My father was a strong lovable man, he had a great sense of right and wrong; I believe this is where I get my vengeful side from. Not a good trait in real life, but a gift when writing adventure novels. Most plots have one person doing harm to another, whether it be a manager sacking a worker from their job just because they wanted to, or a murdering psychopath slitting the throat of an innocent; when the audience don't like a character they are enticed into wanting the good guy to exact revenge. This is only part of the equation though, as the plot has to establish motion. By motion, I mean to take the reader to different places and areas they may never have seen, for example, the inside of a dam, or under an estuary through a tunnel carrying high voltage cables from a power station, down a mine travelling in a cage or riding on a belt. These are experiences only those working in these environments will have had and as an author it is up to you to describe those experiences in such detail, that the reader can himself, or herself, be there.
This brings me to my next influence; life experiences. If you haven't done it, you simply cannot describe it to another; you must feel the confinement, the danger, the pressure, the heat, the cold, the grief, the love, the sex,the humidity, the height, the speed, and in some circumstances, the pain, to enable the writer to convey what is happening and what the character is enduring. We can all use the internet to research, but nothing beats the real thing. Losing my Mum seven years ago and more recently my Dad two years ago was the catalyst that started my career. God Bless x
