Becoming A Writer, Chapter Ten: On Imitation

Again it may be that you feel that your writing is monotonous, that verb follows noun, and adverb follows verb, with a deadly sameness throughout your pages. You are struck by the variety, the pleasant diversity of sentence structure and rhythms in the author you are reading. Here is the real method of playing the sedulous ape: The first sentence has twelve words; you will write a twelve-word sentence….

Brande’s instructions continue, and the reader’s heart sinks: He or she is to mimic the model passage in word count, in each word’s syllable count, in every aspect of grammatical structure, imperative by subjunctive by indicative. The only difference is to be the actual words chosen. Thus, if the model passage begins, “The quick red fox jumped over the lazy dog,” you might begin your response with “The kind old bird flew across the darkened plain.”

It’s not an exercise to be dashed off in five minutes; nor is it one, Brande acknowledges, that you’d want to perform with any kind of frequency. Like the most exacting of poetic forms, it requires great concentration, deliberate word choice, and awareness of meter. By imitating the model passage’s rhythm so closely, you gain an intimate familiarity with the feel of that rhythm. From that familiarity comes the ability improvise in its key signature, so to speak:

Once having taken the trouble to analyze a sentence into its component parts and construct a similar one of your own, you will find that some part of your mind is thereafter awakened to subtleties which you may have passed obliviously before.