Writing Blog

20211217 influenced

December 17, 2021, 11:20am

Well, the long story petered out after 4 chapters. I knew where it was going, but it was feeling derivative already and I need to find a way to make it feel less like a Brian Lumley pastiche and more like a "me" story.

But this is about external things negatively affecting the writing, not my own brain.

Yesterday, I went to the opening day of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Great film, already posted a review of it. But the problem was this morning I sat down to write a short story for an anthology (the editor likes my writing and reached out to me, and I realised I had an idea) and everything that came out was influenced by (or stolen from) that film.

It is a hard call. When something really sticks with you, for better or worse, then it can have subtle influences which are not healthy for your writing. But then do we shut ourselves away from pop culture? That's insane. But how do we prevent it from influencing us without resorting to fan fiction? (I am not a fan of fan-fiction [ha-ha] in general, but that is my opinion. If people want, I could write about my thoughts on it, but I don't want to upset anyone... honestly.)

I tried working on my non-fiction work but without being able to go where I need to go for research, that fell apart. I tried a poem, but that didn't work, so now I am writing this to hopefully get it out of my system.

The issue is, writers tend to be sponges. We absorb everything. We see that person, hear that conversation, witness that incident and our brains automatically go, "Ooh, I could use that in a story." Unfortunately, the same comes when it is another creative work. I have written a heap of short stories based on songs, but I do freely acknowledge the basis, and that is fine. I mean, I turned Shakin' Stevens 'This Ole House' into a zombie tale. Based is very loose. But I look back at a long story I wrote in the 1980s and I realise now it was based completely on the TV mini-series version of King's Salem's Lot. Guess what I'd recently watched?

At least I am self-aware enough after doing this writing thing for a few decades now to understand that. Some writers might not be. They need to be able to look back and see that they have been influenced. Now, I am not saying that it is an entirely bad thing. But when your characters have interactions that are scenes straight out of a film or TV show or some-one else's book, then you might have to dial it back. Influence is okay, but it still needs to be "you" doing the writing, your ideas, your style, your characters.

So, what I'm saying is - be careful.