. I thought perhaps the answer to that might be a useful article here. Therefore: the two series I think had a large impact on my skill were the Redwall books by Brian Jacques, and the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini. 

To those familiar with Jacques’s Redwall books, you’ll should soon realize what exactly I picked up from him. That’s right–I divided my own work into separate “books” or, rather, parts. In the first draft, I included considerably more language one might find in a typical Redwall book; sort of an older style of English (at least that’s what I always thought about it). Which–and I can’t say for sure if this was a good change or a bad change–I later stopped using as I developed my own style. Every now and then I’ll relapse into the longer sentences with complicated wording, but there tends to be less of that now. It just isn’t very original to me, I suppose.

The things I picked up from Paolini’s writing tends to be more vocabulary and punctuation oriented. For instance, I distinctly remember reading a sentence where he used a comma like this: “He nocked an arrow, let it fly.” which makes complete and total sense because a comma technically should be interpreted as an “and” (that sentence was not from Paolini’s books, although there was much nocking of arrows and them subsequently flying). 

Several other notable works include Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, and even Kate D’Camillo’s The Tale of Desperaux. I especially loved The Tale of Desperaux because of how Kate narrated–in fact, in some of my drafts I narrated in a similar way. Eventually, most of it was taken out because it felt unnatural. I guess I didn’t do it well enough.

Sentence structure and some forms of repetition were derived from the Hunger Games. As many notice, Suzanne writes in a distinctly fast-paced way. This, coupled with a great story, leads to readers becoming engrossed in the book and unable to put the book down. 

These are just a few of the esteemed writers I’ve gathered experience from, yet they all hold a certain nostalgic place in my mind. If anyone reading this blog wishes to become a skillful writer, I would suggest starting with these books. Be sure to read as a writer, and not just as a reader!