Imitate The Writers Who Are Successful

If you want to be a successful writer, you would do well to imitate those writers who have been successful.

By "successful" we do not necessarily mean the writers who have sold a lot of copies. The sort of writers who achieve sales in the millions are not always the best writers. There are some very popular writers whose work is extremely bad. We could name some of them, but it would probably be actionable, so we will just content ourselves with the thought that you almost certainly know who we mean.

How, then, do you decide who is a good writer, and worthy to be imitated? We think the best judge of that is yourself. If you have any judgement in you at all, you can usually get a feel for whether or not the writing is good or bad. Trust your own judgement then, and don't just slavishly follow what others say. Even the professional critics don't always make the best choices.

Sometimes we see advice that you should follow the examples of classic writers of the past. This advice is good, but should be used with care. For example, Charles Dickens is a great writer, but if you wrote like him, in the 21st century, your readers would probably be put off by the flowery style. Dickens, however, was a fine storyteller, with a great ability to generate pace in the narrative, and also a knack of colorful characterization.

The tip here is to decide which writers you yourself admire, and then follow their example.