DNA of a writer: My top 10 books

Ahh, the dreaded question: “What’s your favorite book?”

Rachel Giesel was kind enough to expand it to “What’s your top 5 favorite books?”

I’m taking part in a free online course to figure out my writerly DNA – analyzing who I am, what I read, and what I write to come up with who I am as a writer. #MyWriteDNA if you will. And because I have a website for such a time as this, I thought I’d share with you my favorite books and their themes that contribute to my writing style.

Top 5 favorite books:

1. The Map of Time (sci-fi series by Felix J Palma)
2. Arena (speculative fiction by Karen Hancock)
3. Night Garden (magical realism by Lisa Van Allen)
4. Then and Always (romantic suspense by Dani Atkins)
5. Inkheart Trilogy (fantasy YA series by Cornelia Funke)

Because I had a top 10 and somewhat-arbitrarily decided on a top 5 from that list, I give you….

The runners-up:

6. The 13^th Tale (gothic suspense by Diane Setterfield)
7. Sinner (spiritual thriller by Ted Dekker)
8. Godmother: the Secret Cinderella Story (modern fairytale retelling by Carolyn Turgeon)
9. The Shadow Children series (dystopian YA series by Margaret Peterson Haddix)
10. The Book of Lost Things (fantasy quest by John Connolly)

After I picked my favorite books, I analyzed them. I wrote down any elements of the story that immediately popped to mind, be it themes, style, characterization, plot points, etc. These are elements so prevalent that I remembered them off the top of my head, so there may be even more commonalities I’ve forgotten 🙂

 (Note in regard to spoilers: To avoid blatant spoilers, this section will not call out specifically which books have which elements. Of course if you read this section, you will know that any of the above books have some of these elements, but you won’t know which ones. None of these elements are along the lines of “The main character dies at the end” or something hugely spoiler-y. If a main character dies at the end of one of these books, well, I won’t be the one to tell you, muahaha.)

The small stuff:

Okay, so this isn’t very small. That more than one of my favoritest of favorite books has these elements probably makes it noteworthy, but it’s still less noteable than what you’ll see in my next blogpost. Anyway, here’s a snapshot of some commonalities:

• 1 book has an investigative reporter. This is just one book, but that’s a key part of my work-in-progress, so I thought I’d include it in this list 🙂
• 2 books involve a quest
• 2 books have the theme of the power of words or story
• 2 books have a small political change that greatly alters everything
• 2 books are allegorical, but not preachy
• 3 books have a noteable narrator – unreliable and/or chats directly with the reader
• 3 books have romance as a prevalent sideplot – not the main deal, but still a deal
• 4 books break the 4^th wall (haha, 4 & 4)
• 5 books are of epic proportions, involving an entire world
• 5 books have changing alliances and deal with the question of who to trust

So there’s a snapshot of what I like in my reading and my writing. My next blogpost shows the top 3 elements that were in over half of the books on my favorites list, and then I also include what that actually looks like in my writing.

Any guesses as to the top 3 common elements? First to guess correctly in the comments gets major kudos from me and a shout-out in next week’s post 🙂