Ripping off a style?

zahra · Aug 24, 2007

Reading a book by a successful H'wood sit-com-scribe, and it's pretty funny etc, but at about a dozen pages in, it leaps out (to me at least) that the writing style is a complete rip-off of PG Wodehouse (Jeeves etc).

Now, it's not one thing, it's like the author has studied a Wodehouse template. 'Retrospect' thing, where he stops mid-scene and muses, 'Looking back, I can see that where I made my mistake was in mentioning the cat to the vicar' - Check. Long-winded simile - Check. Apologizing to the readers who don't need a background-filling-in, while filling in the ones who do - Check. He even uses some near-identical phrases, and even the rhythm is similar.

Isn't this a no-no? I know screenwriters have 'pastiched' Spillane, for instance, but that's different, surely. I mean, sure, all us Wodehouse fans wish he hadn't been so selfish as to shuffle off aged 100, and was still writing books, but sheesh. Or, not-sheesh? Acceptible?

I find it pretty cheeky and annoying, myself.

OverTheHills&FarAway · Aug 24, 2007

Heh heh. Perhaps some of that is unintentional.

I've been known to incorporate some of those elements, and I've never read Wodehouse (though I've been meaning to).

I think it's like painting. When you're learning, you take your canvas and easel to the Louvre, set up in front of the Mona Lisa, and you copy. Every brush stroke, the shading, the contours of her cheek. Then, when you're done with the Mona Lisa, you move onto something else.

But the point is, you're learning. When it comes time to produce your own artwork, you don't copy someone else's. You come up with your own.

I think it takes a while to develop style in writing. Naturally, we want to emulate our heroes. They're our heroes, aren't they? And hopefully our style will come from a bunch of different sources, instead of just one, easily-identifiable one.

kikazaru · Aug 24, 2007

I think that it would be a difficult thing to copy another writer's style effectively - unless it is also a style that comes from your personality. If one is attracted to a certain writer, it is because he/she speaks to us at some level so imo isn't hard to see that an unconscious emulation could be the result of this.

I love Georgette Heyer (circa 1917 - to the 50's) she is the queen of the historical romance, but she writes in a very old fashioned style with lots and lots of descriptive paragraphs with fewer spoken passages. I have read all of her books, and because I have reread them more times than I can count, I find that I have to make myself cut out much of the description and put in more conversation.

Jamesaritchie · Aug 24, 2007

Style

No one owns a style, and unless the style is just overwhelmingly tagged with a given writer, I doubt anyone would even notice. I would, in fact, say that darned near every writer out there has a style almost identical to a number of other writers.

It may be this guy has never even read Wodehouse, and that few would find their styles identical. I've read most of what Wodehouse wrote, , but I really don't find his style all that unique.

zahra · Aug 24, 2007

So, acceptable.

maestrowork · Aug 24, 2007

Personally I don't think you can successfully rip off a style without making it sound like... a rip-off. A style should come natural to you as a writer, me think. If your so happen to write like John Grisham or Hemingway, all the better. But trying to copy or imitate a style doesn't really work, IMHO.

zahra · Aug 24, 2007

Well, frankly, this particular eg leaps out at me too much and is distracting. I find PG's style as individual as Damon Runyan's. I guess it's well done, though, and it is a funny book, so has he succeeded? Hm.

Karen Junker · Aug 24, 2007

This makes me want to read the book you're reading.

I love Wodehouse so much - I want to write like him. I also want to write like Dorothy Parker, but no matter how much I try, I don't sound like either one of them.

I went so far as to copy a Wodehouse story, changing the words to suit the story I wanted to write, just to try to 'get' the voice and the style. But I would never do anything with it, it's just for writing practice. I doubt the H'wood author meant to copy Wodehouse, but if he did, I'd prefer to believe it's an homage rather than just derivative.

zahra · Aug 24, 2007

Well, I shall PM you with the title. I haven't got it on me at the mo, and I don't remember it. It is a funny book, though - I've LOL reading it.

Ripping off a style?

zahra

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