Do You Have Outside Influences?

[XIII]

Good day to all you awesome Iwakuans!

I have a topic for you today that I think is pretty interesting.
Most of us, at some point, has had a job, and even more of us have had hobbies outside of roleplaying. Whether it be something we stumbled upon ourselves or something you were introduced to, we all have things we do outside of here.

My question for you is how have those things influenced your writing, and do you get inspiration (or a big fat no-no) due to it?

For me, I work remotely now. I don't take a whole lot of inspiration from my job (mainly because it's pretty boring, but I'm good at it so whatever.)
But before, I worked in a max security prison. I dealt with men on death row, I've seen my fair share of un-alived people, I've seen all manner of fights and overdoses.

I always thought, especially because I worked mainly on graveyard shift (6pm to 6am,) how cool and interesting it would be to be a nocturnal creature (like a vampire) working in a prison. Absolutely no one would suspect anything, and you could still make it home before the sun came up. When inmates would get into fights, how easy it would be to break it up, and when we get attacked (happened way too often,) how we wouldn't be killed. I thought about a roleplay kind of centered around that idea, but nothing every came to be. A big no-no that stemmed from that was my distain for the 'Beauty and the Beast' style roleplays; prisoner falls in love with the captor. We had so many classes about that and how to not do it, and I've seen way too many people, men and women alike, lose their careers and end up in prison themselves because of it.

So once again, Iwaku, what sort of outside influence do you take in with your writing/roleplay style?

 

[Nemopedia]

I know that my university years have pretty much defined my appreciation for brevity and tone. Back in my undergraduate years there was a lot of focus on how to make 'law' more accessible to the common man. The first and most obvious solution was to simplify the language without dumbing it down too much, but also without wasting too many words, because most people don't care for large texts. It really had me thinking on how to word something effectively. The second solution was by making texts more engaging to read, which had us focus on the flow of a text, how it and beats and finds its rhythm.

But my biggest influence would be growing up multilingual. It came with equal parts of frustration because I had words in one language that just couldn't be explained in the other, and vice versa. Growing up as a translator of sorts for the adults surrounding me, dealing with adult business also had me naturally look for words and ways to translate something as effectively as possible without losing too much meaning. It got me thinking really creatively on how to word something and what isn't as effective, which then got amplified when pursuing higher education.

My professional life only influences my writing so-so. I'm a creepy people-watcher by nature with a huge imagination, so I tend to run away with mere chance encounters as well that I happen to witness and stuck to me. Most of the times I get inspired by something that had me thinking: 'That's so silly, that could never work!' and then I would think of ways in which it could.

Though nowadays it doesn't require that much brainpower anymore to believe something stupid could work in reality. Just turn on the news for the next big pea brain idea.

 

[Raynar Saassin]

Oooh, an interesting question! I'd have to say I owe my writing improvements to Gaming. After being exposed to numerous different ways of storytelling through different mediums, consoles, companies etc. etc., I definitely owe part of my writing from that. Learning different ways that different scenarios play out in the writing; whether it's a crucial piece of the story being revealed, character development, twists, you name it. Exposing myself to more story elements allows me to come up with new ways to write certain plot points or scenarios with the personal experience of watching/playing them.

Though I feel most of my influences has just been all the Roleplaying Partners and friends I've met along the way. I used to be so undescriptive and wrote in first person all the time which isn't bad but it didn't get me much exposure. Until one of my friends told me to try it out, and lo and behold, I grew better as a writer and expanded my own vocabulary at the same time.

Some of my old friends are still here, on Iwaku. If you ever read this and you still remember me? From the bottom of my heart, thank you.