Want to write better? Copy someone else's novel.

“Man, oh man, if only I can write like Hemingway,” you say.

But wait, you can! With this revolutionary old method, you can write like anyone you want. You’ll have access to the skills and style of the greatest authors in history. Nothing is out of reach with this secret writer training method!

What is this method, you ask?

It’s called copywork. And it’s absolutely free! All it costs is 20-40 hours of your time.

It’s Not Plagiarism, It’s Copywork!

In the late 50s, a then-unknown Time Magazine copyboy named Hunter S Thompson, already hating his job, was planning to write his great novel. In preparation for writing a novel, he hand-typed the entirety of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms,[1] as well as some of Faulkner’s short stories.

Biographer Kevin T. McEneaney, in his book Hunter S. Thompson: Fear, Loathing, and the Birth of Gonzo, described it as “an unusual method for learning prose rhythm”.[2]

Copying great novels to learn the rhythm of the giants might have been unusual, but it wasn’t ineffective. Thompson went on to become a literary giant of his own right. We’ll never know whether these exercises helped his career, 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.

The method is called copywork.

For centuries, copywork has been used by fine artists all over the world. As a fine artist, to do copywork is to replicate a well-known painting. 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 a master’s 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 out.

A few years ago, I copied Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea word for word. It took me a month of part-time copying. It was the best thing I ever did for my own writing. After copying the novel, I noticed an immediate improvement in my descriptions and dialogue. My character interactions became less awkward. My pacing tightened. My stories became more engaging.

Copywork made me a better writer, and the effect was almost instant.

Why It Works.

“How does copying help with writing?” you ask.

Well, let’s take a look at the following passage from The Old Man and the Sea:

"Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air."

After you read the passage, you realize it’s a scene about the old man watching a dolphinfish (a.k.a. a mahi-mahi, a fish with a golden body). It’s a beautiful passage.

But if I asked you to replicate Hemingway’s style, you probably wouldn’t be able to do it.

Why not?

The answer lies in the way we read. When you read, you read for the purpose of understanding. You read to imagine the scene. Unless you exert conscious effort, you don’t read to absorb the prose technique and rhythm, because thinking about craft so impairs your ability to understand the passage.

However, learning how to write like Hemingway is more than just absorbing Hemingway’s metal pictures. This is where copywork comes in. By copying the passage, you force yourself to actively think about the words and the way they’re arranged. You start to pay attention to the sentences, their construction, their cadences, and their purpose.

You can get the same effect through conscientious analysis. This takes forever, and isn’t nearly as effective. But, for the sake of demonstration, lets take a look at the first sentence.

Just before it was dark, —> a setting fragment that anchors the reader.

as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea —> a piece of visual imagery, adding motion and scale to the picture.

as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, —> a comparison that introduces a feeling of warmness and a color tone.

his small line was taken by a dolphin. —> a break in the long, breathless sections that introduces the reader to the purpose of the paragraph.

We see through analysis that this sentence is comprised of three sections: setting, imagery, purpose. We see how Hemingway writes in short cadences, broken up by long, breathless sections. We see how he constructs intricate imagery using small, simple words.

Now imagine doing this type of analysis for the entire novel.

With copywork, your brain will do this type of analysis automatically. All you have to do is sit down and copy someone else’s novel.

How To Copy.

You can copy a story at nearly your full typing speed. I can type at about 60 words per minute, or 3600 words per hour. At my speed, it takes 20 hours to finish copying a 72,000 word novel. I do, however, recommend dramatically slowing down for the sake of absorption.

Try it today. Take your favorite novel or short story and copy it word for word. Take it slow when you copy. Think about what you’re writing. You’ll get so much out of doing this, I promise.