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What factors can influence an author's writing?
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Several factors influence an author's writing, including historical context, personal experiences, education, and societal pressures. Authors often write to reflect or critique societal issues, as seen in Jane Austen's focus on gender roles and class conflicts, or Harper Lee's exploration of racism. Personal experiences, such as travel or religious encounters, also shape writing. Education impacts style and form, while feedback and societal acceptance influence content and themes. These factors collectively shape an author's work.
So many factors contribute to an author's writing style, purpose, and form. One of the first I always consider is the historical context of the work. Often, writers are trying to convey a truth about their own societies or provide a call to action based on some conflict in their society. Often, writers reflect the issues of high importance in their lives by constructing stories that propel a truth about their conditions.
Jane Austen portrayed the struggles associated with the roles of women as well as class conflicts, important issues in her own setting. Mark Twain wrote of the cruelties of slavery that followed from owning other human beings in his works. Harper Lee constructed a story of the inherent and inescapable racism of the South in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Era in the United States.
An author's own life experience also contributes to their writing....
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Some authors bring a great sense of life's tragedies to their writing. Some authors have traveled the world, and they adeptly convey the varied world they've seen by creatingimagery with their words. Some writers have been touched by a deeply personal religious experience, and these themes run throughout their writing. As each person's life story is a compilation of a multitude of life experiences, each writer has a wealth of varying experiences to create stories from.
A writer's education is also reflected in their works. A writer who has been trained with a formal, classical education may take a different form or style than one who has been allowed to explore writing on their own terms. As students are taught what is and is not acceptable in writing and as teachers along the way provide different opportunities for writing, the effect on a writer's work is constantly being shaped. For example, a student who enjoys creative writing but who never has teachers who allow for this type of written expression may never develop those skills or pursue those initial interests.
Writers can also be influenced by the amount of support they receive along the way. They can be influenced by the feedback they receive from editors. They can be influenced by societal pressures (whether a certain topic or style is acceptable content or not). Indeed, so many factors contribute to the final products which are published.