Become Another Author

by Courtney Sherwin
(New Jersey)

Rembrandt Self Portrait - 1660

Rembrandt Self Portrait - 1660

I find a lot of my inspiration from my favorite authors, such as Thomas Gavin or Thomas Harris.

What I usually do, if I'm in a rut, is open one of my favorite books and start typing a paragraph in the book, verbatim. This allows me to actually feel the author’s words, his or her sentence structure, verb placement, etc. When I start writing on my own, I find that I pick up on the author’s writing mannerisms. This allows me to remove myself from my writer’s block. I can always go back and edit passages of my own work so that there is absolutely no plagiarism involved.

This technique is similar to art students who reproduce a famous artist’s paintings. It allows the student to actually feel the process the famous artist went through when creating his or her masterpiece.

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Oct 25, 2014
 Why I Write Whodunits NEW
by: Steven

Writing whodunits allows me to be another Agatha Christie, another Charles Dickens(really? He wrote "Bleak House" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", dying before he could finish), or another Conan Doyle; I'm more with the gentleman detective than the hard-boiled one; I've tried time and time again, but never found anything that would be that entertaining; how many of us know that Pierce Brosnan's character from "Remington Steele" was originally supposed to be American? His character was the gentleman thief; mine, Steve Tindale/Jones, was originally a gentleman thief gone straight, like Steele; he learns of his heritage as a member of the gentry along the way, giving up his life of crime to become a gentleman sleuth.
May 14, 2013
 I want to be an author NEW
by: Chidiebere

Ikenna.ugochukwu.emeka
May 06, 2010
 Never thought of that
by: Anonymous

but it's an interesting idea. I am eager to try it out. Thanks.
May 05, 2010
 Expanding one's range as a writer
by: Anonymous

I once tried this with To the Lighthouse and found it a useful technique.

Although I haven't copied any novels recently, there are some novels that I have reread so many times that I have practically memorized them, and I know that they have given me new tools, expanded my range as an author.

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