Learn How to Copy

In my last post, I wrote about my attempt over the last decade to create a new work of fantasy fiction, while accidentally recreating a list of fantasy tropes in an unoriginal, relatively immemorable fashion.  

The basic idea, however, is not a bad one. 

We should copy. 

I learned the following concept in an elementary school art class:

"Students Copy, Masters Create"

This was my interpretation of Van Gogh's White House at Night,
during the daytime, with pretty birds 

While learning, and, in fact, to learn, students copy those who came before them.

And even though I understood this concept at age seven, somehow I neglected to apply the full concept to one of the most important aspects of my life—writing—for the next twenty years. Go figure.

I assert that it is a mistake to avoid the “copy” phase of artistic instruction. I have seen this phase particularly in poetry exercises:

Write a Sonnet. Now write in Terza Rima.

Now a Shakespearean. Now take the same poem and change it to a Petrarchan,

to learn how your words must adapt.

We play with form, to see how it affects function.

While I have found this to be a staple of my poetry instruction, this same technique was not present in my ‘Creative Writing- Fiction’ classes. I say this not as a critique of those classes or my teachers, because God knows I was taught more than I could possible learn, but simply to say that it is more difficult, and, perhaps, even disagreeable to copy the masters of fiction.

I enjoy using painting as an analogy for writing instruction, simply because I feel there is a very real and immediate grasp of a visual medium. If I come upon a student copying Monet’s Water Lilies, It is obvious that student is simultaneously practicing their own art, honing their own skills, and copying the work of an artist who came before them, to see how it was done.

So...beautiful...

In the writing world, this method of practice is often lost. Are we to open Shakespeare and copy his lines word by word? Perhaps. Surely, after spending so much time writing in a Sixteenth Century voice, one can at least be sure to retain a sense of time and place. If an author were working on a period piece, this may well be a useful technique.

I shall call thee squishy, and thou shalt be my squishy

But for others, this would seem a waste of time, almost more of a punishment than an exercise, like Bart Simpson writing lines on a chalkboard. No, for true instruction, a writing student cannot simply copy a master’s words, but must recreate the same aspects of the master’s work that are copied in poetry classes. Copy form, copy function. Learn how they did it.

For instance, what if a writer were to take the content of Thoreau’s Walden, which I have often and loudly condemned as mind-numbingly dull, and write it as Edgar Allen Poe. This is a dual act, copying the content of one writer and the style of another (though, I am sure some of Poe’s content is sure to slip in. After all, there’s nothing to spice up a lonely few years at the lake like a nice murder and a spiteful ghost).

Can you imagine how many hearts would fit under those floorboards?

I have seen a writing exercise that ‘updates’ old fables—

“Retell ‘The 3 Little Pigs’ in modern day,”

or “from a feminist point of view,”

or “in space, with space-pigs.”

This is right on the threshold of the kind of exercise I am searching for. This fable has a moral and a structure simple enough to be applied to multiple settings (in fact, most of the fables do, which is why we see them redone again and again). As long as the moral and the three-turn structures is maintained (failure, failure, success; brother 1, brother 2, brother 3) the fable is still a success.

I believe it is a young writer’s fear that they won’t be true to “their voice” which keeps them from learning through copying. But why, of all the arts, should writing be so different from painting, or music, for that matter? How ridiculous would it be to have a beginning piano player refuse to play Mozart because he fears that “his own style will not be allowed to grow?”

After all, it is mastering the different voices of our characters, our settings, and our genres that creates incredible literature.

Goodbye My Darlings

This blog is my journey through my own literary mangling. Let me explain. 

"Kill your darlings" is a phrase I have heard again and again. According to this Slate article, the etymology is far more complex than I knew going into this, as I was only familiar with a passing nod to Faulkner and this Stephen King quote:

"kill your darlings, kill your darlings,

 even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, 

kill your darlings.”

I have a book. It has a long history.

At the time I am writing this, I have recently turned 27. The first idea for this book, so different from what it currently is, came when I was a freshman in high school, a dozen years ago. I was age 15, at most. It’s safe to say, I saw the world differently.

I had an idea, with a friend of mine, that moved from a genuinly original idea, to a pseudo-Pokémon rip-off, to a completely different kind of rip-off.

There was a break. Years. I guess, four of them. I was a freshman in college and I read Eragon. Anyone familiar with the fantasy genre, or YA literature, or even anyone who walked into a Books-a-Million in the last decade has heard of his Inheritance Cycle at one point or another. 

Seriously--this cover was everywhere

From those I have spoken to, Christopher Paolini seems to be the kind of writer that people either love or hate (or they loved for years and then learned to hate by talking to other people who already hated him, which, I think, is just terrible. If you’re going to hate a thing, at least be original about it).

My own feelings varied. I loved Eragon, at first read. I ate it up. I showed all my friends, my brother, and then we all read the next books together. I loved the world, the characters, the story. But what I loved most of all was that it seemed doable.

For those trying to be writers, there are authors to be admired, worshiped, and copied. Some authors sit on a pedestal—we don’t know how they did what they did. And there are those we read that, at the end, we say—“that was good. But not so very good. I could do that.”

I wrote a scene, trying to reach into the epic mystery I had felt when I read Eragon, the kind of writing built on Beowulf and Tolkien (but more importantly Tolkien building on Beowulf). It was a nonsense action scene, but I built a mythology on it. Hidden powers, statues becoming people, weaklings becoming warriors.

Like this, except with far less offensive language

I suppose I learned some things in college. But mostly I wrote. I can see it in all my notebooks. The notes were on the pages, but my attention was in the margins. Everything got applied to my story—anthropology, art, western civ, mythology, composition. Four years led to two more, and little changed. Now the stories were stranger, and my comments were too.

By this time I already had full printed copies. I finished the first draft on July 27, 2009. Then there was a second. By the third, I’d realized Office Depot could print double-sided, costing me half the price of paper. Instead of wasting $45 on these ring-bound, black plastic covered manuscripts, I was only wasting $23.

I had friends reading them. Rave reviews, of course. There was a good mix of friendly unawareness and actual helpfulness. My brother read the most. If I died today, he might be able to piece my story together just because of how many times we’ve sat and talking about it. I started querying agents in 2012.

I had some partials, but no dedicated interest. Nothing stuck. I rewrote and rewrote. Every year I created a new, dramatic file folder in my “writing” file. 2012. 2013. 2014. Each time, my book was revisited, redone. This was it, the version that would change it all. But it was still the same. Paolini, and Eragon, were amazing to me, and yet they were still criticized because they were “unoriginal,” a recreation of fantasy tropes. What can I make if I struggle to recreate the recreation?

It’s about perception. What story do I want to tell, and, most importantly, how do I want to tell it? What is my goal? To tell a story that my friends and family will read, over and over again, because they love me, or to create something real, something new?

I have to murder it. This twelve year old, fermenting piece of work. For now, I will set it down, work on other ideas that aren’t so mired in a decade of past words. Someday, I’ll pick it back up, and see what I can make of it. If it’s unrecognizable, that’s because it wasn’t going anywhere as it was.

This hurts, but not as much as failing would.