From Unknown Office Worker to Best-Selling Author 📝

Let me tell you four stories about four very different writers.

The first story takes place in 1958. A young man named Hunter sat at his dim cubicle at Time Magazine HQ in New York City. He was barely legal to drink, but he already had grand ambitions for his life.

Hunter wanted to write great fiction, and he knew exactly how to get there.

So, in between the drudgery of his work, Hunter opened his favorite book, The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, and began copying it word-for-word. Then he did the same with his second favorite book: A Farewell To Arms by Hemingway.

Hunter would sell over 1.5 million copies of his novel over his career.

The second story takes place in 1900, at the turn of the century. That year, a writer named Jack made $2,500 from his writing. This was a whopping $90,000 in today’s money. Incredibly, Jack was still four years away from publishing his masterpiece.

Jack wasn’t always a successful writer. Three years prior, in 1897, Jack joined the Klondike Gold Rush. There, in the snowy nothingness of the Yukon, he developed scurvy and almost died.

So how did Jack go from gold prospector to best-selling author? He followed a rigorous self-improvement program. For hours a day, he would copy the works of his favorite writer, Rudyard Kipling. Jack hoped that, by copying, he would absorb Kipling’s rhythm, cadence, and prose style.

It worked, and Jack had 90,000 ways to prove it.

The third story takes place in the mid 1800s. A budding writer named Robert wished to improve his craft. He developed a three-step process to train himself as an author:

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.

He did this for years, slowly building his writer’s toolbox with great works from the past. By 1883, Robert would publish Treasure Island. By 1886, Strange Case of Dr. Jerkll and Mr. Hyde.

The fourth and final story takes place in the early 1700s. A young boy named Benjamin had a “lack of elegance” in his writing, or so his father said. So, to write better, Benjamin would read an article or story, summarize it, and then rewrite the piece from memory. Then he’d compare his work with the original, and revise if necessary.

Benjamin would go on to earn a very long Wikipedia article about his life’s work.

Who are these writers?

If you haven’t figured it out yet, here are their full names:

1. Hunter S Thompson

2. Jack London

3. Robert Louis Stevenson

4. Benjamin Franklin

What did they have in common? They all did copywork.

Biographer Kevin T. McEneaney, in his book Hunter S. Thompson: Fear, Loathing, and the Birth of Gonzo, described Thompson’s copywork as “an unusual method for learning prose rhythm”.[1]

Unusual, yes, but also effective. Thompson went on to become a literary giant of his own right. We’ll never know whether these exercises turned his career around, or whether an esoteric cocaine-addicted generational-talent just happened to copy novels on his path to greatness.

But we do know that copying novels is an incredible method to improve.

Painters use copywork. So do sculptors. So do chefs. To learn the ways of the masters, artists replicate well-known paintings and chefs replicate well-known recipes. That’s why you see so many artists sitting in art galleries with sketchpads and little canvases. Art schools teach you to do this, because this is the best way to learn style and technique.

For us writers, copywork is much simpler: you take a story you really like, print it or open it on an iPad, and type it word-for-word.

Is it really that simple?

Yes and no. Because it's writing better isn't just how you learn, but also what you learn.

That’s why I created Mastering Fiction. It’s a 12 day copywork course where I show you what to copy, and teach you how to write great fiction.

You’ll receive 19 hand-picked passages from great works. You'll get them in your inbox once a day for 12 days. Each passage comes with a lesson that explains an important aspect of good writing.

If you can spare an hour a day, you will write better in three weeks. I guarantee it.