When I was 11 or 12 my friend introduced me to Max Barry through his book Jennifer Government.

Over the next few years I'd read Max Barry's works as I found them/as they were released and I ended up adopting his writing style to a small extent because I found it easy and enjoyable.

I would employ em-dashes for asides or to separate clauses, I would make my writing conversational and, most notably, I would use sprinkle in short sentences and paragraphs. Some of my paragraphs would just be one sentence, I liked how it looked and flowed.