The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Influence

  • Input/Output

    Just as writers get ideas from all around us, we also are influenced by everything we come into contact with. I dedicated a portion of my own personal blog entries to this phenomenon, which I affectionately call the Input/Output modes. Anything we take in inevitably affects what comes out.

    As a writer, I talk a lot about other writers and books that influence me, but sometimes I forget how much the other categories of art inspire me, as well.

    Music is a powerful one. When I listen to instrumental music, new worlds unfold inside my mind, and I envision scenes to fit with that music. When I was a kid, I used to lie in bed listening to my favorite movie soundtracks and make up new stories to go with them. Hell, I still do that sometimes. For some novels, I’ll create a Pandora station based around certain songs or bands for a certain mood. For others, I will pick one specific instrumental movie soundtrack and listen to it over and over, which shapes my story quite a bit, inspiring scenes I wouldn’t have otherwise fathomed.

    Visual arts – paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs – also trigger stories in me. I have always struggled with setting and description. I have a vague idea of what a person or place looks like, but the details are usually missing in my writing. Visual representations help me really consider the details.  Sometimes a picture will really speak to me and I’ll be driven to write a story that fits the scene. I’ll want to tell the story of how that domed city on the cliff came to be, or why the sky has inexplicable green miasma in it, or where that dragon got all of those books. Then characters will start to wander around inside the images to answer all of these questions for me.

    The arts aren’t the only other medium that influence my writing, however.

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  • Muse in a drive-in theatre

    Fox 50 Drive-In Theater
    The Fox 50 drive-in theater in Lenexa, Kansas. Photo courtesy Cinema Treasures.

    A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post over on my blog about “Creativity and TV crime.” I talked about watching too much television during my formative years and how that had a profound impact on my storytelling. But today I want to talk about another medium, one that had an equally important connection to my desire to write.

    I’ve been a fan of movies since I was a kid. When I was young, my parents would pack us kids into the family car on Friday nights every summer and take us to the Fox 50 drive-in theater up the street. We saw Disney films like Now You See Him, Now You Don’t and Herbie the Love Bug. Disney movies became synonymous with family outings, a tradition I carry on today with my family.

    I can’t count the number of ways that movies have influenced my writing. I write stories with a 3-act story structure used in screenplays. I see my actors and actresses playing the roles of my characters, which helps me flesh out descriptions. I hear music and add it to the “soundtrack” of my story. Most of what I know about heroes, villains, romance, drama and comedy comes from the movies.

    And when I’m having trouble visualizing the direction of story, I like to imagine what the trailer would look like. A good movie trailer hits the high points of the film leading to the climax. When I envision the trailer of my story, I hear a voice-over, a swell of music, and the titles that grab the audience’s attention. If nothing else, it helps me to write a good synopsis.

    By the time I reached high school, I had seen a lot of movies. I read magazines about movie special effects and make-up. I dreamed of working at a movie studio. But Hollywood was half a country away, and it wasn’t likely to happen. At some point during my senior year — as I waited in line for snacks at a concession stand — I made the decision to become an English major when I enrolled in college. I wanted to write stories.

    And if somewhere down the line those stories were made into movies, all the better.

  • Sing Me A Song, Mr. Writer Man

    When it comes to these blog entries, I feel like I spend a lot of time avoiding answering the question, or I at least take a boxer’s stick-and-move approach to the week’s topic.

    This time though, I’m going to answer it straight up . . . maybe. We’ll see how it goes.

    As far as non-literary sweet tooths go, I am a sucker for a good lyricist. If you can paint a vivid picture in just a few words and tell a damned good story in about four minutes or less, I’ll be a fan, regardless of whether or not you can carry a tune. That’s not to say I don’t love music. I absolutely do. But I think it’s okay to be in it for the words too.

    One guy who’s had my ear lately is Robert Earl Keen. He doesn’t have the greatest voice in the world, but the man can tell a story. He’s also funny when he wants to be, which gets you bonus points in my grade book. I’ve read that Keen writes a lot of his songs based on personal life experiences, and while I have no idea if this is true or not, the characters in his songs do have an authenticity that I admire and try to emulate in my own writing.

    Another trick of a good song writer is the illusion of shared experiences. If someone’s words can make you feel like you could have grown up in the same house with them, or at least on the same block, then you’ve just found a talented writer. Lyle Lovett does this to me over and over again. I grew up in rural Oklahoma, and I often recognize myself or my family in the songs he sings.

    One song of Lovett’s in particular describes the scene of a small boy out for a drive with his parents. He’s sitting in the front seat between his them, watching the countryside fly by, and there’s a cold can of beer in his dad’s lap “protected by only a small, thin brown paper sack.”

    Setting aside the legal no-no’s of this scene, I was that boy, and the moment I heard that line, I could picture it in my head. Lovett had me, and I was going to follow that song until to its end, no matter where it took me.

    I want to do that to my readers. If I can get them to believe they know me, that we are somehow alike, I believe that illusion of camaraderie might keep them reading as I stumble through the mechanics of what I’m trying to say. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and people like to reminisce, even if it’s about things that are so very wrong.

     

  • Other People’s Muses

    “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” – Paul Gauguin

    Art is a dangerous thing.  It is a key that can open many doorways.  However, you don’t know what will be on the other side until you have already crossed the threshold.  For an artist, art unlocks perceptions and inspiration you might not have otherwise found.

    I have always been a fan of using art as inspiration for my own art, especially writing.  Writing is about perspectives, about being able to shift between your perspective and the perspective of sometimes imaginary people who are nothing like you.  Allowing another artist’s work to move you can be a good shortcut.

    Art is always an expression of self.  By letting others express themselves, you can get out of your own way.  I’ve found inspiration and writing material in the art of many other mediums.

    I’ve never been one to wait around for ideas.  There aren’t little inspiration fairies floating around my head offering to sprinkle me with creativity dust, at least not that I have seen.

    If I need an idea, I go looking for it.  I’ve mentioned finding inspiration in lines of poetry in a past blog.  But I have also found inspiration from works of art in other mediums.  My novel, Kill Creek Road, began as an idea taken from the song lyrics for “Water’s Edge” by the alternative band Seven Mary Three.  The concept grew away from that initial idea, leaving it behind, but the lyrics got me through the initial planning.

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  • Other Media Influences (Week of 27 February 2012)

    We’ve talked about our writing influences and heroes quite a bit here at the cafe. We do that because they’re important to us, they shape us and how we write. Being a confabulator of any kind means being the sum total of everything that one has read, watched, heard, touched and tasted. Have you read a passage about a meal that made you want to go out to eat? Are there songs that make you happy or sad for no apparent reason? Movies that make anxious to go home and write something?

    The team here this week is talking about the other media that inspires us or fires our imagination. When you take your seat at the Cafe this week and get that mocha in front of you, savor the heat of the milk, the aroma of the espresso, the sweetness of the chocolate on your tongue. We’ll tell you everything you’d ever want to know (and probably a little more) about how those things fit into our stories.

  • Bad Influences

    If I had to name the single most influential… influence on my preferred writing style, it would have to be the denizens of the Usenet newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery [0].

    I was in IT for about ten years, herding Linux boxen and generally trying to make myself useful to people who had no fsking clue what I did, but had a vague idea that it was All Terribly Important. On the one hand, it was a great job being as that you got paid to websurf seven-and-a-half hours a day [1] and about half an hour of actual, productive typing [2]. Eventually, as the remains of the burst tech bubble finally stopped deflating and I was unable to find a permanent paying job that would support me in the lifestyle to which I would like to have become accustomed [3], I made a sideways career move into library science and somehow ended up as a quasi-historian.

    Alt.sysadmin.recovery was the online watering hole where bunches of professionally very clever, professionally very geeky people [5] went to bitch about their jobs. All subcultures develop their own ways of doing things— jargons, inside jokes, and unique communications styles— as a way to separate the sheeple from the sacrificial goats [6], and the Scary Devil Monastery formed theirs out of a self-deprecating blend of gallows humor, unbridled cynicism, science fiction and Monty Python references, a love of all things Pratchett, snarky and illustrative footnotes [7], a withering contempt for anyone with an IQ demonstrably below body temperature [8], and a philosophy that there are days when the most productive thing to do is to kick back with a fermented beverage of choice and just watch the lunatic parade pass by [9].

    The style is esoteric and harsh for non-initiates. Needless to say, it gets toned down in my professional writing to avoid frightening Those Who Sign The Paychecks. But it does make writing that difficult first draft ever so much more fun.

    [0] For a sample of asr back in the day, try <a href=”http://home.xnet.com/~raven/Sysadmin/ASR.Quotes.html”>here</a>, or <a href=”http://home.xnet.com/~raven/Sysadmin/ASR.Posts.html”>here</a>.

    [1] Justified as Googling error messages. Whatever your obscure error message was, somebody else on the Internet was already out there bitching about it. And misery does love company.

    [2] Because before you fix the syntax error in sendmail.cf, you first have to understand sendmail.cf.

    [3] One with such luxuries [4] as rent paid and actual food on the table that didn’t come out of a dumpster.

    [4] Needless to say, in those days broadband internet was not a luxury, but life’s blood itself.

    [5] Much like myself.

    [6] In asr lore, the only way to properly diagnose a misbehaving SCSI chain.

    [7] Ahem.

    [8] That is to say, just about everybody.

    [9] From a high location. While holding a high-powered rifle with an extended magazine and laser sights.

  • How much is your own writing like your favorite author’s?

    I would have to say that my writing style is mostly unique, although I’ve snagged techniques from practically everyone I’ve read. Nevertheless, I try to provide a happy ending, or at least a satisfactory outcome, to my novels (I mean, how awful to kill off a YA character?!?), and so did one of my favorite authors, Nevil Shute, whose novels almost always beat up the main character all the way only to find him in the arms of his true love at the end. I may not go that far, but I do try to keep my MC alive through the story and reunited with a loved one at the end, too.

  • Pants on Fire

    After reading a really good book, or watching a TV show or movie, I find myself adopting the speech patterns of a character that I identify with. Sometimes it sticks around for a few days, other times it sticks around for months or even years. If you’ve ever watched Deadwood you can probably guess what my favorite curse word was for a very long time.

    There are a conglomeration of authors I need to thank for who I am today as a writer. Embarrassing as it is, I must begin with the myriad of authors who wrote for Dragonlance, but in particular Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Thank you. I discovered a love of fantasy literature through your guiding hands. Without Dragonlance I may never have graduated past reading about girls and their horses. Without them, I may never have discovered the authors who would later directly influence my writing. (more…)

  • Influences

    I would like to say that I am a complete original. My ego would prefer that I depict myself in this essay as a creative genius who oozes unique ideas all the time.

    Honestly? Well if I’m being honest, then I have to admit that whatever I am currently reading heavily influences my writing style. My NaNoWriMo novel for 2011, which I am still working on, is more than a little colored by the fact that when I started it I was reading REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. A suspicion haunts me that if I were to suddenly ditch the Stephenson book and pick up Emily Brontë, the tone of my own novel would change in turn. In order to keep the tone the same throughout the novel, I’ve made a pact with myself to only read that one novel while writing this book.

    I’m not proud that my creative work is so easily influenced by what enters my mind from the outside. It seems like a distinct weakness in my writing abilities. I may be embracing this weakness for NaNoWriMo, but on other projects I have deliberately sequestered myself from media in order to keep other people’s ideas out of my work. I was writing a voice over script for a World War II documentary a few years back. Everyone I told about my project recommended watching a television series called Band of Brothers. I was curious but I waited until my project was finished to prevent any subconscious lifting of ideas.

    I read somewhere that one must must write one million words before finding their true voice as a writer. That is what I’m shooting for, 1 million words. If I participate in National Novel Writing Month every year it will take me 20 years to achieve that goal. I really can’t wait that long. If I take the magic number from NaNoWriMo 1,667 and write that many words every day it will only take 20 months to reach 1 million words. This seems like a much more exciting proposition. If I keep writing as much as I did during November, I should be on schedule discover my true voice in around two years. I’m not sure if my editor will allow me to make up tags here on Confabulator Cafe, but if I can I will create the tag “1 million words” or something like that and keep everyone updated on the progress towards my 1 million words goal.

    Optimistically, perhaps after crossing the 1 million word mark I will not need to isolate myself from media in order to keep my writing voice strong and original. Neither will I be a slave to imitation. Eventually I will be able to write authentically and from my heart all the time. In the meantime I am moving purposefully toward that destination of 1 million words and hoping that I can finish my 2011 NaNoWriMo Novel before I finish reading this Stephenson book.

  • Combo One

    I seem to keep coming back – again and again – to this laundry list of authors: Robert A. Heinlein, Alan Moore, Ian Fleming, Neil Gaiman, Alan Lightman. These are the writers that have inspired my attempts at writing stories and influenced how I put one word after another as well as how I organize one idea against another.

    Back in the ancient days of the early to mid-90s, I first tried to write comics exactly like Gaiman and Moore and boy did I fail miserably. Once I got over trying to create the next Miracle Man or Sandman and settled in to telling stories that were occurring to me I did a lot better. I toyed with the idea of writing fiction, too, and that’s when I tried aping Heinlein.

    When I was a songwriter for the bands I played in, I would tap Heinlein again for song titles and themes. A couple songs were pretty successful though anyone listening to them and looking for a hidden meaning or if I was trying to adapt a book into a song would be disappointed. (And don’t bother trying to find any of my songs anywhere. I have copies and so do the guys I played with but this was way before the internet and music software were so ubiquitous.)

    As I started trying to write fiction on a dedicated word processor (anyone remember those?), I used thinly-disguised characters and settings from Heinlein and Gaiman, especially. I was trying to write fantasy and science fiction so it was natural to turn to masters of those genres. Later, after I discovered Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman taught me how to write emotions and so it was natural to pull from him, too. That led to me really dissecting Moore and Gaiman’s comic stories for emotional content. Goldmine. I was attending Fiction University.

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