Copycat, Copycat: Writers on Copying Our Inspirations

It's a common story. Writers get into writing because they're inspired by certain authors who have influenced them. And, almost always, at first they emulate them in at least style, if not substance and theme.

But let's move it from the general to specific and talk about YOU, writer.

Which author or authors were your beginning models to copy when you started? When did that copying start to shift into something that would grow into your own voice and style?

Ef Deal: My earliest influences were Bradbury and the Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. Then Tolkien. The handwavium aspect of Bradbury is the basis of all steampunk, if you think about it, so yes that fantastic element is still in my works. But mostly I was influenced by my studies in French literature, where words were chosen for their greatest effect. Poe said all elements of a story should work together to create a unified effect, and that has been my guiding mantra.

Rob Cerio: Douglas Adams, Issac Azimov, and Clive Cussler. I think my style grew into its own after I stopped worrying about making jokes that sounded like "Bad Douglas Adams" Jokes, and just let them be funny on their own.

John L. Taylor: At the beginning, I was an imitator of Ray Bradbury and John Updike to a vast extent. All my work from that period was soundly rejected as it was a pale imitation of a superior author. I had tried to write a novel manuscript, but the early draft was a meandering pile of exposition. Note I hadn't tried writing horror or New Pulp yet despite being a major fan of the genres. I began developing a voice of my own, oddly, while writing erotica under a pen name for a now defunct website (Ironically, those unpaid stories are still my most widely read at 6k or more reads). I somehow connected with an audience by writing the type of story I wanted to read. My voice in writing finally emerged while writing The Rocket Molly Syndicate for the Dieselpunk E-Pulp Showcase Vol.2 in 2013-14. My Mom was fighting ovarian cancer as I was working on it, half was written in hospital waiting rooms. I needed a release and wrote pure escapist fiction. It connected, and the anthology it appeared in moved about 775 copies across all platforms and was adapted as an audio drama for the Coffee Contrails Podcast, adding another 200 or so downloads. It is still my most successful work to date. I dug further into New Pulp, but with a strong influence from Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. My next works were The Legend of the Wild Man, a 100 line narrative poem that ran in the Mythic Circle, and The Thing in the Wexler House, an audio narration that Otis Jiry performed for me on his YouTube channel. Both got solid receptions. As I branched into poetry, more growth happened, and My current style was cemented. Eerie, dreamlike narratives with a pulp twist. Also, writing online narrations helped a lot, as I was introduced to horror voices different from what I'd read before. Variety helps a lot.

Anna Grace Carpenter: The first I remember trying to imitate was Cordwainer Smith. He had a flair for not letting story get in the way of the occasional stylistic flourish and I loved it. Later Tad Williams and Raymond E. Feist made an impact on how I used characters to best tell the "exciting" parts in ways that actually had an emotional impact, plus a particular style of world-building that has stuck with me. (I would be hard-pressed to explain this, but I know that it's there because of reading their work.)

Things started to be less copycat once I really started writing a lot. The more I was using words in storytelling regularly, the more my own style began to emerge from the way I pictured certain scenes and the dialog I heard from my characters. At which point those authors moved from a category of imitation to one of influence.

HC Playa: So there are 4 authors that spurred me into writing: Sherrilyn McQueen, J.R. Ward, Karen Marie Moning, and Patricia Potter.

All four build intricate worlds, whether it's dropping you into the romantic lives of people in 1100 AD Scotland, a hidden Vampire society, a murder investigation turned apocalyptic collision of Fae realms and human, or weaving mythology into romance and adventure.

I didn't copy any of them directly, but they all made characters breathe on the page. They weren't afraid to weave love into blood and gore and battles. One of my favorite things that I did copy was the reoccurring cast that doesn't necessarily feature the same POV from book to book.

Ernest Russell: My earliest influences were Poe, Verne, Wells, and an anthology called Tales of Time and Space. Later Lovecraft and the circle of writers from Weird Tales.

Of these early influences, there is one that influences every story. That is Jules Verne. One of the things I LOVE about Verne's stories is he did research and did his best to not only incorporate the science and technology of the story's time period but to project it forward into what might become. As such I try, even in my fantasy writing to research what I am writing and make it plausible within both the world rules for the story and what I find historically or current science and technology and translate it into the story.

Frank Fradella: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert B. Parker, and Chris Claremont. Remove any one of them and I'm not sure I'd be a writer at all. My college professor in English told me to look at Parker for dialogue, and he was right. Fitzgerald showed me how to make prose feel like poetry, but it was Claremont who taught me how to tell a story. I had been reading comics books off the spinner rack for years, but the first comic book I *remember* is Uncanny X-Men #131.

Tom Powers: A weird mix of Walter Gibson, Paul Ernst, and H.P. Lovecraft. Still echoes of them all, plus a bit of Norvell Page. Much of what I write is in the traditions of those writers' genres.

Pj Lozito: I wanted to write like Lester Dent, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler and Sax Rohmer.

Teel James Glenn: Robert E Howard, Lester Dent, Peter O'Donnell, Dash Hammett.

Krystal Rollins: My inspiration: Mary Higgins Clark from my past, and my present is you,, Sean. Her work continues to inspire me in how I create my characters. Her words are printed in black ink and white paper but in my mind, it's blooming with color. I keep writing Sean because of you. (Editor's Note: Awww... Shucks. Thanks, Krystal.)

Charles Gramlich: Ray Bradbury for one

Murky Master: So Dragonlance and the anime Escaflowne, above all else, got me into writing seriously when I was about 13 years old. It took another ten years before I returned to that old dream, but I wrote part of a fantasy novel in those days that I am still surprised at its quality compared to what I wrote today.

John Morgan Neal: Stan Lee, John Broome, Gardner Fox, Bill Finger, Bob Haney, Denny O'Neil, Archie Goodwin, Len Wein, Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin, Roy Thomas, Doug Moench, Michael Michael A. Baron, John Ostrander, Mike Barr, William Messner-Loebs, Bill Mantlo, Marv Wolfman, and last but opposite of least, Chuck Dixon.

Michael Dean Jackson: When I started writing (as Jack Mackenzie) I was inspired by a lot of military science fiction; Heinlein, Jack Campbell, David Weber, Lois McMaster Bujold, etc. It was with those inspirations that I wrote THE PARADIGM TRAP and THE MASK OF ETERNITY.

Do those elements of your inspirations still show up in your current work? Howso? Are they things you do consciously or have they just been internalized by the years of doing them?

Frank Fradella: Completely internalized. I took Parker's style for a spin on its own, and it felt like wearing one of those 1970 Halloween costumes that comes with the hard plastic Batman mask attached by a string. It was a conscious choice to find me in that amalgam, and that's the writer I became.

Anna Grace Carpenter: I do still love a stylish bit of storytelling. Voice, unexpected use of language and grammar (or lack thereof) to catch the reader's attention at a critical moment are some of my favorite things. And that all grew from early attempts to mimic Cordwainer Smith. And the storytelling inspiration I got from Feist and Williams is still there too. Using all the characters to tell the story whether we see their PoV or not. Allowing heroes to not always be heroic and villains to not always be villainous without diving into a grimdark grey. And allowing tragedy to occur, sometimes in very small ways that adds a bittersweetness to big triumphs.

I don't think it's deliberate, it's just how those inspirations encouraged my own voice and writing the kind of stories I like to read. Because that was what first made me want to imitate them - they wrote stories I loved. And now I write stories I love so the influence is still there, but organically after years of practicing my own storytelling.

HC Playa: At some point, I found my own writing voice, but for all my novels, these elements remain, including having two central protagonists (usually a male-female romantic pairing, but like JR Ward, I branched out the more I wrote).

Depending on the story it can almost seem like a hero and side-kick type of casting, especially as I pit them against larger-than-life dangers. (As I type this I suddenly see why my publisher says my writing is pulp 😂.) I don't lean into the romance aspect as much as those authors tended to. More like Moning's Fae Fever series, the romantic aspects take a back seat to the apocalyptic events and characters dealing with their issues.

I have read plenty of classics of multiple genres, but it would be disingenuous to say I am influenced in style by those stories.

I don't aim to write the next classic that future college students dissect to figure out what I meant when I said the sofa was an ugly flea market reject.

I write to entertain. I use elements from the stories I love reading. I love weaving in magic and the amazing, because life always needs magic.

John Morgan Neal: Yes. I'm a big ol' ape in more ways than one. But never outright. The stuff I love is in my DNA. So it has to shine through.

John L. Taylor: Many facets of my inspirations are like a reflex now. A subconscious thread. I still lean on Lovecraftian themes and first-person narrations in horror but avoid the adjective salad pulp writers often used when stories paid by the word (Lovecraft was great at taking a whole paragraph of them to say "it was an amalgam of parts that defied description, an offense to biology itself.") I guess that's the real difference between me and my inspirations: I prize concise writing. I suppose that's the last vestige of Updike left in me. But it's a great influence to retain/

Rob Cerio: I still feel like I use Cussler's "opening Gambit" formula and basic formatting of action scenes. Azimov's use of "working-class schlubs" is something that still crops up all the time in my work.

TammyJo Eckhart: I can't answer question one so question two also doesn't apply. While there are authors that I loved and still love, the idea of copying them in any way never entered my mind. I was writing stories from kindergarten onward.

Murky Master: Things I took from Dragonlance were:

• mixing cultures is both hugely interesting and creates lots of conflict, from Tanis Halfelven's internal identity drama. I'm biracial myself so it was interesting seeing someone "like me"
• Bad guys are F-ing Awesome. Raistlin made a permanent mark on my picture of wizards and magic and the lure of power magic brings. You need no further proof than to behold my profile pic, after all. Nothing makes me hahaha quite as much as my hourglass-eyed boi. Lord Soth was pure mother finding METAL as well and remains my fave Ravenloft Darklord.
• Escaflowne was a romance and an epic fantasy all at once. Later on, I would actually sit down and read a romance novel and find it totally awesome, and I like to have strong, real relationships in my books because of that anime.
• also, the anime was grand in scope, full of pathos and beautiful at times, unspeakably cruel at others (looking at you Dilandau). It helped me understand PTSD and the weight of honor as well as the power of dreams to destroy and create. Dilandau also made me like insane villains.
• the Adventures of Batman and Robin cartoon with Bruce Tim as the art director also made me love art deco and Pulp sentiments. The episode featuring "The Grey Ghost" and Brendan Frasers The Mummy sealed my fate. Now I can't help but have all cap titled like DESTROYERS FROM WALMARTS BEYOND and COURT OF THE GLISTENING LUNCH LADIES and such.

Chuck Dixon: I read so much before I started writing for a living that I have no idea who's work I've intuited over the years.

Michael Dean Jackson: However, around the time I was writing my books I discovered the television series SHARPE on the History Channel. I loved every episode and I loved Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe. So I figured I would try the novels by Bernard Cornwell and I loved them even more. The books were, I found, immensely better than the show.

And it was those novels and the character of Sharpe who fired up my imagination and helped me come up with my own, military SF version, a character called Jefferson Odett.

I have only written two Jefferson Odett books, DEBT'S PLEDGE and DEBT'S STAND, but I do have a third one that I may eventually get to. Nevertheless, Jefferson Odett is more than a little inspired by Richard Sharpe, in the same way that Horatio Hornblower, C.S. Forrester's seafaring adventure hero, inspired Bernard Cornwell's character.

I am under no illusion that my novels have anywhere near the quality of Cornwell's or Forrester's, but the inspiration is there.

TammyJo Eckhart -- I Call Them My Muses

Getting to know... Tammy Jo Eckhart.

Tell us a bit about your latest work.

True You 101 is my first YA novel to be published though not my first YA piece that I've written. The book follows Blake Trudeau during their second year at magic high school, a year when everyone takes a class that will challenge their views of themselves and others at the deepest levels before revealing who they truly are at the end of the year. While I didn't write it to be a counter to a certain exceedingly popular magic school series, some folks think it is a nice change of pace that is meant to be inclusive of all people (or at least mages).

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

I've always written. My mother was a writer, small local publications, but since her health was quite bad, others often took care of me physically while she attended to my intellectual and emotional needs (bad and good). I think writing was something she could understand and thus encouraged in me.

What inspires you to write?

I call them my muses but that is just symbolic of this feeling inside that says "write this down." I have unusual dreams that haunt me until I do write them down. I like to challenge myself, too, by tackling a new subject or a theme that I might see in an open call from a publisher. That's how True You 101 came about.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I call everything I write "edgy fiction" because I like to deal with the realities of how people interact with others and themselves. I repeatedly look at consent issues and feelings of self-worth, possibly because I'm a childhood abuse survivor.

What would be your dream project?

I'm soon to embark upon that actually because of a publishing contract I signed earlier this year. 

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

It isn't so much improving what I wrote (I could always do that), but not believing a publisher who turned out to be dishonorable. I wouldn't have spoken with The Nazca Plains Corporation at all and found another way to get Servants of Destiny published. That was supposed to be a trilogy, but because they never sent me sales reports or royalties and have refused to stop offering the book, I'll never be able to finish that world.

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?

I think that creative writing is a talent. You can learn skills to help you improve it, but I don't think you can learn to have an imagination that forms itself into story form. Just because you can see it all in your head, doesn't mean you have the skills to put it into a form that others can understand or even desire. This is why a good editor is necessary and finding an audience of like-inclined folks is important.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Dealing with physical pain is my greatest challenge. In 2012, I had a serious arm injury that will limit how much I can type, lift, and even just hold that arm in any position for the rest of my life. For someone who writes and types fast, this might not seem like a big deal but I went from being able to write for 4-5 hours in a row to no more than 90 minutes at once. I also tend to get illness and have severe allergies that can cause headaches. While I can do research and even write non-fiction with a headache, that doesn't work well for fiction. I need to be in the world and in the characters, not aware of this pain in my body.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

There can be a sense of shared ways of thinking or mutual respect from other writers. Another writer doesn't think you can just give away your books or that everything you do should be free, they understand the work involved. 

However, because of how my creative process works, I've never been a fan of writers workshops or conventions. When I've tried them, I've found few people willing to give as much as they want back. I stopped trading books for reviews because I learned that while I fulfilled my end, more often than not, the other person didn't. I'm a wanted reviewer, I'd rather people just accept that I do what I can when I can in that regard. Better to just be friends and be upfront about what you want/need from each other.

What does literary success look like to you?

I have minor literary success with 13 of my own books published and being part of at least that many published anthologies. I had bigger success early when my first two short story collections came up from one of the big publishing houses in the mid-1990s. We bought our first car and made a house downpayment from those two books. However, that company went under and left a lot of authors homeless. I've not been able to score that level of publisher power yet, though I'm hoping Liminal Press may prove to be a good small- to moderate-sized house.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

I am sharing all upcoming projects first and foremost with my Patreon community. I'll share details about two more publishing contracts I've signed this year as those books are released. 

For more information, visit: 

https://www.tammyjoeckhart.com/

Meet TammyJo Eckhart!

Hey, folks. Meet TammyJo Eckhart.

Tell us a bit about your latest work.

Right now I'm waiting for my literary agent to sell one of two projects.

While she is doing that, I'm working on book four in for one of those projects, a science fiction series that is similar to the feminist science fiction of the 1970s.  I'm also finishing up a collection of short stories focused on the what I fear is the real possibility of the creation of debt slavery in the USA in the next generation if we continue following the same political trends.

The last published book I was part of is a history anthology that came out in the fall of 2016 entitled Our Lives, Our History. I wrote the chapter on ancient Greece and Rome.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I look at power, authority, and the fact that all relationships and anything worth having in this world takes work, ongoing work. I don't pull my punches with sex or violence but I also don't just add those in for shock value.

What would be your dream project?

Honestly if my agent can sell the science fiction series I mention above, that's a 10+ book series that I have been writing parts of since I was in the fifth grade. Yes, the fifth grade! It is the project of my life.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

I think I could probably improve any short story or novel I've written but I learned a long time ago that you have to let go and give it your publisher and editor. If you just pick, pick, and pick at something you never get it out to others to read. Perfection is a killer to creativity.

What inspires you to write?

Generally I set myself a challenge to tackle X. X can be inspired by my relationships or events I see in the world around me. Then it is a matter of which idea my muses feel like working on and making time every weekend to do that work.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

I don't think I've been influenced in terms of style or technique. But in terms of topics and not pulling  my punches, I love Octavia Butler who left us far too soon and Laura Antoniou who is arguably the biggest kink author in the world for the past decade. Readers have said that I remind them of the "good" books from Laurel K. Hamilton and Joey W. Hill but I require my readers to think more. *grin*

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?

I think it is 70% art and 30% science. I do not believe that you can teach someone creative writing. You have the ability to be a storyteller or not, to be creative or not. But if all you do is keep those thoughts in your head or struggle to put the thoughts into understandable sentences, you'll never share your creativity with others. So you need to learn how to manage your time, how to write coherently, and how to accept editing and publishing guidance.

 Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug? 

Only that I hope folks come see me when I'm at conventions and that they heck out my website.

Don't Suck. Okay, Well Can You Be More Specific?

As I mentioned here not so long ago, some awesome advice I got from a friend way back when was this: "Don't suck." That's all well and good, because I knew what Frank was saying to me when he said that.

But what does that advice mean to you? 

If a writing mentor were to tell you "don't suck," what would you understand that to mean?

Ralph L Angelo Jr: I'd have to think that means make sure you write something engaging and interesting. Something that presses all the right buttons with your audience, but also is true to yourself and not just a cookie cutter book or project. In other words, don't just go through the motions, but actually write something you would want to read and of course something you are proud to put your name on at the end.

Mark Koch: While producing something you are proud of, ensure that you consider how it will appear to the reader. Write only for yourself, and you will likely be the only one who appreciates your writing.

Mark Bousquet: To me, this means, "Don't be lazy." We all have those moments in a story when you know you need to do something you don't want to do because it's time consuming - maybe it's trying to find out the right handgun a Norwegian soldier should be using in World War 2, or going back through your story to provide infrastructure for a new subplot you introduced at the end of a draft. If you know something needs to be done, do it. Now or later is fine, but before publication.

Peter Welmerink: I believe if a writing mentor told me to DON'T SUCK, he'd be saying to make sure, when I am all done with letting my writing SUCK on that FIRST DRAFT, by simply writing without abandon or caring about if sentence structure, grammar, the rest, was all good and just GETTING THAT FIRST DRAFT DONE, by telling me to DON'T SUCK, he/she would be saying to go through that SECOND DRAFT with care and conscience and polish it to perfection.

Van Allen Plexico: Do your best work. Don't settle for less. Don't put something out for public consumption that reflects badly on you. Drink from the glass or cup; don't use a straw. You're a grown up.

Marian Allen: Be technically competent and respect your readers.

Violet Patterson: Tell an unforgettable story.


Ray Dean: In one of my writing communities a member complained that one of the first reviews she had on a self-published novel stated that she needed some editing for basic grammar and sentence structure. She lamented that she didn't have the money to pay someone to edit. We offered her ideas on how to get some help with editing or resources for her to help and edit her own work. Later that day she replied to the thread saying... "That's okay, I like my novel... my MOM likes my novel... haters gonna hate!" I'm not saying that her mother isn't able to identify good work when she sees it, but discounting that review as merely a hater probably isn't the best thing to do. We can always get better... learn more about plotting, grammar, characterization, etc. We can always improve and we should... to me "Don't Suck" means if you can make something better... do it. Don't get lazy.

Selah Janel: Don't write to a formula or what you think you should be writing about. Do what hasn't been done or try a different take on things. Don't write with the mindset to try to advance plan what the next new thing or big bestselling idea will be. Write what you know and be true to the writer you are. Definitely edit and pay attention to spelling, grammar, and formatting. If you're writing to a specific call or magazine, then write what the guidelines ask for. Stretch your wings and be original, but the editors definitely are asking for certain things for a reason. Keep going, keep reading, keep writing, keep pushing yourself to get better.

Lee Houston Jr.: "Don't Suck" to me means I make sure that everything I submit for publication is the best I can humanly create. The reader deserves no less.

Shelby Vick: It boils down to:  Don't cheat the reader. That applies to Western, SciFi, mysteries, etc.

Rebekah McAuliffe: Don't be afraid to bend the rules. Technique and methods should be important, but don't let them overshadow the actual writing of the story.

Tony Acree: Make sure you run spelling and grammar check at least once. Hmm. Twice. And never, ever, start your story with "It was a dark and stormy night."

Terri Smiles: Work at it, revise, revise revise, until it becomes what I intended. For me it was advice to blow deadlines if I needed to in order to create a product I was proud to have my name on.

H. David Blalock: Know your limitations, then push harder. Get outside your comfort zone and take the reader with you. Readers get bored with the same storyline over and over again. Show them something they, and you, have never seen before. Most importantly, don't leave them hanging.

TammyJo Eckhart: Don't be afraid to push the edges of what a genre should include or should be about. While you'll have a harder time selling your work, you'll be more satisfied with it and those readers and publishers who find you will appreciate that you aren't mundane.