My father was a natural storyteller. Just how he was. He’d come home from work and tell some story about how he pulled some prank on someone (often this guy’s Dad) or how he fought to get pay raises for his guys (Dad was a plant manager, had a team of guys who worked under him). Often he’d wander off into stories: stories of him getting into a knife fight or flipping his snowmobile or how he lost his pinky finger. (I’m not making any of that up. And if you knew the man, you’d grok that. He was well-armed and certain to not take any shit from anyone. Including cops. Or the government at large.)
Some of his stories, you know, I was a kid. I maybe didn’t get them or didn’t really care. But even still, I listened and I absorbed that — and, outside of realizing, “Hey, if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, I’m trusting my old man to lead the charge against the undead horde,” I also eventually came to realize that some of my inclination toward storytelling is very much nurture over nature. I wasn’t born with it, but rather, it was kind of passed to me — not genes, probably, but memes. Skills and ideas that survive against others.
Of course, even still, it’s reasonable short-hand to call it DNA, I think. Because over time, even though it’s something you pick up rather than something that you’re born with, it still changes your fundamental material, still tweaks your human code a little bit.
So, the question I’m putting forth to you is, who’s in your storytelling DNA? It can be writers, too — hell, I know I’m the turbid broth of Robert McCammon, Douglas Adams, Joe Lansdale, Christopher Moore, and others. But go beyond just those you’ve read and look too to those in your life. Who flipped on that storyteller switch inside your head? Who taught you to love hearing and telling stories?
Marlan says:
I would probably have to go with the first Stephen King novel I ever read. I want to say it was The Stand, but it might have been IT. I think that was the way that King told a story with such a natural voice, like you were just sitting in a dark room listening to him, that made me want to write.
I was also fortunate enough to be able to take a Science Fiction class for my English credits in High School. While it didn’t do much for teaching me “how” to write, it exposed me to material that I found interesting for a change, as opposed to the classics that just didn’t really hold my attention at that age. Suddenly I was able to read things like Ender’s Game and Fahrenheit 451 instead of having to pick apart Shakespeare.
I feel badly for kids growing up under the effects of No Child Left Behind these days.
March 31, 2011 — 12:27 AM
Amanda says:
My Dad is still regaling me with stories of his past on a regular basis. My Dad never really read to us…think that was more my Mom or someone else, maybe just me picking books up myself after they taught me to read. But when i was around 7 or 8 i remember he used to sit out in the hall between mine and my younger brother’s bedroom and tell us stories until we fell asleep. One i remember vividly had a vague semblance to Lost actually…
As far as authors go though…
I was reading stuff like Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe–lotsa classics when i was 9 or 10 while other girls and boys my age would probably stare dumbly or snore through the stories so i’d say they definitely are a part of it. Have always loved Stephen King too, spent ages 11-15 catching up on all of his stuff to date. What else… ah yeah i guess you could say Harry Potter got in there too. Mainly because for some reason i don’t particularly remember anymore J.K Rowling was the first one to make me think that becoming an author might actually be possible. Though i have to say as far as YA fantasy goes, I find Cornelia Funke’s style much more enjoyable.
Just the tip of the iceberg of the list of books i love and that have inspired me to write, but there you have it!
But I honestly think its those stories my Dad used to tell me when I was a kid that fueled my interest in storytelling the most. Maybe he’d not give me such a hard time about me wanting to be a published author if he understood that? hehee
March 31, 2011 — 12:48 AM
Bianca says:
I remember my dad telling my brother and I stories, “true” ghost stories from his hometown. I don’t remember when the ghost stories started, but I do remembed that I became “pulled” into storytelling somewhere in elementary school, I’m pretty sure it started in first grade when the teacher would have us read stories out loud. Well, I wanted to be the best reader, so I would take my book home, read out loud and do it over and over again until the words flowed and I didn’t mess up. It also helped that my mom bought me all these Dr. Seuss books with all the cool rhymes. I became obsessed with rhythm. Still am.
March 31, 2011 — 1:00 AM
Marlan says:
My dad was never much of a storyteller, but he did expose me to The Hobbit and a lot of Ray Bradbury stories. Those are some of my earliest literary memories.
March 31, 2011 — 1:53 AM
KDJames says:
My dad, definitely, who told about shooting out all twelve streetlights in town one night when he was fourteen and how the first few weren’t much of a challenge; it was the last two or three that demanded stealth and proficiency. And my grandma, dad’s mother, who told about how her neighbors shunned the first Catholic family to move into their small Lutheran town and how she baked for two days and then kept my dad home from school one day to walk with her down the middle of main street carrying armfuls of those baked goods to the new residents and insisted he go outside to play with their kids, in the front yard, while she visited. Or my great uncle who told so many good stories of life on the farm and even some tragic ones, though he made them sound matter-of-fact, like the time he tripped and fell face first into the thick sharp stalks of newly cut pigweed and lost the sight in one eye and how that was not cause for pity or special treatment but just one more thing requiring hard work and tenacity, like milking cows or cutting wheat.
Growing up, I never thought of that as “storytelling” and certainly never connected it with writing. I just knew there were a handful of relatives who were more interesting than others and I couldn’t wait to see them again so I could sit, wide eyed and rapt, listening.
Funny thing is, as an adult, I’ve learned that my mom and her siblings (who as a child I considered to be reserved and somewhat uninteresting) have different stories to tell — deeper, more quiet and perhaps even harsher stories — that are equally compelling.
And the books. So many books, all the books you’d expect a HS English teacher to have laying around for his kids to discover, and more, all over the place, constantly telling me stories.
And I’m still listening. I like the notion that it’s DNA rather than some kind of psychosis.
March 31, 2011 — 3:35 AM
Michael LaRocca says:
I hear everyone from North Carolina is a natural-born storyteller. I don’t know about that, but in hindsight, Daddy sure can spin a yarn, and Mamma always could to. Who turned on my switch? I think it was Nietzche and Dostoevsky whereas my high school English teacher thinks it was Kafka. Other comparisons have included Spike Milligan, Kurt Vonnegut (a hero of mine), Douglas Adams, Dante, Nathaniel Hawthorne (huh?), and Lu Xun (I wish). I’ve also been called loathsome, which is much appreciated.
March 31, 2011 — 3:58 AM
Sparky says:
There are two for me. I mean stylistically there are more but that’s a mite different.
The first is my father. An aspiring children’s author when I grew up hearing his stories, and reading them eventually. My school was half an hours drive away and I always liked it more when he drove because I learned things. Either NPR was playing or he would tell stories. Long before I even knew about what they really were I had heard the plots of Frankenstein, Les Mis, Hunchback, and who knows how many classic myths. Stories became a central part of my life. Oddly enough my parents never really read me bedtime stories though. They just sort of happened through the day. Also when I grew older my dad used to have giant metal shelving units in the basement filled with his books. Everything from classic Scifi and fantasy to pulp to who knows what else arranged haphazardly and smashed together. I used to just go down and grab books. In an armload I may only finish two or three before putting them back and starting again, but it was amazing. Since then all the books have been catalouged and put in plastic bins to be more organized. I get the need to make it manageable, but I miss the tightly packed shelves literally overflowing with yellowed pages.
The second source was Tolkien. It was fourth grade, and I had to do a book report. The problem? I hated reading. Then in the bookstore I see this thing: a black cover, a fat guy with a glowing sword had a creepy grey thing behind him in a cave. I asked my parents if I could read that one for my school report. Mom was hesitant but my dad said yes. That copy of the Hobbit must have been mis-shelved but it didn’t matter. My dad seemed to know what I was getting into. I fell into that book, reading on the floor of my room for hours. Thanks to Bilbo I loved to read because I was exposed to more than annoying primers. And from that came the desire to write. I wasn’t good at first (still have a long way to go) but hey it had to start somewhere.
Now as for the mix of style that formed bits of my DNA: Butcher, Green, Applegate (Animorphs was the first series I followed), Gygax by way of later D&D fluff material, Rowling (I look like Harry, I am two days his senior and I was big into fantasy at the time, how could I not read it), Wells, Card, Asimov, and who knows how many others. I could spend all day listing them.
March 31, 2011 — 5:26 AM
Rebecca J Fleming says:
As far as DNA goes, it’s definitely my grandparents. When I was little my nan used to tell me stories, either about various faries or about her school days with her evil teacher and a constantly-misbehaving student. My grandfather was a writer as well, slaving away at his typewriter for close to thirty years on a manuscript he never managed to finish.
As for reading? Probably David Eddings. I know his writing isn’t particularly brilliant, but his were the first fantasy books I read, and from the time I walked through the world of Sparhawk and the Pandion knights, I knew I wanted to be a fantasy writer as well 🙂
March 31, 2011 — 8:03 AM
Marek says:
For me it was probably my junior high school Polish teacher who taught me that stories have to convey something, while still being entertaining reads. He always made sure to give us kids a “free writing” option on our tests (“Write a story utilising these elements” or “Write a story starting with these words…”).
He was a published poet and a very, very good teacher. He taught us mnemonics to better remember all the arbitrary elements of Polish, like the interrogative pronouns that are connected to specific noun cases and the various types of objects and modifiers you can find in a sentence. He also treated us like adults, establishing a certain “learn at your own pace” policy, where he carry out the lesson plan, but instead of pop quizzes, we chose individually when to write a short quiz on a specific topic. And you had multiple attempts if you failed a topic. I remember attempting the syllable division tests like 5 times.
He really was one of the best teachers ever and he awakened a passion for writing in me that was later thwarted by high school.
March 31, 2011 — 8:06 AM
Tony Lane says:
My dad used to tell fantastic stories about my grandparents, and it was only recently that I found out they were mostly true. It turns out I am from Carnie stock (dodgy git that I am).
Gary Gygax changed my life, and at the same time I was listening to Iron Maiden which was perfect. I joined RPG group run by my best mate’s brother at age 10 and most of that group are my best friends today (25 years later). The effort some people put into building adventures was just amazing, and I did my bit too. I still play with a different group, but imagination and story telling is still important to me.
Weis & Hickman bowled me over with the Dragonlance Chronicles, and they are still some of my favourite books. Steven Brust’s trilogy Taltos the Assassin has been read so many times that I wore it out and had to buy another copy (not easy when it was out of print).
I’ve recently really got into books by Matt Forbeck and J. Robert King. Mr Forbeck was deliberate because of the Bloodbowl novels I enjoyed, and Mr King through his tweets. It turns out that I have previously read and enjoyed lots of stuff by both of them from a long time ago and not realised.
Oh and less established authors I should really mention that after finishing Irregular Creatures I pre-ordered Double Dead on Amazon the next day. Andy Remic is an author I have only recently discovered, but am looking at his back catalogue now.
March 31, 2011 — 8:07 AM
Ali says:
I think, at a very young age, my mom imparted her love of stories, because she’s so damn great at reading them. Then my dad was wonderful at them for an entirely different reason: he made them up. Even if a story started in a way that you’d recognize, it’d quickly veer off track and have you laughing. Er, me laughing.
From then on, I loved stories. I was always the one on the playground thinking up scenarios for our Let’s Pretend sessions. I read all the time — in my free time, during vacations. I was the only kid I knew who brought 5 books with her on vacation, and then had to buy more. Because I’d finished them all in three days.
I had an English teacher in high school who found one of my essays hilarious — it was completely off-topic, and he gave me an A, with the stipulation that I never made him choose between humor and an essay topic again. In that essay, believed I called Mrs. Haversham a hag. I don’t remember much else. But the fact that I’d made a teacher laugh? Awesome.
As far as writer DNA via authors…Shakespeare, first. My brother bet me that I couldn’t read, and understand, Romeo and Juliet. At ten years old. I won. Now that I think about it, I don’t think there was a ever a prize given. I’ve been hoodwinked! *grin*
Every author from R.L. Stine to Stephen King to Robin McKinley to Neil Gaiman to Jean Rhys to Jane Austen to Ted Hughes. Poets, playwrites, novelists — they all offer magic in one way or another. Okay, I’m done rambling now….
March 31, 2011 — 8:20 AM
Albert Berg says:
Well it helped, I think, that we didn’t have television until I was ten. Back then I could devour a whole stack of books in a week. Mom read to me a lot in my younger years, and dad told me all these stories about how he survived the race riots at his high school. I, like you, did not realize how great they were until later.
Also my mom got me a set of tape of old-time radio shows, and one of them was a tape with three Suspense stories on it. I still remember listening to that tape in the bathtub when the episode called “The House in Cypress Canyon” came on. There’s a moment where this inhuman scream comes from a locked closet with a thick wooden door, and as a child it was the most frightening thing I had ever experienced.
Later on, I devoured TONS of science fiction short stories. I fell in love with that genre for a while. I fell in love with the fact that short stories didn’t have to live up to your expectations with typical story structure, and a happy ending. I still remember how I was affected by stories like “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” “Grownups” “The Microcosmic God” “Flowers for Algernon” “The Manhattan Phone Book” man I could just on and on.
And then, sometime in high school, when I was working at the local library I discovered Terry Pratchett. That I think was the final big piece for me. Reading Terry Pratchett instilled in me the importance of telling a compelling story and giving your audience a fantastic ending, no matter what kind of fiction you’re writing.
March 31, 2011 — 8:20 AM
Anthony says:
I’m not sure what it is that got me into writing. Story Telling I think comes from my cousin John who got me into role playing games. Which then led to a long and sordid affair of playing RPGs wherever I could find them, online or offline. Online is probably what developed into writing, and probably explains a lot of my flaws as a writer.
Add to that the novels, primarily fantasy and sci-fi, that I started to consume. Starting with the Star Wars novels and Dragon Lance chronicles, and just expanding from there to whatever seemed neat at the time. I got fairly heavy exposure to R.A. Salvatore, but then again he lived in the area so all the book stores got to sell all his Forgotten Realms stuff with a “SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL AUTHOR” tag that still just kind of feels wrong.
But if I had to pick, I’d probably say RPGs in general are where I got my storytelling from. Everything else has been picked up from that, and still in for long term development.
March 31, 2011 — 8:39 AM
Shullamuth Smith says:
I grew up in the bars that all the women in my family tended. I grew up listening to people say funny, and sad, and violent things. I listened when people didn’t think I was listening because I was too young and kept my face hidden behind a book.
Counterpointing all of this, were the words I was actually reading. Francis Hodgson Burnett, Stephen King, Alice Hoffman–anything I could get my hands on.
Thanks to my DNA my bar scenes are killer, and I can kick dialogue’s ASS.
March 31, 2011 — 8:40 AM
Lindsay Mawson says:
I remember like it was yesterday, I befriended a new girl (grade 5?)… I had always been a story teller, talker, etc. but she was the one that got us writing stories at recess, and it just grew from there. I still think I owe my passion for writing to her (don’t know where she is these days)…
March 31, 2011 — 8:42 AM
Sina says:
I guess it was my grandada really. He used to read a lot and I was a curious child that always wanted to know what he was reading. Didn’t get to see him as often as either of us might have wanted due to distance so he entertained me when I asked and told me of the stories he read. When I got a little older we started reading them together, Agatha Christie novels. I’ve always seen him as the reason that I love books as much as I do and for a good part of my life I was content with just being a reader. I never thought about being a storyteller until later in life, I met some people that I started playing DnD with and I found myself being the game master, the one creating the stories and adventures that my fellow peers had to master in order to progress and it was when that little group of people shattered, school and work taking most of our time, that I started writing. Going from game mastering a fantasy game to writing shorter fantasy novels was an easy leap and one that I have never regretted doing.
March 31, 2011 — 8:43 AM
Amber Keller says:
I don’t think I had any story tellers in my family, but my mom read constantly. Before kindergarten she started taking me to the library and I would leave with a stack of books every time. She didn’t care what I got, so it was a matter of time before I picked up my first Stephen King and I was hooked. Been that way since.
King, Koontz, Kafka-couldn’t get enough.
Explains my twisted nature.
March 31, 2011 — 8:56 AM
Kate Haggard says:
Yup, I blame it mostly on Dad. Although most of his stories weren’t really about himself (at least not until recent years – he still likes to talk about how he got his braid (which was (and is again) down to his ass) caught in a speed lathe and his harrowing fight to cut it off with an old pocket knife before he had his scalp torn off.). Nope, when I was a wee thing, he’d like to spin mighty tall tales involving Indian spell slingers (that would be him), lost princesses (that would be me) and all sorts of magical heroics. I think it was his way of connecting us to a heritage that’s been lost by his grandmother literally getting kicked off the rez (and Iroquois affiliations laws needing direct bloodlines through the mother).
Plus both parents turned me on to fantasy from the start. Dr. Seuss became Roald Dahl became Tolkein became Feist became Ed Greewood, RA Salvatore and all those guys that made TSR (and then Wizards of the Coast, I suppose) a publishing tour de force in the fantasy section. It taught me to write one hell of an action scene. Mix in the influences of Poe (read to me since I was a wee thing) and my mother’s love of all things horror and my inability (ok, unwillingness) to age past 17 – it explains a lot.
Though I can’t help but blame my 4th grade teacher. She was/is a friend of a the family and knew about my burgeoning interest in storytelling. So she took it upon herself to give me extra assignments that were basically writing stories. Then she gave me a B (my first B’s ever! I cried and mourned my Harvard scholarship at 9 years old) every quarter in writing until the last one when I finally got my coveted A. She confessed later that I deserved an A all along but wanted to see if I could push myself to write better. To this day I was to dedicate my first published novel to her and ask if I’m writing better yet.
March 31, 2011 — 9:13 AM
Guy LeCharles Gonzalez says:
My grandfather was a natural born storyteller (and a poet and songwriter, too) and had a lot of influence on my growth as a storyteller. I even wrote a poem about him years ago referencing that: “Sunday Mornings in the Kitchen with Gan’ganny” http://bit.ly/ei7KwE
Stephen King and Matt Ruff are probably the two authors who’ve had the most influence over my writing since then.
March 31, 2011 — 9:17 AM
Benoit Lelievre says:
I didn’t have the luxury of a storytelling father, but I had a mother who would shove books down my throat with a pair of pliers and a smile. I didn’t get the itch to write until I started checking out books for myself though. And it took time. I mean, why go out in the world and check it out for myself when I had piles of books put on my night table on a weekly basis.
Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River was the kick-off for me. I wanted to tell stories about good people trying their hardest to shine in horrible circumstances. He’s my storytelling daddy. James Ellroy and Chuck Palahniuk (pre-2000) are also strong with the force.
March 31, 2011 — 9:34 AM
Elizabeth Poole says:
Neither of my parents are storytellers, per se, although my mom is long winded (a trait I have picked up on), but my mom always had a book in her hands. Ever since I could remember I read books too. When I was 5 or 6 I realized that people actually wrote those books, and they just didn’t magically appear. Even since then I wanted to be a writer too.
I would tell these long, elaborate stories to my family, over and over, and if they interrupted me, I would start over. I remember writing stories on yellow paper in pencil and then stapling the pages together and giving the out to whoever would take them. I read everything I could get my hands and never spend time in front of the television. Roald Dahl, Robert Cormier were some of my early favorite authors, and I have added King, Gaiman, Butcher, Prachett, and Lisle to the early ranks.
My parents encouraged my desire to write, but it’s something that I always wanted to do.
March 31, 2011 — 9:39 AM
Lauren says:
My dad is the storyteller in my family. I could probably recite verbatim his experience with rice wine in Vietnam, and the time he swam part of Boston Harbor to evade the police when he was a teenager (this was probably right around when the Standells were writing their song about our fair harbor and the Charles River, so it’s amazing he didn’t, y’know, grow an extra arm or something.)
He and my mom both read to me before I went to bed. (I can remember insisting that Cinderella’s fairy godmother said magic-a-boola, not mechicka boola in the Little Golden Book, because it made more sense. Bless them for not humoring me.) They made sure I was never, ever without books, and when I announced that someday I wanted to be a writer, they encouraged it.
For influences outside of my gene pool, Stephen King is probably the most prominent, followed closely by Robert R. McCammon. You should see my copies of The Stand and Boy’s Life. They’re tattered and well-loved. Madeleine L’Engle, specifically A Swiftly Tilting Planet.
Christopher Moore, for Lamb, and for setting the example of how (should I ever get published) I want to interact with my fans.
More recently, Neil Gaiman and George RR Martin have entered that mix. I’m learning a lot from Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch, too.
I’ve also always loved mythologies of all flavors and Arthurian legend, and I can trace my love of a good apocalypse to a random doomcryer who shoved a pamphlet about the End Times through my friend’s mom’s car window. Friend’s mom tossed it into the backseat as we drove away and it landed next to me. Of course I read it. I got an eyeful about Judgment Day and seas turning to blood and holy crap this is terrifying and awesome.
March 31, 2011 — 9:44 AM
Aiwevanya says:
I honestly can’t tell you where my urge to tell stories comes from because I can’t remember ever not having it. Writing stories was my idea of fun when I was still young enough to be mostly be reading Enid Blyton. My family are very into archiving so some of them still exist, which is kind of embarrassing because they’re about as awful as you would expect.
Some of it is probably down to the way my dad reads bedtime stories, most notably reading Winnie the Pooh with all the voices (something me and my sisters still enjoy enough to have listened in when he was reading them to my son). On the other hand, both my sisters also listened to those stories and neither of them developed the same love of reading and writing, so who knows, I think at least partly it’s something I was born with.
March 31, 2011 — 10:06 AM
Silver James says:
I have to look to my dad, too, though I was adopted and we didn’t share a shred of DNA. He taught me to love reading–turning me loose in the adult section of the library at the tender age of 11 (after I’d read every book in the children’s section) where my first two checkouts were Mary Stewart’s THE MOONSPINNERS and Ian Fleming’s THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. I also think my dad also recognized my cultural roots (Chickasaw & Cherokee–both known for their native storytellers) and nurtured my ability to dream and spin tales from my imagination.
March 31, 2011 — 11:19 AM
Richard Dansky says:
In third grade, I got chicken pox, and I’d already read every book on dinosaurs in the house. My mother cunningly placed a boxed edition of the Chronicles of Narnia within reach of my sickbed, then closed the door.
The rest, as they say, is history.
March 31, 2011 — 11:24 AM
Darlene Underdahl says:
It was my father. My Mom (bless her heart) didn’t have a creative bone in her body.
My family was second generation Norwegian, and the worst thing any Norwegian could do was brag, so Dad couched his bragging as storytelling; he could go on all night, and often did, if he had a fresh victim.
I would sneak away and go to bed, leaving my current beau there listening to Dad.
March 31, 2011 — 11:33 AM
Jamie Wyman says:
My grandmother used to just listen to the 3 and 4 year old version of me spin stories. She’d encourage that and even started recording them. That was huge. She gave me my first typewriter, too. After that, I’d have to say that other friends helped sire my storytelling. Pam, Susana, Bri, Brian…sitting around yard-sale couches or campfires, usually with booze. Just shooting the shit and telling stories.
As far as professionals who’ve influenced me: George Lucas (say what you will, but the original Star Wars was profound to a 5 year old!), Tim Burton, Joss Whedon, Chris Moore, Jim Butcher, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Dean Koontz…and tons of movies. Movies are stories and they taught me a lot about storycraft before I really became a bookavore.
March 31, 2011 — 11:37 AM
Hillary Monahan says:
My grandmother was a professional writer for upwards of 40 years, writing children’s books and greeting card copy (she was the original writer of those bitchy old woman Maxine cards for the first few years they were published by Hallmark). This was a hardcore lady; during the 50’s and 60’s she wrote under the name J. Howard Clarke because writing was “A Man’s Industry” and unless women wrote flouncy chick-lit or ONLY for kids, they couldn’t break in. So she did what any self-respecting woman would do in that instance – she lied and reinvented herself as a dude.
I remember her tapping away on this dinosaur of a typewriter every day for hours, and as a kid, I quickly learned YOU DON’T INTERRUPT GRAM WHEN SHE’S WORKING OR YOU GET THE HOSE AGAIN. The embryonic version of Hillary just assumed “this is what all people do” so when it came time to write things for school, it was no big deal to me. When I started getting kudos and winning awards for short stories in fifth grade, my grandmother decided I was the next Great White Monahan Hope, so she started blue penciling all my shit, which essentially means I had an in-house copy editor before I had tits. And man, she was brutal. “This is unnecessary, you spelled this with two Ls, and I’m sorry, but if a monkey is eating a banana here, how is he climbing up the tree here. You might only be eleven, BUT YOU WILL NOT SHAME OUR FAMILY NAME.”
/whimper
Beyond the writing gestapo presence , she was a remarkably funny woman, and she told fantastic stories. She knew how to hold a room when she talked, and that ability to hold court carried over to the written word. Her stuff was fun and interesting – it really made you want to read more. If there is such a thing as Writer DNA, that’s where mine comes from. I’m just a little sad I didn’t kick it in the pants and actually produce anything worthwhile until after she was gone. She’d undoubtedly have pointed and laughed at me when I got my lit agent all the while chanting ONE OF US, ONE OF US.
March 31, 2011 — 11:42 AM
Paul Crowley says:
My parents were attorneys, and their stories were always direct, A to B affairs, with details added as necessary. Because they were prosecutors, I learned early on about the non-glamorous side of the law, and let me assure you there is much that lacks glamour. But they were always concise, they were always clear, and they were always talking about the people involved.
My mother’s father, on the other hand, told lies so big they had to buy two seats on a plane. My grandfather used to ride a T-Rex for the Pony Express, when he wasn’t waiting for Neil Armstrong to pick him up on the moon. He knew the location of a lost city made out of frosting. He once pantsed Hitler.
Even at six, I knew that Hitler was bad, and pantsing him was a strike for all humanity.
Even though his lies were egregious, he never started that way. They started small and believable. They’d build. Like a con man, he’d have you nodding. “Of course you couldn’t be called the first man to the moon; you have to make it back for it to count. Obviously.”
As for writers: Heinlein, Robert B Parker, John D MacDonald, Spider Robinson, Adrian McKinty.
March 31, 2011 — 11:58 AM
Justin Holley says:
While certainly not sired by any one of them, Ketchum, Keene, and Laymon filled my mind with terrible possibilities. If you couple that hell with a childhood full of characters, well, the stew in my brain just kinda congealed and formed around the horror genre as a result.
March 31, 2011 — 12:25 PM
Karina Cooper says:
When I was a wee thing — wee’er still than I am — I used to visit my dad for summers and the occasional holiday. My parents split when I was too young to recall, and my dad hied off to parts unknown (Maine) and foreign (Florida) to marry his childhood sweetheart. They’ve been together ever since, so there’s that.
While my brother and I stayed there, my dad would tell us bedtime stories. The best by far was his retelling of Lord of the Rings, wherein he combined The Hobbit with the other Three, utilized Bilbo and Frodo and tossed out the others, and had us in stitches and cheering for the intrepid hobbit heroes. He had a way of telling tales — this manic, effervescent energy that it is one part ADHD and two parts pure genius. Tall and lanky and really funny to the bone, my dad was and is every bit the storyteller I wish I could be.
I think in this case, writing really IS in the genes for me. I was quite young when I stopped seeing him, and more years passed without him in my life than the years where he was there, but somehow, I turned into a carbon copy of him. I ended up a writer without ever knowing that’s what I wanted to be growing up. I act like him, I talk in circles like he does. After too many years of being apart, we finally connected again, and the mancandy was so in awe of how much like him I am.
I don’t know about the rest of my genetics — there’s some German barons in there somewhere — but I can look at my dad and see a talespinner, a storyteller, a man with a good yarn to spin. Like some kind of adept actor, he could fit himself into any story, any character, any voice.
…I think I’ll go email him now.
March 31, 2011 — 1:16 PM
TaraMonster says:
Dad is the storyteller. Now that I’m all growed up I would go with pathological narcissistic liar, but hey, he is one creative emmer effer. Daddy issues aside, he really did tell some kick ass bed time and car ride stories. That, and every tale about his childhood adventures was embellished. You’d think he was Huck Finn with a magic carpet and the Fonz’s charisma the way he tells it. My grandmother smiles fondly and calls it blarney (enabler!).
My mother is a teacher and used index cards to teach me to read when I was 4. Baby Einstein on a budget! She’s where I gets mah smarts and love of letters. It helped that we were too broke to afford cable and my mother would take my brothers and I to the library while she worked on her thesis. It made me a voracious and eclectic reader. I’m a firm believer that you can’t be a good writer if you don’t read a lot and widely.
So I have to give both my parents props. Their DNA and swirling-black-hole-vortex of a marriage made me the writer I am today!
March 31, 2011 — 1:18 PM
X says:
My mom is a writer with seven books published and six forthcoming. When I was a kid, she would sit me on her lap at the computer and have me dictate stories to her. I admired her so much when I was a kid, and I still do in a different way. So she made me want to write. But I can’t really say that I got my writing style from her–I’m nowhere near as elegant. I think I got that from my dad. Technically, he has written an unpublished book (about medieval vampires in space or something), but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is we watched movies together and talked about life and death and God and people. My dad is fascinated with people, and his job allows him to meet new people every day and hear their stories. I’m fascinated with people too. When I’m with my dad, life just gets kind of weird, but at the same time, it is so utterly normal.
Also, he makes zombie safety plans. Sometimes he drills me, like if we’re driving somewhere he asks me what I’d do if zombies came out in the road in front of us. Kinda freaky.
March 31, 2011 — 1:29 PM
Alice says:
Hardwired into my brain from birth.
I have the maths skills of a neurologically underprivileged teacup. A phrase used to describe people like me that I particularly like is “can’t run past a tombstone without counting on her fingers”.
So my neo-cortex, feeling a little insecure, decided to overcompensate by giving me the ability to read at age two and the propensity to use words like “felicitous” in kindergarten.
My mother once told me if I were any more lopsided one of my ears would be dragging on the ground. Thanks, mum.
If I don’t make it as a writer I’ll likely as not have a nice career waiting for me in dictionary copyediting.
March 31, 2011 — 1:44 PM
Stephen Blackmoore says:
I learned story-telling from my dad mostly, but beyond that I’ll blame stand-up comics like Lenny Bruce, Steve Martin, George Carlin, etc. The best story tellers are also the best joke tellers and vice versa. It’ all about timing, pacing, voice.
Get those down and you can make the most banal trip to the DMV sound like the fucking Odyssey.
March 31, 2011 — 2:37 PM
Bruce H. Johnson says:
Over 50 years ago, my folks subscribed to Readers Digest Condensed books. I still remember many of the stories — and try to remember the author so I can get the full versions.
Of course it helped that we didn’t have television in the house until after I was through college and lived alone in the Navy.
March 31, 2011 — 3:31 PM
AB says:
My grandparents and older relatives who were forever telling stories about the past; mainly my maternal grandmother, though. I remember sitting at her knee (literally) and listening to these wild stories about our family. I mean…wild. Like my grandfather losing his new car 1940-something car in a game of poker (he and his buddy decided that if my grandfather lost they’d exchange cars), my grandfather driving up – drunk – in the middle of the night to my grandmother’s house (they weren’t married then) and calling her out to look at what happened to his car. She managed to get the story out of him, promptly bundled him into the car and made him drive around the tiny mountain town until they found his buddy – passed out – and got his new car back. Yeah, those sorts of wild stories. How can you not be a writer after hearing those things?
March 31, 2011 — 4:33 PM
Scooter Carlyle says:
My father gives speeches all over the nation and has been asked to do them in China and Russia. He’s a range management specialist, which means he’s spent forty years developing grazing methods that promote healthy rangeland. He loves to tell stories about how he pinned Bill Clinton under a pickup, how my step-grandfather was thrown in a morgue freezer, how my biological grandfather disappeared without a trace, and how my uncle coined the Banister creed, “We may abuse our women, but we’ll never abuse our guns.” This was the same Uncle that was one of the first FBI agents, worked on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, trained men for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, guarded Bonnie and Clyde’s car, was suspected of being in on the plot to kill Kennedy, and was fired from a job for threatening a waiter with a gun.
“I SAID, my soup’s too cold.”
March 31, 2011 — 5:19 PM
Merced Davis says:
Mostly my Grandmother who raised me. She constantly told stories about when she was younger on the farms of Puerto Rico and her wrestling days. Her stories were always so grand and emotional. She even had pictures. It was great.
The rest of the credit goes to my mother who grew up in NY and made it all the way through high school without learning how to read or write (English nor Spanish). After I learned that I read everything I could get my hands on including the encyclopedia’s my grandmother would buy. She would get them one at a time from the market. Each one was an invaluable treasure.
March 31, 2011 — 8:20 PM
john doe says:
since reading your request this morning chuck my mind has rolled back the years remembering things that im not even sure how i do remember them. as i read thru everyone else’s regaling i’ve remembered even more still. i warn you my grammar is gross and my punctuation is pitiful
im not sure when or where but ive always loved to read ever since i first learned how. my first memory of writing though is on a summer visit with my dad going with my step mom to her job for one day although not sure why pounding away on an old typewriter writing god knows what that never came out right after the first few words and starting over on a new sheet. then years later i think around the 4th grade i moved on to a poor kid’s self pub by taking loose leaf notebook paper and folding a bunch of pages together and writing in that. around jr high i developed a weird love of shakespeare (having never really read anything by him at the time) i ended up writing love notes to the girl i liked styled after what i thought was the late great willy shakes. i was probably no where even close. call me a necrophiliac but still love that old pile of dust. it wasnt until i was starting to read the stephen king novelettes of the green mile that i had any desire to write as a career. then in high school i through my own teenage angst of being the kid who statistically should have shot himself or his torturous school mates i starting writing. most of it was hell and damnation tortured soul stylized free form poetry but i finally grabbed a pencil and notebook to write a novel. granted i didnt have the discipline to stick with it to complete the work or the emotional endurance to pour every nasty nuance onto the page for very long. but writing has always been my prefered form of therapy since high school. since then ive poured out idea after idea usually born of my own pitiful panderings at trying to make the american dream from a pile of panda poo droppings ive saddled myslef with through the chooses ive made. every so often when i feel the need ive gone back and tried to complete that original novel but always finding myself putting the pen down only to pick it up again some years later rewriting it everytime. i still carry the handwritten manuscript in my backpack in case i get the urge to pick up the pen and finish it. ive been reading chuck now off and on for idk probably a year or two and i see him much like the muse from this oglaf comic (http://oglaf.com/blank-page/1/) but because of chuck and a friend and local self pubbed author liz staley (http://adrastus.comicdish.com/)(http://www.amazon.com/Hinomoto-Rebellion-Book-Ryuu-Chronicles/dp/1442121777) and my own warped twisted and tortured mind ive churned out more starts of stories than i care to recount. maybe i should finally get off my assailing ass and finish something for a change. thank you and good night.
*drops the mike and walks off stage to go finally finish that damn effing novel so i can move onto the other ump-teen rasa-frasin ideas ive had*
March 31, 2011 — 10:10 PM
Gween says:
I’d have to say it was parents…sort of.
My dad was a raging ass-wipe because he wasn’t happy with my mom who was sort of a whore, and depressed.
They didn’t really pay much attention to me, so I made shit up.
My stuff animals and I had a ball in fantasy lands that spurted forth from my brain.
Eventually I started actually talking to people and some of those stories found an audience.
Others morphed into short stories I would write for class or for my own private collection.
So, yeah…erm…thanks Mom and Dad.
April 1, 2011 — 2:56 PM
Chuck says:
Test!
April 1, 2011 — 8:12 PM
im_not_a_lizard says:
I am a, rather pale, melting pot of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Tom Holt, Iain M Banks, John Irving, Michael Marshall Smith, Marsha Hunt, Isabel Allende, Kate Long, Sandi Toksvig (go read one of her books before you judge me you sanctimonious git – yes you, I can see you eyebrowing me), Robert Rankin, John Connolly and the conversations you hear bits of whilst walking down the street – especially the three guys I passed on Buchanan Street in Glasgow about 10 years ago, of whose conversation I caught “…but that would make me, God and the Devil all brothers…” and have been trying to work out a plausible explanation to ever since.
April 1, 2011 — 8:57 PM
Wrainbeau says:
There are too many authors to name. My mom and dad were both great storytellers. My mom a bit more so than my dad. My mom has and still does regale of tales from her childhood and other works of historical fiction such as the time she and her younger brothers piled harmless snakes into a cousins bed because she was and I quote “full of herself and needed some country justice”, which apparently is different from Urban Justice. My dad on the other hand he was a classical storyteller. I’m talking fireside horror stories, Native American tales, stories of him and his brothers hunting in the bayou. I grew up around it. I was raised on it nuorished on storytelling. It was like mothers milk..which is why I find it hard to understand how i’m the only storyteller out of 7 siblings that write and tell stories.
My mom says I was born to it that I would throw a fit if she didn’t read to me constantly and that before I could talk I would sit quietly with a book. All books and it didn’t matter what genre the story was if the story was good i was going to read it. That hasn’t changed books are like children to me precious and adventurous. I’ve been writing stories for as long as I can remember and keeping journals with story ideas since I was six. I can’t remember a time I didn’t write or read or tell a story in the verbal tradition. Even now I make up stories at bedtime for my kids.
April 15, 2011 — 5:08 PM
Angela says:
I think some of the most important people in my writing life are my parents, J.K. Rowling, and a few of my teachers. My parents had me reading for a long time. When I was a toddler, they would leave cardboard books on the edge of my crib so when I woke up I would just sit there and look at the pictures. When I was supposed to be napping, most of the time I was reading a book from under my pillow. J.K. Rowling is the one who really got me *excited* about reading though. I was going to the birthday party of a friend, and it was Harry Potter-themed. So of course before I went I had to see the movie. Then I started reading the series, and I was hooked. I kid you not, I have read the entire series no less than five times. Not that I kept track or anything. But those were the books that were my friends for God knows how long. Yeah, I was pretty antisocial.
And finally, my English teachers. My 6th grade English teacher was the first one who ever told me my writing was worth much. We had to write a report of sorts about something interesting that had happened to us, and since nothing cool has happened or wil happen to me, she said I could write a fiction story. We had to present them to the class, and when I finished, she exchanged this look with one of the aides in the room and said, “I want a copy of your first book!” She was the first one who critiqued my writing. Ever. And then there was my 8th grade English teacher. This man was absolutely bat-shit crazy. He gave us jolly ranchers that granted wishes and had M&M ties hidden in his closet at school. Over the summer, he sent me a letter that told me that I was a good person. Not a good writer, necessarily, but that I was a good person. While he didn’t necessarily shape my writing, he has shaped who I am as a person. My biggest regret so far in my short life is that I have never thanked him for it. I just haven’t known how.
April 17, 2011 — 5:34 PM