Other Influences

Of course, movies are not my only influence in my writing.  I also enjoy music, reading, drawing, TV, etc.  So I thought I'd get into a little more detail on a few of these things.

Reading

I'm currently reading The Chronicles of Narnia (in order) and I'm on part 4.  Books like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Narnia have all been useful in developing a long running series and character arcs.  Others like Fight Club, Survivor, and the Dexter series are useful in finding the details of your story and writing a gritty world where not so nice things happen.

Music

I like a lot of music and usually have something going while writing.  I pretty much like every genre except Country.  Mostly, though, I listen to rock (in all its glorious forms) and I dabble in alternative, techno, rap, and some R&B.  Songs are almost like mini stories in themselves.  So you may find refrences to song names or themes in my stories but these are much harder to catch unless you're familiar with the particular song or band.

Life's Little Details

They say that you write what you know.  That's mostly the case.  While I'll never be a Marine Scout/Sniper; I can only imagine what that's like.  Sure, I can do research (watch a lot of movies) and try to think of what they might do in a given situation, I'll never really know.  Where I'm going with this is the details.  The details of a story are what you get from your own life.  Like the birds fighting story in NYC actually happened to me and I couldn't believe it when I saw it happening right in front of me.  I gave the story and some of the reaction to Jill for the story.  Maybe there is a person at work with a weird quirk or you saw someone at a restaurant that spoke a weird way or something.  Those details and the little things of life become details in my writing.  And those details are what fill a story out, giving it context and a life all its own.