Hi all!
I wanted to see what writers people have been influenced by and whether these influences have contributed to their writing style?
Hi all!
I wanted to see what writers people have been influenced by and whether these influences have contributed to their writing style?
As a child I read a lot of the classics such as The Secret Garden and Little Princess, stories that picked children up from their 'normal' lives and into the magical. I followed that with writers like Helen Cresswell and Roald Dahl who continued those themes. I would say that my book The Legacy of Hagger's Hill does hark back to the idealism of the bad world come good.
As an adult I read widely but I always return to writers like Hardy and Dickens, I enjoy the way that they weave political comment into their stories. I'm attempting to make more political comments in my writing now and I would aspire to doing it in such a way as I'm not writing a 'political' book merely adding a moral.
I also enjoy writers such as Liz Jensen, Douglas Coupland and Jonathan Coe who create fascinating and unusual characters and put them into novels with intricate plots and subplots, wrapping them altogether in the last quarter. I can't say these guys influence my work as I can only dream of creating worlds like they do. But if I could I would!
Jane Austen for me too.
I learned much from Austen, Hardy, the Brontes, Rosemary Sutcliff and Eva Ibbotson. Contemporary authors Michael Morpurgo and Sharon Creech have also strongly influenced my writing.