Should you copy your favorite authors?

If you’re a fan of Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, Michael Pollan, Isaac Asimov, or David Sedaris, should you copy them? Should you try to write like them?

No. You are you. But you should copy their best practices.

How to learn from successful authors

If you like what you’re reading, take a moment to examine what the author is doing and why it works. That’s technique, and you may want to “borrow” it.

For example, Malcolm Gladwell nearly always starts a chapter with a story, a technique so well known that some people call such stories “Malcolms.” It’s a great way to draw readers into a chapter; I use it myself. If you like that technique, steal it!

Daniel Pink extensively researches his topics and uses his interviews to liven up his writing.

Michael Pollan gracefully weaves statistics into his arguments — without making the resulting prose impenetrable.

Isaac Asimov’s prose combines fierce and precise logic with a wry sense of humor. He’s not above mixing in a little reductio ad absurdum — showing how the position contrary to his leads you into an untenable and indefensible position. It’s a persuasive technique.

David Sedaris exposes him own foibles in an irresistible and entertaining way.

These are all techniques worth emulating, although of course you must be selective. Isaac Asimov’s and David Sedaris’s techniques are not compatible.

You can also learn from more mechanical elements, such as the way a given author deploys dashes or rhetorical questions, mixes long and short sentences, embeds direct quotes, or cleverly uses repetition. Try these techniques out. See if you like them.

You can also borrow writer’s methods

There are a lot of ways to draft and revise content. Any of them might work for you.

Anne Lamott embraces the “shitty first draft” — spewing everything out on to the page, then revising from there.

Stephen King advises you to “kill your darlings” — delete the elements that you’ve grown fond of, even though they are distorting the story.

John McPhee uses successive drafts to get content out, work on structure, and refine language.

Jimmy Soni keeps a comprehensive list of detailed research in the cloud and assembles it with the help of Scrivener.

And I recommend starting each writing job with a detailed “fat outline” that makes it easy to get past writer’s block.

Again, I recommend that you pick and choose among these techniques to see what works for you. But you may as well learn from the best.

Don’t copy how they write, copy what they do

You have your own unique writing style. How you think, how you use language, how you tell stories, and what you think is interesting all will inform how you write. When we read what you write, we should think, “Ah, this sounds just like them.”

You can embrace that even as you adopt the techniques and methods of your favorite writers. That’s what you makes you a smarter, better, faster, and more effective writer without becoming a copy of somebody else.

As T.S. Eliot said, “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal.” Stealing makes them better writers. But staying true to their own unique style is what made them great writers in the first place.