I was thinking again about copywork.

Chatting with some LLMs, we came up with a list of notable writers that are known to have used or advocated copywork.

Here’s what we got (warning: quotes could be fabricated!):

  • Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary)

    “I just wanted to feel what it felt like to write that well. I’d just type out pages of The Great Gatsby or A Farewell to Arms, just to get the feel of it inside me.”

  • Jack London (The Call of the Wild, White Fang)

    London reportedly copied out works of Kipling and Stevenson to absorb their rhythm and structure.

  • Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

    “Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality.”

  • Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles)

    “If you want to write well, steal from the best. Copy their styles, learn how they structure their sentences, and then make it your own.”

  • Cormac McCarthy (The Road, Blood Meridian)

    While not explicitly quoted on copywork, McCarthy is known for intensely studying and absorbing the styles of Faulkner and Melville before developing his own.

  • Stephen King (The Shining, It, The Dark Tower)

    “You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. The best way to learn to write well is to read and copy the work of those who have done it best.”

  • Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Coraline, The Sandman)

    “Most of what I learned about writing fiction I learned by writing bad fiction first, and by copying out passages I loved.” (Paraphrased from various interviews.)

  • H.P. Lovecraft (The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness)

    Lovecraft admired and absorbed the styles of Edgar Allan Poe and Lord Dunsany, often mimicking their prose in his early works.

  • Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls)

    “When I was learning to write, I’d copy out passages of [writers like] Turgenev because he wrote so well.”

  • Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons)

    Brown has mentioned copying passages from great thrillers to study pacing and tension-building techniques.

  • Michael Moorcock (Elric of Melniboné, The Cornelius Chronicles)

    Recommended copying pulp fiction writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard to learn pacing and action-driven storytelling.

  • Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Invisible Monsters)

    “For years I typed out stories by other writers word for word. Hemingway. Amy Hempel. I typed Mark Richard’s stories until my fingers hurt.”

  • Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, Hell House)

    Matheson has been cited by horror and thriller writers as a master of economy and pacing, which some have copied to learn his craft.

  • Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power)

    “If you are learning the craft of writing, copy out entire books by great authors. You will absorb their style, their way of thinking, and eventually find your own voice.”

  • Benjamin Franklin

    “I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length.”

  • C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)

    “The great man, just to be understood, must be translated into the vulgar tongue. If we do this with Homer, Shakespeare, or Virgil, we shall find we are learning to write.”

  • Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)

    “One way to learn about writing is to copy out by hand passages from great literature. It slows you down and lets you feel what it’s like to write that way.”

  • Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

    “When I first started writing, I copied passages from American novels to understand their structure. This is how I trained myself to write fiction.”

  • Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

    “To learn to write, I copied entire pages of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Sophocles by hand. I wanted to feel how they wrote.”

  • Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

    “I trained myself to write by copying the best passages from Victor Hugo and Dostoevsky.”

And on…

Inspiring stuff.