What if I tell you there’s an easy and proven method to improve your writing skills from an average to an expert in a few weeks? Or even shorter, depending on how quick you are to absorb the techniques in this method?

This method is called the practice of imitation. I’m sure you’ve heard about this before. 

I believe everyone should learn writing by imitation and use this method to level up their skills. 

Imitation or copying others is an approach used in many skill areas to cut down an individual’s learning curve.

It’s a method used by painters, athletes, business owners, and everyone. 

When I say copying others, I don’t mean to plagiarize others’ works, specifically to model your writing from what’s already successful and working.

 

Here’s a fact you might be surprised to hear about…

No writer is 100% original. Every writer today has copied from their favorite authors or great writers of the past.

Hopefully, you’re not thinking badly about this. 

Because you’re not going to copy others’ works, but the strategies behind their works.

Did you know that William Shakespeare modeled his writing style from Ovid?

And thousands of other writers have done the same thing and are still doing it. 

If you love to read books, have you noticed that the ideas in the books are all the same?

From marketing to self-help books to books about religion— different authors used different words, styles, structures, and techniques, but basically, all books in the same genre say the same thing. 

I know because I’ve read a few self-help books. And what I found in the first book I’ve ever read, I also found in other books. 

So today, we’ll apply the same concept in practicing your writing by imitation. 

 

Learn Writing by Imitation: Why Do It?

Let’s talk a bit about what you can get by imitating other writers. 

 

1. You’ll Learn To Read Like A Writer.

When you read a book, what goes on in your mind? 

Is it what’s happening to the characters in the book? 

Or do you think way beyond what’s going on in the pages and notice the author’s writing style, character development, storyline, and techniques? 

When you copy from other writers, you’ll learn to read like them. You’ll pay attention to the same things they give their attention to.

What’s in Hugo’s mind when he wrote Les Misérables? Or Shakespeare’s when he wrote The Merchant of Venice?

By imitation, you get into the same writing experience the author had gone through. 

Therefore, you get valuable insights into how they read, analyze, and write. 

 

 2. You’ll improve your writing and expand your techniques.

Copying others will help you fine-tune your techniques. 

For newbie writers, getting started in writing can be confusing, especially if you don’t have a mentor. 

But by imitating others, it’s like you get yourself a writing coach. 

For example, you want to master persuasive writing; you can study the works of Gary Halbert, Joe Sugarman, Eugene Schwartz, or John Caples. 

If you’re self-taught, you’d want to copy and study these writers’ high converting sales pages until such time you get familiar with the persuasion techniques they had used for every content they had written. 

As you immerse yourself into these writers’ writing experience, you’ll have a better understanding of the structure, form, and their style of writing. 

These are what you should aim to learn by using the imitation method. 

After some time, you learn the different techniques; you can recreate them, add your personality, and make them your own. 

 

3. You discover your writing voice and style.  

When you learn writing by imitation, you get insights into the style of writing you like and don’t like. 

By being exposed to the hundreds of writing techniques used by other authors, you eventually find one or a combination of techniques that you can comfortably settle in. 

Ultimately, you’ll discover writing techniques that match your personality so that cranking out ideas becomes easier for you. 

By imitation, you learn a lot of things. 

You develop an eye for good writing. 

Additionally, you’ll acquire the skill to assess whether a book or a piece of content is good just after reading a chapter or a few parts of it. 

Conclusion

Again, don’t plagiarize. It’s not about literally “copying” other people’s works. 

Use imitation only as a tool to improve your writing skills and mirror the techniques. 

Use past works to get inspiration from and apply what you’ll learn into your content. 

There are several writing imitation exercises you can do, but I’ll share with you one practice that you can do today.

Note: You can only do this exercise if you have a clear idea of what type of writing you want to go for.

Here’s an example. 

I want to be an expert in persuasive writing and become a legendary copywriter.  

I wanted to learn the strategies used by Gary Halbert.

So months ago, I used his Million Dollar Smile Ad as a copywriting exercise. 

You can read the ad here. The ad sells two things, a veneer as the perfect solution to get the million-dollar smile and Dr. Thomas Gleghorn as the dentist people should go to for the procedure. 

So first, you need to brainstorm similar products, so you can model what you’ll write from the original ad. 

As for me, I thought of a book that’s about the different ways to make money online. It’s sold by Bill Willis, an established financial book author. (Again, this is just a made-up product and persona to mirror the ad copy.) 

So from here, what you’ll do is replace the veneers with the book as the product and the dentist by the author. 

Then start your exercise with the first sentence or the headline. 

In Gary Halbert’s ad, the headline is: Have You Ever Wondered What You Would Look Like With A “Million Dollar Smile”?

So what you need to do here is capture the concept and apply it to your content. 

In our case, we’re selling a money-making book, so your headline can be like this…

“Have you ever wondered what it would feel like earning $1000 while you sleep?”

As you get more techniques from other writers, you can also make your writing more solid and punchy. 

Hopefully, you get the gist of what I’m trying to say about writing by modeling in imitation.  

That’s it for today. 

If you find value in this, please don’t forget to share it. Thank you, and see you tomorrow.