To improve your writing, binge-read your favorite writers and shamelessly copy their style

“Wait, are you serious?”

Yes, and the best authors go a step further. Hunter S. Thompson once wrote down every word of the Great Gatsby so he could feel what it’s like to write a great novel.

There are two insights here:

1) When you copy your favorite writers, you’ll absorb their style.

2) If you can’t find your voice, copy people and pay attention to moments of resistance. At times, you’ll want to write something different — those moments reveal your unique style.

Musicians copy the greats all the time when they practice their scales. It’s boring but it works. The mechanics of music become clear not when you listen to it, but when you play it yourself.

The same is true for writing.

Jack London famously improved his writing by copying Rudyard Kipling.

He said: “As to myself, there is no end of Kipling in my work. I have even quoted him. I would never possibly have written anywhere near the way I did had Kipling never been. True, true, every bit of it.”

Benjamin Franklin copied his favorite writers too!

Here’s what he wrote in his autobiography: “I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it.”

Robert Louis Stevenson used a three-step process:

1) He picked a passage from a writer he respected

2) He read the passage twice, very carefully

3) He re-wrote the passage word-for-word from memory, without looking at it as he wrote

Watching painters copy the art on the walls is one of my favorite things to do at a museum.

They don’t mind when you watch them, so it’s the closest I routinely get to watching skilled painters in action.