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I have definitely noticed how stuff I’ve read has impacted my writing over the years. The first time I remember this happening was in high school with Rick Riordan’s two series Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Kane Chronicles. I fell in love with Percy’s voice almost immediately, and I enjoyed the bantering narration between Carter and Sadie. When I first started writing in the first-person PoV, I drew a lot of narrative-voice inspiration from these stories.

Another author who has influenced my writing is K.M. Shea. She writes a lot of fluffy stories, marketing herself as a writer who will make you laugh. That being said, some of her protagonists, especially lately, have various degrees of childhood trauma, and it absolutely affects the way they interact with the world and the decisions they make. (Specifically, Royal Magic comes to mind, for anyone curious.) However, the way she handles it keeps the story from becoming dark, as it easily could. Her stories are still fun, full of lighthearted goodness, with just enough grief that you cheer that much more at the eventual triumphs. I’m actively learning how to incorporate that balance into my own stories with various protagonists who deal with their difficult backstories in different ways.

Additionally, as Brandon said, romance stories are heavy on character development. I’ve also learned a lot about what I don’t want to include in my own characters’ romances by paying attention to what annoys the socks off of me about certain romance novels. (I have come close to yelling “Stop touching me!” at more than a few books – clean, Christian books – to merely scratch the surface in a topic I really should shut up about before I end up ranting. xD)

On a similar note, reading Christian fiction and, more specifically, Christian fantasy has taught me what I like and dislike about portrayals of religion and characters’ approach(es) to religion and, subsequently, how I want to incorporate it (or not) into my own stories and characters.