I’ve been studying Italian history and one of the recurring themes is how sculptors would copy their predecessors to learn technique, both during Imperial Rome and The Renaissance. Then at a writing workshop I heard a presenter give similar advice, that if someone wants to write in a certain author’s style they should copy that person’s work and see what it’s like to flesh out those characters and stories in your own words.
I’ve gave this a try recently and the results were remarkable. When your medium is someone else’s work, you can’t blame stories or characters for a poor screenplay because the only variable is your technique. I now know my writing is thoroughly informed by current events and tends toward melodramatic loners if I’m not careful, among other revelations.
Have you guys tried this? I’m talking purely as an academic exercise, not necessarily as someone getting tapped to adapt a story for the screen. And what existing works would you like to replicate? I'm big on the writings of Raymond Chandler and William Gibson, so they are my next projects.
CJ Walley Was it basically Die Hard in a palatial hotel?
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Works like a charm, hell, I been stealin' stuff for years. I'm fond of Eastwood's strong character driven work but I like a little more comedic tales.
CJ Walley I dig it. Like Yojimbo, but Max Fischer and Royal Tenenbaum fight over control of a fancy hotel forcing Luke Wilson to intervene.
Okay, this sounds like it could be fun. I'm so doing it...
I guess there's outright "stealing" (as evidenced by lawsuits won or settled by plaintiffs in all of the art forms), and being influenced by others. I think most people tend to use that term "steal" in a less-than-literal way. There's a big difference between "being influenced by", and outright "stealing."
Great American writer Joan Didion remarked in an interview once how she learned to write (and type) by re-typing articles and stories by one of the writers who she greatly admired, Ernest Hemingway. If you've read a lot of their works, you can see that influence. I also remember reading about another screenwriter who did the same thing, and whose name I can't recall at this moment.
As an academic exercise as you noted....we actually used to do that at times in different classes. We did it with e.e. cummings in a poetry class, and with Tom Wolfe in a journalism class. It's also done in law schools, music schools and engineering schools that I'm aware of, too - and in probably every discipline, at least to some degree.
Best fortunes in your creative endeavors, Stephen!
I've tried to emulate Frank Darabont's style for dramatic pieces, but I found it too compact for proper action sequences. So I emulated Shane Black's style with lots of white space. It worked. As for voice, I have a dramatic voice. I have also found that I have an archaic feel to my dialogue that feels vaguely old school to some readers that love it. Some don't. As for copying a script directly, sure, why not when you are just starting out and trying to find your voice. I wouldn't. But it could be useful as you suggest. But learning from those that came before is important.
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I have a few thoughts on this.
1) Nothing new has been conceived since Frankenstein.
2) Rodin (The sculptor) offered an apprenticeship to a young man with talent. It was turned down. The young man said “nothing grows in the shadow of a great oak”. If I am too influenced by other I cannot grow myself.
Having said that, the young talented - no one remembers him.
Frankenstein was unashamedly drawn from Paradise Lost.
Stephen Floyd I don’t see the Garden of Eden and the Beast begin connected. But I am not going to pour through his 10-12 book poem written in the 1600s to find a connection. You’re probably correct. I have no idea.
Frankenstein was def drawn from bible, paradise lost, and stories of Prometheus. It was called the modern Prometheus
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Jeff Caldwell, themes for sure. That and Dracula came at the end of a huge Gothic era for novelists.
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Before I even start a new script, or even sometimes while writing a script I'll stop and watch a movie or read a script with a similar tone. For my current script, before I began, I re-watched The Pursuit of Happiness, paying attention to the scenes and how the writer connected the story. For my horror, before starting, I watched A Quiet Place and read the script because it was one of the few new horrors that actually gave me a scare and sucked me in with the story. I like being influenced by art. I look at it as understanding what they did that worked so well. If you understand it, then you can take it and apply it in your own unique way, and not simply just drop their scenes into your work.
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I see this as a variation on the old cliche, "You can't break the rules until you know them." Learning, stealing, being influenced - whatever terms you use - these are all simply methods of deepening your craft. Sometimes I consciously set out to write a story in the "style of so-and-so" (Chandler and Gibson are two greats, BTW Stephen Floyd). That exercise teaches me new ways of looking at plot, character, style, etc., and informs my next project - I take what fits for me from those greats and endeavor to create my own style, ending up in the Dan MaxXx School of "Write me a story that's been done successfully but add your own spin/personality." Hey, Dan, did you know you're a school? :)
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To give one more whack to the dead horse, Shelley outlines Frankenstein’s literary provenance in the book by letting the monster read the texts that influenced her. Some people would have used subtext, but she just hit the nail on the head like a boss.