50+ Questions of Literary Enquiry

Question 1-3

What stories are you planning to write in the near future?

Well I am working on my Crossover Sagas. I’m trying to develop that, and My Adventures, still haven’t figured out a title for that. I think I might name it after the academy the main character goes to. I am mostly writing fantasy novels that’s what I’m mostly into.

 

What would you say are your influences on your work?

One of the most major influences probably, would be just the world around me; really, just anything that I can see in the world I think would be good in a story, which somehow finds its way in. A lot of the characters in the Crossover Sagas, for instance, were influenced by friends of mine, having personalities or appearances based on theirs, and a lot of events are based on, like if I like any mythology, usually it will someway influence My Adventures in some way. And a lot of other stories, like the Freedom Trilogy, are based on observations on political unrest there is in the world, and the way some people are.

There are many people that inspire me, and there are many authors out there that have written wonderful works, that I quite frankly, when I look at them, they are great inspirations for me as they are the people who made me want to write. For instance, people like Darren Shan. The Saga of Darren Shan was written from his own perspective, and the main character was based on him, even sharing the same pseudonym. So in a way, he inspired me to write My Adventures, with the main character being myself, or at least based on me. And because how wonderful his books were, he was in a way, an inspiration for some of my own writing. Writers like Terry Pratchett, because of how hilarious he was when he was writing his own novels; he was an influence on my own sense of humour. So a lot of the jokes I make in the novels will, in a way, be influenced by him, because he inspired my own sense of humour. And the way I wrote the novels with the academy where magical beings go off to learn how to use their powers properly was inspired by J.K. Rowling. There were other people like Jules Verne, who was one of the most wonderful writers I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading work of. As such, he was one of the most major people who inspired me to write, because of how wonderful his work was; how he took the world around him, and made it his own. The way he just figured out how to make things work, and the characters he wrote, how bizarre they were, but how wonderful they were because of that. There are countless other authors, a list too long for me to go over and describe, but to name a few: William Shakespeare, Christopher Paolini, Arthur Conan Doyle, and J.R.R. Tolkien. There are many more I could name, but every novel that I’ve read that I thought was wonderful, its author probably influenced me.

 

Is there anything out there that is practiced commonly in literary circles that you don’t want to be a part of?

Well, definitely not giving the antagonist enough backstory. A lot of authors seem to not really concentrate on the antagonist much, they’re sort of just there, and if they do give them anything, it’s very short. So really, I want to be able to give my antagonists good development, not just have them there as who the person is meant to fight, but more a person that is actually developed, that some people will actually grow to love as well, not just ‘He’s a villain; deal with it’. For most people, if the villain or antagonist isn’t developed enough, people just hate them, they don’t understand them, they just hate them outright, and they have no reason to other than they are the antagonists; whereas I want to develop mine, and make it so that people will understand them, so that some people will actually not hate them. I want people to actually like all my characters, even the villains.