Being a Better Writer: Imitation ... or Copying? · 5:18pm Sep 4th, 2017
This'll be a short one today, guys. I'm actually still sick, but I really feel bad about missing last week's post (in truth, my whole week went by in a blur of "ack, bleck, cough cough cough, can't think, play Sonic Mania/X-Com 2). So you're getting a post today. Not the one I'd planned (my brain's not quite functional enough for the more in-depth companion piece to Horizontal and Vertical Storytelling), but a post nonetheless that instead serves as a sort of semi-follow-up piece to this one, instead.
You'll note the similarity of the titles if you click the link. That's intentional.
Oh, and really quick: Patreon Supporters, there will still be an August reward. I just ... need to stop being sick first.
Okay, so today's short topic. This was brought on by a post I ran across on a forum the other day that was directed as "advice" for new writers.
It was ... poor advice. I'll give you the quick summary. It postulated that in order to become good, what one should do was find an author whose writing that they wanted to emulate, pick a story or excerpt of theirs that you wanted to emulate, and then just ... copy it. Type out the same words, massaged slightly with your characters and the details changed so that it wasn't outright word-for-word plagiarism. Their reasoning was that this would help you 'create' something very much like the author's you idolized, but still your own.
No.
That sort of advice they gave makes sense for learning programming, but does sound interestingly awful for writing. Welp, time to click through the link!
Okay, I read the thing.
The tracing analogy was surprisingly apt. It bugs the crap out of me that to this day, my most-faved piece of art I "created" amounts to something I traced, colorized, and tweaked a little. And it's still getting new faves after six years, where nothing else I do gets noticed. -_-
Might have gotten off-track.
But yeah. May need to try that reference-compare exercise with my writing sometime. Haven't really been putting that much thought into why a scene or description works.
Hmm. I should try that too someday.
I found that post too. And skipped over it. Great post, Viking. Especially since you aren’t feeling great!
That was very good, although there is one little issue with your comparison to tracing in art. Tracing is an important part of some workflows where a rough sketch is produced with construction/reference lines and corrections before placing it on a light table with a clean sheet on top of it to trace over only the lines you actually want to use in the final product. I don't think this is a major issue all things considered, but I felt like it was worth pointing out.
Also, on the subject of originality and convergent designs stemming from underlying reality in the older post, one of my big pet peeves is people who decide they want to be "original" so they throw out those physical rules and make something that looks absolutely moronic to me thanks to my combination of engineering knowledge and HEMA experience.
A solid and well reasoned post!