Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Influences

For each book, I'm usually inspired by two specific things, often ones that have nothing to do with each other. And then my brain mashes them up and makes an idea.

BREAK: Fight Club and Into the Wild, first the movies, then the books.

INVINCIBLE SUMMER: A book of essays by Camus and The Hotel New Hampshire.

THE ANIMALS WERE GONE: Love Is The Higher Law and the 2002 Metro sniper shootings.

ZOMBIE TAG: How To Train Your Dragon (movie) and this comic.

FISHBOY: Peter Pan and Choke (the books).

For me, the experience of going to the movies always triggers something. There's something about sitting in the theater and just getting assaulted by someone else's ideas. Something, even something tiny, always hits me.

What are your inspirations?

20 comments:

R.G. Porter said...

Movies and music can do that easily. Movies are great because you have the visual stimulants. Music helps take me on flight for the rest of my inspiration. Then there are books I read. They help give flow to my thoughts and make the idea even more concrete. :)

grace said...

Ender's Game/Shadow and Uglies. No question.

Francis said...

J.J. Abrams (all of his work) is a huge source of inspiration for me.

Anonymous said...

Oh I know exactly what you mean. I always have movies for inspiration. For BROKEN it was definitely Pretty in Pink and City of Angels. For my new WIP it's Mists of Avalon, The Craft and The Visitors (old French comedy).
And the inspiration for wanting to be a writer and in this insane lifestyle -Romancing the Stone all the way.

Nadine said...

I am inspired by movie trailers - complete stories forced into a 2 minute gap. Watching the trailers often ignites ideas for me.

Linda said...

For the project I'm outlining the inspiration came from the songs White Rabbit and Strawberry Fields Forever and partially from the book The Electric Koolaid Acid Test.

Vee said...

The Colors of Sky was Pavement songs and late nights and this installation hammock artwork at this art gallery I haunt. Also Bunnings Warehouse and T.S Eliot.

The Gnome is Watching was Indie Rokkers and Fight Club (woot, Fight Club inspiration!).

ALSO. I WANT TO READ FISHBOY LIKE... NOW. Seriously, how do Choke and Peter Pan combine???? So curious :)

Ellen Brickley said...

Chuck Palahnuik, Torchwood, Doctor Who, Forever Amber, I Capture The Castle, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood . . . yeah, it's kind of a mixed bag.

Lindsay said...

I wish I could pinpoint my inspiration. Some of the things that inspire me are movies, TV, music, things I see as I'm walking around. Dreams are a big one.

hannah moskowitz said...

Vee--you sound just like me right now. Shady Lane, by online alias, is from the Pavement song, and goddamn I love me some T.S. Eliot.

Kate Hart said...

I have the uncontrollable urge to answer "YOUR MOM."

Okay really, my current inspiration = a news story about a hiking accident + "This Mess We're In" by Thom Yorke & PJ Harvey + "Running Up That Hill" by Placebo.

Robby said...

Everything. I see something, or hear something, and I think of what I'm writing. Mostly music, but sometimes things I think or hear. This was such a great post. I need to read some Chuck Palahniuk, don't I?

hannah moskowitz said...

My mom is FABULOUS. She has her own Twitter hashtag.

Robby, you DEFINITELY do.

Vee said...

I don't understand people who don't love T.S Eliot. And your username on AW makes me happy on the inside :D I had this WHOLE SCENE in my book based on Shady Lane and then I realised I was just being indulgent and it had no purpose for being there other than that I liked the song. So I cut it. And mourned it's death for like three weeks, haha.

hannah moskowitz said...

That is so very sad. Make it the premise for the new book, hahaha.

My next tattoo is going to be "I have heard the mermaids singing."

Anonymous said...

For my current MS, in the current section I'm in, Hall & Oates' Rich Girl, a black and white picture of New York, and Far and Away are inspiring me. Eclectic, ya?

-S.

Rebecca Christiansen said...

Ahhh, would that be David Levithan's Love is the Higher Law? He's definitely one of my favourite authors. He's a big inspiration for me.

Vee said...

Why oh why won't the mermaids sing to meeee? ;) That has to be the best tatoo ever. Prufrock is kind of awesome.

And that scene/a variation of it is actually going into the new book (it's like you read my mind or something. Are you holding out on your psychic powers??).

hannah moskowitz said...

Becca-yes. I adore that book.

Vee--you are so righteous.

Gary Couzens said...

I have watched more movies than is any way good for me, so it's inevitable that some of it leaks back into my writing.

My currently-being-beta'd WIP Partings and Greetings was first thought of as "Sunday, Bloody Sunday in sixth form" until I thought it might not be a good idea to pitch a contemporary YA by referencing a film made in 1971...

My also-in-progress SF YA The Plague Years is "Survivors Meets The Blue Lagoon".

My earlier (and trunked) fantasy novel The Storyteller's Tale has a Chinatown ending. And my in-preparation follow-up to Partings and Greetings will have a Deliverance scene. (No, it doesn't involve male rape or duelling banjos.)