Influences – Style

I often think that a writer’s style, or that of any other type of creative, comes from the things that they like to read, listen to, look at. The things that evoke passion and stimulate thought within them. Style for most is a jambalaya of many ingredients, tastes and flavours. It’s what they love and what speaks to them. Songs and paintings can influence writers and people and places can influence writers.

By my early twenties, having seen active service in the first Gulf War, and having read as much Scots and Irish history as I could get my hands on, I had developed a social conscience. On discharge from the army, I read Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath for the first time, having read neither of these books due to my poor relationship with the education system. There was no Amazon or Goodreads to suggest similar titles in those days, and I wasn’t reading with a class of English students that shared my passion, but I found Hemingway nearby Steinbeck in the bookshop. I devoured their work.

Later I would read Scotland’s own Robin Jenkins and then Comac McCarthy, who is, along with Willy Vlautin in more recent times, a natural extension to the afore-mentioned American minimalists.

I have written elsewhere (see Inspiration to Write comes from Reading) of writers that I admire, and that inspired me to write. Sometimes it is the case that these writers have not influenced my style I still want to write stories in a way that makes me feel like their writing does. That is to say to emulate the way that they tell stories technically, without necessarily drawing on their style. To build a well-structured story, one that readers can become immersed in, like John Irving’s novels, or to inject emotion and imagination in tandem like Kurt Vonnegut or to create tension and build worlds like George Orwell and Margaret Atwood.

I have a real passion for sparse realism, of the prose being delivered in an unsentimental way, that causes me to feel deeply, nonetheless. Sometimes a wordless action, such as a look or a shake of the head, says everything the reader needs to know. The aim is that the reader feels the emotion as part of the reading experience, and that they are not told how to feel. In order to achieve that, I think that the writing has to be honest, and that genuine emotion has to come from the writer.