Post: #1

He was very good at setting his eyes on something he wanted to create in himself and then setting out to make it happen in a simple, common sense manner.

In his autobiography, Franklin outlines his method for teaching himself to write well:

(Note: I split the wall of text up to make it easier on the eyes for online reading)

Quote:About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. …

I thought the writing excellent and wished if possible to imitate it. With that view, 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 and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should occur to me.

Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. …

I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavoured to reduce them into the best order before I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of the thoughts.

By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and corrected them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encourage me to think that I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #2

I've heard recommendations like that before. Somewhere I read that a way to learn to write is to literally copy somebody else's work. Sounds like Franklin built on that by trying to blind-copy. That sounds worth attempting.

Post: #3

Absolutely. I did that with some of my favorite writers as a kid and I think it paid some dividends. I've been thinking about doing it again.

It may sound a bit ambitous, but if you did it with an entire novel, I guarantee you would learn A LOT.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #4

I've just been re-reading George Orwell's 'Why I write'. It's slightly tangential to what you are asking, in the sense that it is not a formal blueprint along the lines of:' Do this and become a good writer'. But there are lots of interesting things that are highly pertinent to anyone looking to become a writer.

For example, he recounts how, between his teens and early twenties, he'd find himself running a constant narrative in his head when he was going about his day to day life. So he'd walk into a room, and in his head he would be saying 'he opened the teak paneled door to the study, and as he walked through a thousand particles of dust danced in a sunbeam. On the old oak table lay a half open match-box' etc. (In case you couldn't tell, that was improvised (although the closest recollection of the actual example he gives that I can do from memory)).

He also talks about the various forms of motivation, and the importance of purpose, and many other things. It's a very short, cheap little tome, and I can't recommend it enough.

Post: #5

I wasn't asking anything - just sharing - but that's an intriguing idea. I could definitely see it being effective. Will look it up.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #6

(03-29-2015 07:44 AM)emuelle1 Wrote:  I've heard recommendations like that before. Somewhere I read that a way to learn to write is to literally copy somebody else's work. Sounds like Franklin built on that by trying to blind-copy. That sounds worth attempting.

That's exactly what several of the top copywriters say to do, too--copy copy copy the best ads word for word and then rewrite them. Very interesting. Anyone up for rewriting The Odyssey? I bet we could do better than that hack, Homer.