Every so often, I like to do what I call “Echo Exercises.”
There are three parts to this: Echo, Reflection, and Imitation.
Altogether, this exercise takes only about 35 minutes.
Here’s the breakdown of the “Echo” portion.
First, I choose a book or short story I admire or even one I haven’t read yet but that
has received critical acclaim.
Oftentimes, I’ll choose a book based on how much it resembles the tone I’m going
for in whatever story I’m currently working on.
For example, if I’m writing a horror story with an old-fashioned writing style, I might
choose a short story by H.P.
Lovecraft.
If I don’t have the book on hand, I’ll go to Amazon or Google Books to find a preview.
I set my timer for 15 minutes and begin typing out every word and comma from those first
few pages, reading the sentences aloud as I do so.
Since I’m a fairly fast typist, I can copy around 1,200 words in that time.
Reading aloud is a crucial part of this exercise because it allows you to hear the rhythm of
the words.
Instead of mindlessly copying the text, you’re engaging with it on an aural level and letting
the musicality of the prose seep into your mind.
After I finish the “echo,” I move on to the reflection stage.
I glance through what I’ve copied and highlight anything that caught my notice during the echo.
That might include an interesting moment of characterization or an unusual sentence structure.
Then, I set my timer for 10 minutes and write a few paragraphs about my thoughts.
I ask myself questions like, “What is the writer trying to accomplish?
How do they introduce characters or the setting?
What adjectives describe the overall tone?
Does the writer have any style quirks?”
For me, the reflection is a time to brain dump.
I don’t treat it like a serious academic essay; I just let my thoughts flow and examine
my highlights within the text.
The third stage is the imitation.
Based on what I noted about the author’s style in my reflection, I create a writing
prompt for myself.
For an echo exercise using Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, I noted in my reflection that Flynn
has an enthralling way of depicting abstract concepts, such as in this piece of description:
“Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like
fast, frantic centipedes.”
Coils, shuttling, frantic centipedes!
You can picture AND feel what Flynn is trying to convey, and the word choice creates a sinister mood.
With this aspect of Flynn’s writing style in mind, I wrote the following prompt: “Employ
figurative language or imagery to convey abstract ideas.
Create a subtle horror atmosphere based on the images you choose.”
With the imitation, I might write with a work-in-progress in mind, describing a character or scene that
I’ve been struggling to convey.
Or, I might just go with whatever pops into my head as a way to practice improvising.
Either way, I try to write for a full ten minutes, without stopping or revising as I go.
Let me provide a more detailed example of a reflection and self-made writing prompt
to give you a better idea of what I try to accomplish with this exercise.
I’ve never read Stephen King’s It, but since I was working on a horror story at the
time, I wanted to get a feel for how the Master of Horror generates atmosphere.
Here’s part of my reflection on the first few pages of It:
“I don’t mind lengthy paragraphs, but King does insert a lot of unnecessary detail.
At the same time, these mundane details create a powerful sense of reality.
This feels so much like nonfiction.
It tricks you into believing that someone has experienced this life.
The writing establishes the ordinary while also providing ominous foreshadowing, particularly
in the last sentence, which describes the trees: ‘Over his head, a grim gust of October
wind rattled the trees, now almost completely unburdened of their freight of colored leaves
by the storm, which had been this year a reaper of the most ruthless sort.’
The details about the man dying in the flood is a jarring, violent image amongst the banal
descriptions of the flood itself, and I think that’s an effective technique—hiding the
frightening amongst the ordinary.
Beyond the dense paragraphs, King also seems fond of ellipses and dashes.
His sentences tend to ramble, and he uses a huge number of nested clauses.
Here’s an example of a nested sentence that also contains dashes: “He laughed aloud—the
sound of solitary, childish glee a bright runner in that gray afternoon—as a vagary
of the flowing water took his paper boat into a scale-model rapids which had been formed
by the break in the tar.”
So I tried to analyze the sentences that stood out to me and figure out how the writer’s
choices—as far as both content and style—affected my experience as the reader.
Here’s the writing prompt I came up with based on my reflection: “Write a dense paragraph
filled with mundane details that make the descriptions sound like a non-fiction retelling.
Try to use run-on sentences, dashes, and ellipses.
Include a vague omen about the future to make the reader curious.”
For my imitation, I picked a random setting and let the story roam freely.
This was my attempt to imitate Stephen King:
“Rust climbed up the side of the old lighthouse, orange fingers spreading along the scarred
white brick.
Fifty years abandoned, this place had morphed from a symbol of Whitehall pride to a private
home of an eccentric painter, then to a failed tourist attraction.
The last owner would wander the beaches at night, muttering to himself—ominous messages
about the dark brotherhood, the space people, The Event—and he would purchase gallons
of vinegar from the corner gas station to ‘keep the thought police away.’
Two weeks later, they found the man’s body splintered at the base of the lighthouse,
his bones jutting out in compound fractures that suggested a fall from a great height…The
lighthouse was fifty-two feet tall.
Even after all this time, the lighthouse’s great bulb, bigger than two grown men, had
not broken, and some poor soul climbed to the top of the sagging stairs every so often
and flicked the switch to alight the beacon—but that light would soon invite an unwelcome
presence into the city of Whitehall.”
Creating a space for myself to consciously imitate other writers has freed me to experiment
with my style without the pressure of trying to complete an entire story.
I have a document where I keep track of all my echo exercises, with the book title, author,
and publication year at the top of each entry, as well as the date.
Typing and reading aloud the words of published authors is incredibly inspiring.
It immediately puts me in the mood to write.
I hope it does the same for you.
What book would you like to echo?
If you try your own echo exercise, tell me about your experience in the comments.
Whatever you do, keep writing.