Writing workshops and classes have a tendency to waste aspiring writer’s time in a big way. Everything you do should move toward a finished product. If you write a scene, you should expect to use it somewhere eventually.

This advice about “copying” other writers is not new. I’ve heard it enough times to not know who the first idiot was who started this ball rolling.

If you want to learn from a writer, then do the work and study his/her work. Don’t imitate it, the world has enough hacks. Study it. Understand it. Now if you want to be a better typist or work on your penmanship, then by all means, copy away.

“Some lucky people are born with…” Nope. Not at all. The reality is that some people are too lazy to develop skill and talent and must justify this by saying that people who do invest time in themselves must have been “born” with it.

What she is describing with Shakespeare is rhythm. Rhythm is one form of repetition, which is one of the premises of any art form. The advice about varying your word and sentence length is pretty arbitrary. Don’t listen to here. It is the context that demands the technique, not the other way around. I’ll do a post on repetition in art at some point.

I do strongly agree with the point about reading your work aloud. But again context plays a strong role. Some works aren’t for the ear but the eye.

I just stopped by from Lisa’s blog. Great stuff, this. I especially liked your Red Dragon vs. Manhunter posts. I write thrillers as well, and I plan to stop by more often.

Cheers,
Josephine