Remembering the first world war, with its poems and poppies, is somehow part of being British. I'm not talking about the actual events: very few people can remember those now. I mean the powerful words and harrowing pictures which bring home the reality of that war.
But why bother remembering? Isn't there enough violence today without fretting over the past? Well, yes and no. When I was a reporter with Reuters, I witnessed the end of Ethiopia's 30-year civil war, and wrote about the terrible human toll of other conflicts as well. But seeing modern warfare first-hand didn't erase the horror I'd felt when reading Wilfred Owen's first world war poems at school. His haunting images of life and death in the trenches will stay with me forever.

Berlie Doherty told me about a similar experience when she was a girl. "It wasn't until I was a teenager, loving poetry, that I read the likes of Wilfred Owen and began to comprehend the utter horror, waste and devastation of those years. In Owen's time men and boys wanted to fight: it was a glorious thing to be fighting to save our country from the enemy. Nothing of that came over to me – the sentiment of 'Pro Patria Mori' ['To die for one's country' - a phrase in one of his most famous poems] seemed a horrifying con trick. Owen's poetry took me into the very heart of the crime that was war."

Of course, it's not only poetry that can bring you face-to-face with the past. For Melvin Burgess it was facts and figures that shocked him. "My dad fought in the second world war and for me the first world war was already ancient history. I was astonished when I first came across the numbers about all those men dying [in the first world war] and all those women with no husbands and no families because there were so few men left. And then, when you're standing under the monument in the local park, and you see six people with the same name, from the same family, who all vanished… That war was a common experience, a mass experience and I think that's the reason it's still here and now."

This common, mass experience has affected national attitudes towards conflict ever since. As Anne Fine put it, "This war was a watershed. It did away with any innocence about what happens in battle or any belief in its 'glories'. It ushered in a period in which any declaration of hostilities is viewed with deep suspicion and trepidation. That's all for the good. Anything that reminds enthusiastic and inexperienced youth that something supposed to be 'over by Christmas' can turn into such a long, grisly, futile carnage should be encouraged."

Adele Geras said this explains why first world war remains significant for each new generation. "I have an old-fashioned view that it's very important to know our own history. We will be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past without this historical knowledge. The more violent and senseless, the more we have to try and make sense of it somehow."

The impact of the first world war didn't stop with the signing of the Armistice. In Britain, legislation on equal pay for men and women, and the rights of girls to get a university degree, were among the sweeping changes brought about by war-time upheavals when women and girls went to work in factories and offices to replace the men who'd gone to fight.

"It's really interesting that when you look at all these dystopian novels, people sort of assume that when you have a disaster, society is automatically going to get worse," noted Sally Nicholls. "Actually what tends to happen with real disasters like the Black Death and the first world war is that society gets better. I think it's very hard to understand where we are now if you don't have that sense of history."

What about the future? Theresa Breslin expects that fiction writers will continue to play an important role in keeping the story of the first world war alive. 'The literature and art [of WWI] are part of our cultural heritage ... I think stories of world war one have changed in the telling and will continue to do so as more information becomes available and different insights are gained. Like all war reporting since ancient times the 'facts' have been sifted and slanted, but the core of a story is emotional truth which is the mark of good fiction."

Mary Hooper added, "In the same way that Shakespeare plays change and evolve to suit the times, we will find different ways of portraying this war. My own particular way takes real things that happened and dresses them up as fiction. I recently wrote a book set in world war one in which one of the characters injures himself rather than go out and fight. Most people's attitude to war-refusers has changed dramatically over the years. There is even a statue now in memory of those boys 'shot at dawn'."

As for me, I hope more of tomorrow's stories about the first world war will seek inspiration beyond the mud and blood of the Western Front. It was, after all, a world war which led to the fall of empires and contributed to the rise of Hitler and Stalin.

But I'll leave the last word to Matt Whyman: "War is pretty much a permanent feature of human life on earth, and will no doubt continue to break out in some shape or form – whether large scale or on a local and even personal level. There's always hope that we might learn from momentous episodes such as first world war and not make the same mistakes. It's an optimistic position, but also serves as a small mark of respect to those who sacrificed their lives."

• All the authors quoted in this blog have contributed original stories to War Girls, a collection of first world war stories through the eyes of young women. For a little taster of what the book is about read Melvin Burgess's story Mother and Everington.