How do you develop the range or adaptability of your unique writer’s voice? One thing that I have found helpful in making progress in this is – ironically – imitating others.
If you were learning to speak another language, and wanted to sound natural you probably would not settle for just ‘being understood’ – just learning one form of the past tense, or one form of the future, you would learn the grammar rules of all the tenses. You might learn the top 100 frequency based words first, but you wouldn’t stop there, you would acquire a broad vocabulary. Why? Because then you would be able to eloquently express your thoughts and idea and opinions no matter the situation. I view writing the same way.
You might not want to be short and pithy like Hemingway all the time. It might not be your general style. But even so, being able to do so is probably still useful. And if you don’t learn the techniques he used, you will never be able to pull it off. Why would you want to adopt a different voice? Well, perhaps in dialogue. For example, if one of your characters is a newspaper reporter, and you want their diction, their thought process, to reflect the way they think. You might think about using a more ‘Hemingway’ style then. Conversely, if you wanted to improve your ability to write flowery prose, perhaps you should look at Marcel Proust (or whomever you admire) whose prose leans more that way.
It’s not about replacing your own voice. It’s about broadening your repetoire. And so, one of my current writing practices is to write a paragraph in my voice. I then read a passage of Hemingway (or Virginia Wolf, or Jane Austen or whomever), to get me into the ‘mood’ of how he/she writes, and try to write the same paragraph/scene in that style. In trying to imitate someone you become more hyper-aware of what they are doing in their writing, and as such, you start to practice ‘new ways’ (for you) of writing.
Let me know in the comments if you tried this approach and found it useful, or if you have other ways to broaden your own arsenal of writing techniques!
Gideon P. Smith 
This kind of imitation is such an underrated, underused writing practice, and after I first heard about “copywork” I could hardly believe nobody in all my writing groups and classes had brought up the option before. Try reading a passage by an author you admire, then closing the book and trying to copy it word-for-word from memory. That’s called Hard Mode.
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interesting! I’ve never done that. Though that would rely on different cognitive functions – memory/recall. My attempt to write ‘in the style of’ requires memory only for ‘feel’ so in that way is lesser, but also requires you to note their patterns to be able to adapt them, which I think might engage higher level learning. I may try this too though 🙂 Thank you!
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