Around the time the maze runner was made the author, James Dashner was influenced by the books of the hunger games and other books like twilight. James Dashner wanted to create something like the hunger games hence while both books were placed in a post- apocalypse type setting. Around this time while James was thinking about the book he wanted to have a maze an old one with ivery plants and big walls. He also loved the future type tech and but with an old feel (like the hunger games) and decided to try and create just that. He also based the situations off the lord of the flies when boys were thrown into a situation and they had to figure it all out. However James didn't really show any signs of him being in any of his characters that he writes about he rarely even talks about himself and the characters like he put himself in there. However I do think he did show himself in the character Thomas . I think that he shows himself in Thomas because Thomas in the story likes to learn and strive to learn and adapt to his surroundings to survive and try something new like what James Dashner did when he was creating his book( The Maze Runner). The themes of the maze runner are usually friendship, never give up, and trust between eachother to survive. He gets many of his themes from other books and strong influence from Stephen King.
James Dashner also likes to continue on from old stories of his own childhood and use all of those ideas to incorporate them into his own writing in a different way.