W R I T E L I K E the Masters W R I T E L I K E the Masters EMULATING THE BEST OF HEMINGWAY, FAULKNER, SALINGER, AND OTHERS www.writersdigest.com Cincinnati, Ohio WI ll I A M C A N E Write Like the Masters. © 2009 by William Cane. Manufactured in United States of America. All rights reserved. No other part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writer’s Digest Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236. (800) 289-0963. First edition. For more resources for writers, visit www.writersdigest.com/books. To receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter delivering tips and updates about writing and about Writer’s Digest products, register directly at http://newsletters.fwmedia.com. 13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1 Distributed in Canada by Fraser Direct, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, Ontario, Canada L7G 5S4, Tel: (905) 877-4411. Distributed in the U.K. and Europe by David & Charles, Brunel House, Newton Abbot, Devon, TQ12 4PU, England, Tel: (+44) 1626- 323200, Fax: (+44) 1626-323319, E-mail: [email protected]. Distrib- uted in Australia by Capricorn Link, P.O. Box 704, Windsor, NSW 2756 Australia, Tel: (02) 4577-3555. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cane, William. Write like the masters : emulating the best of Hemingway, Faulkner, Salinger, and others / by William Cane. -- 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58297-592-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Fiction--Technique. 2. Fiction--Authorship. 3. Imitation in literature. 4. Style, Lit- erary. I. Title. PN3355.C265 2009 808.3--dc22 2009013326 Edited by Scott Francis Designed by Claudean Wheeler Illustrations by Joshua Roflow Production coordinated by Mark Griffin DEDICATION For Marilyn, my wife, Who ate up my words, And Kate, my daughter, Who often ate the manuscript. TA BL E O F INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... i CHAPTER 1: WRITE LIKE HONORÉ DE BALZAC ............................................ 6 CHAPTER 2: WRITE LIKE CHARLESContents DiCKENS ............................................... 19 CHAPTER 3: WRITE LIKE HERMAN MELVILLE ............................................. 27 CHAPTER 4: WRITE LIKE FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY ....................................... 37 CHAPTER 5: WRITE LIKE KNUT HAMSUN ..................................................... 48 CHAPTER 6: WRITE LIKE EDITH WHARTON ................................................. 60 CHAPTER 7: WRITE LIKE W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM ................................. 72 CHAPTER 8: WRITE LIKE EDGAR RiCE BURROUGHS .................................. 83 CHAPTER 9: WRITE LIKE FRANZ KAFKA ...................................................... 92 CHAPTER 10: WRITE LIKE D.H. LAWRENCE ..................................................104 CHAPTER 11: WRITE LIKE WILLIAM FAULKNER ...........................................116 CHAPTER 12: WRITE LIKE ERNEST HEMINGWAY ........................................128 CHAPTER 13: WRITE LIKE MARGARET MiTCHELL ........................................143 CHAPTER 14: WRITE LIKE GEORGE ORWELL ................................................155 CHAPTER 15: WRITE LIKE IAN FLEMING .......................................................167 CHAPTER 16: WRITE LIKE J.D. SALINGER ......................................................179 CHAPTER 17: WRITE LIKE RAY BRADBURY ...................................................192 CHAPTER 18: WRITE LIKE FLANNERY O’CONNOR ......................................205 CHAPTER 19: WRITE LIKE PHILIP K. DiCK .....................................................216 CHAPTER 20: WRITE LIKE TOM WOLFE .........................................................227 CHAPTER 21: WRITE LIKE STEPHEN KiNG ....................................................238 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................248 ACKNOwlEDGMENTS ......................................................................251 BibliOGRAPHY ................................................................................254 INDEX.............................................................................................278 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ........................................................................282 INTR O DU C TI O N So many people today are banging their brains out against their key- boards and asking themselves, “Why can’t I write like the greats?” when the simple answer is that you can. First, though, you need to come to grips with the fact that the greats were educated quite differently from you and me. Unfortunately, during the past eighty or so years writers have not Sreceived instruction in a vital training method that their predecessors routinely employed to improve their skills. Indeed, this neglected tech- nique is one of the most important training methods ever developed for writers, a technique which was used with spectacular results for two thousand years but which was suddenly dropped from the curriculum. Almost every great writer studied these methods, but you were proba- bly denied access to them by a recent change in our educational system. Chances are that when you discover this lost technique, and practice this forgotten art, the experience will have an explosive impact upon your writing and will do for you what it did for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Swift, T.S. Eliot and countless others, infusing new life into your work and jump-starting your creative career. Wouldn’t you like to know the biggest difference betweenyour edu- cation and that of these well-known writers? I’m going to tell you in a moment, but first let me ask one question. How often did you hear the word originality mentioned when you were in school? In other words INTR O DU C TI O N how frequently were you urged to do new work, break new ground, and write in your own voice? Like most students you were proba- bly slapped silly by demands that you avoid plagiarism, be authentic, and above all do original work. “Let me hear your voice!” professors would say. Most of us can still hear the echoes of those demands ring- ing through the halls of academia. And that, believe it or not, is the problem. You cannot become a terrific writer just—poof!—out of thin air. It takes something preexisting, some structural savvy, some founda- tion in technique, some underlying sense of the possibilities of lan- guage before you can strip off your topcoat and tap dance across the pages like Fred Astaire. Before I explain exactly what was left out of your education, let me tell you how I stumbled upon this deplorable state of affairs in the first place. It all started in those long years before I went to law school, years when I roamed the musty library stacks during my stint in col- lege. Because I was president of the debating society, it was my job to dig up as much evidence as I could against the other teams. So I would stand for hours sifting through government documents on the swelter- ing third floor of the library at Boston College. Then, for fun, because I was also working at the college radio station, I would browse around looking for material that I could use in the radio plays I directed. And it was in this manner that one evening I stumbled upon a shelf—actu- ally shelves upon shelves—of books about ancient rhetoric. It turns out that these dusty volumes contained a gold mine of ideas that we could employ in various soap operas which we broadcast to a small group of loyal listeners. But the other thing I discovered was that this subject—the sub- ject of ancient rhetoric—was not being taught in any college writing classes; not, at any rate, in any that I could find. Rhetoric had been relegated to the speech communications department, where we got some pretty tedious lectures on Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. The upshot of my little digression is that rhetoric is the subject that has been neglected in writing education; indeed, according to Edward P.J. W R I T E L I K E the Masters Corbett, widely regarded as the most accomplished living scholar in this field, the key components of rhetoric were phased out of Ameri- can education around 1930.1 Why should you care whether rhetoric was phased out? After all, isn’t rhetoric simply sound and fury signifying nothing but persua- sion? Sure, it may be that, but it’s also much more than verbal volleyball and pontificating propagandism. Rhetoric also encompasses methods of being felicitous with words as well as techniques for mastering style. In its purest form rhetoric also deals with the arrangement of material and the selection of topics for clear, artful, entertaining presentation. Rhetoric, among other things, teaches how to contrive an introduc- tion that will seduce a reader, take him by the nose, and never let him go until he reaches the last paragraph. You want to do that don’t you? Of course you do! Allow me, then, to introduce you to one aspect of rhetoric, one teensy-weensy aspect of it that can literally salvage your writing career, infuse your style with new vim and vigor, and give you a voice equal to the voices of the best and brightest who came before you. It’s all in this book about the classical rhetorical technique of imitation. Yes, this is a book about imitation, a method of writing instruction that has dropped off the map, fallen