What inspired you to start writing? Page 3

Quote: Deferenz @ October 29 2008, 6:48 PM BST

My inspiration was also with James Herbert. His novels; The Dark and The Rats being huge inspiration to put pen to paper. It is only in the last few years that I have turned my attention to comedy. Before that it was horror and sci-fi that held my interest.
Def.

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Yeah, at at early age I was into horror.

But now I write comedy, drama, and all types of stuff.

Mind you, back then (in the 1980's) my parents thought that writing was only ever going to be a hobby for me.

They used to say: "Writers only come from London. Get a real job."

It would be a strange thing to say now in an age where anyone can become a celeb, regardless of talent.

The thought of having to do a proper job inspired me to start writing.

I was a very shy and quiet child and I went to a very good primary school where the staff noticed that I had a thing for making up stories. They really encouraged me to write these stories, poems and plays down, letting me stay in during breaktime to do so and then reading them to the rest of the class.

I may have mentioned him before on here but this man was one of my more inspirational teachers; http://www.alanclayson.com/
He's a muscian, performance artist and rock journalist. He wrote Backbeat, about The Beatles, which was turned into a film. On the first day in his class we had to write an essay about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote that I wanted to be a punk. I was nine. He then fully encouraged me to form a band and take part in all the school plays, etc. He was very unconventional and encouraged me to come out of my shell and just think 'f**k it!'.

For me, writing is just another in a long line of things I've tried having failed the thing before it. Next year - judo!

We're going to get some interesting experiences here. Well here's mine. Writing is something I had been doing since primary school, just like most people but I never considered it as a career. When I was 13 I read the first Harry Potter book and thought 'I'd like to write something like that'. So I did and then when I was 18 I thought the same thing after reading the last Harry Potter book and so I did again. Both those novels remain unpublished as I used them as a means of testing out my skills. Then in May of this year I started writing a sitcom script but soon discovered sitcoms aren't for me. After watching an episode of Brothers&Sisters I thought 'I could write something like that'. So once again I did and am now writing the seventh episode. i've also written a film script and another drama pilot which is on its way to the BBC Writersroom. So my inspiration came from JK Rowling, Brothers&Sisters and my love for writing

The rest of my writing history and current writing ventures can be found in my blog, the address of which is in my sig

I wanted to be a journalist as my dad was quite political and I wanted to write about politics or crime. I gave up doing it because of the importance newspapers have with celebrities; important issues taking a backseat just to make way for a celebrity hairstyle or something. I did leave college with an HNC in journalism with some stuff printed in a few newspapers. I stopped writing for a while and I watched the TV series 'Cracker' written by Jimmy McGovern. I was so blown away by it I decided "That's what I want to do...write scripts". I wrote a lot of drama stuff for TV and film in my spare time and I have recently started writing a lot of comedy sketches. I love writing. I've been writing for as long as I remember. The earliest thing I wrote was about a primary school summer camp trip and some kind teacher put it on the front page of a school bulletin. It gave me a real confidence boost in writing when I was very young.

Ah! Cracker!

That was a big one of mine too.

As I've already said, a couple of times, in similar threads, I got the bug for writing comedy, all the way back in my final year of Primary school, when we used to have a weekly Drama competition. We were split up into groups, and each week, we were given a topic to base a little play around. Luckily, the lads in my group seemed to be happy leaving the writing to me, and we actually finished the year as the group with the most wins.

School inspired me to start writing. I was top of the class in English language classes, but struggled with English literature when we started doing Shakespeare. I didn't grasp it and my teacher was crap... so I bunked off lessons and went at sat at my 'den' in the local fields writing my own stories - far better than those Shakespeare wrote!

My proudest moment came before that though, when I was about ten and we were asked to write an essay on "What I Did This Summer."
All the kids wrote exciting stories about their holidays, but we couldn't afford to go anywhere, so I wrote a story about my parents being killed in a car crash.
Not true, of course, but I was very proud when the headmistress called me to her office with tears in her eyes, telling me how sorry she was.

Quote: Eat_My_Shirts @ October 29 2008, 7:33 PM BST

Has anyone here studied writing at college/uni? English literature or Journalism or something....

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I've recently applied to write for my uni magazine and in secondary school I created and edited a school magazine which ran for 4 years.

One thing that did inspire me was watching a documentary about 'Friends' and seeing lots of writers sat round a big table drinking coffee and eating doughnuts just chipping in funny lines.

Yes, I'd like to do THAT for a living please.

Quote: Seefacts @ October 31 2008, 3:07 PM BST

One thing that did inspire me was watching a documentary about 'Friends' and seeing lots of writers sat round a big table drinking coffee and eating doughnuts just chipping in funny lines.

Yes, I'd like to do THAT for a living please.

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Yeah me too but for dramas.

Quote: Seefacts @ October 31 2008, 3:07 PM BST

One thing that did inspire me was watching a documentary about 'Friends' and seeing lots of writers sat round a big table drinking coffee and eating doughnuts just chipping in funny lines.

Yes, I'd like to do THAT for a living please.

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Eating doughnuts?

Quote: Marc P @ October 31 2008, 5:13 PM BST

Eating doughnuts?

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Ohhh, yes!

Woody Allen - without a doubt the leading light in comedy prose and screenplays. From intellectual one-liners to slapstick, the guy has a phenomenal control over comedy. Imo.

League of Gentlemen, BlackAdder, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, are my TV equivalents of Allen.

As a child and now adult that was more interested in the written word, than voice, as a way of communication, I was always going to end up writing.