How Copying Others' Writing Can Improve Your Own

Last Updated on October 28, 2024 by Candice Landau

I’m a big fan of copying others’ work in order to learn how to do something new, or do something better. I did it as a kid when learning to draw and paint and I do it when I’m trying to figure out a new jewelry-making technique. I still do it today. I read articles online looking for formats and techniques that I can steal and use for my own devices. I “copy write” or skyscrape—or whatever you want to call it—when I’m stuck writing fiction, or when I can’t get started.

In fact, I’m nowhere near the first person to say this: “Copying” others work as a means of learning to do something really well, is almost intuitively accepted. It might be something your boss tells you to do in hushed tones, but it’s really not that weird or that uncommon at all.

My AP English teacher used to get us to do it. I remember one class in particular. She handed us a page of paragraphs extracted from different stories. Our job was to write something new in the style of those various paragraphs. It was a good way to learn different techniques, to learn how to structure original sentences, and to use language in varying ways. Since then, whenever I’ve had writer’s block, I’ve pulled a novel from my bookshelf, opened it randomly to a page, and then selected a paragraph to simply copy, using my own characters and my own story.

Here’s how I do it…

Original paragraphs from Chapter 1 of Lord of the Rings:

“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure.”

My adapted paragraphs:

When Zukisa learned the family would be immigrating to the United States within the next six months, and that the house was already on the market, she continued as normal.

She was realistic and practical, and she believed that things would work out, after all, they always had. She had survived the last family’s immigration, and maybe, just maybe, the Madam and the Master would take her with them.

(and now I’m getting into the story, It’s so much easier to continue writing!)

It was a distant if uncharacteristic hope, but it was still something that helped her sleep at night. She knotted her apron deftly behind her waist and tied her doek about her head. Her bedroom window was dirty. Perhaps if she finished chores early today she would take some time to clean her own room.

You can see from the above paragraphs that I haven’t copied directly, but that I’ve used Tolkien’s style to get my own creative juices flowing. On the off-chance that you’re interested in learning what a doek is, read this article. The character I mention above is from a story I began working on in my Creative Writing Masters program.

Actually, Austin Kleon, author of “Steal Like an Artist,” says that this type of work, especially when we can “copy from memory,” can result in quite beautiful, new creations:

“I’m starting to believe that the idea that the artist can should sit down and create something “new” is a paralyzing delusion. We can only create a collage of our influences, our memories—filtered through our imagination.

By re-interpreting these artifacts, we come up with something that is uniquely our own.”

I’ve been practicing this technique very recently. Last weekend, perusing the art and craft section in Barnes and Noble, I came across this book: D

Although I didn’t directly copy any of Carla Sonheim’s designs, copying basic techniques led to my very own creative and bizarre imaginary animals (though the pink one with the giant nose and eyeball is my sister’s creation):