Sentence Level Imitation
Didion:
Original: When the day of the wedding arrived I did make the wreaths, cutting tiny slits in each stem and threading the daisies into one another.
Imitation: When the evening of our dinner arrived I did mix the poisons, cutting tiny slits into each mouthful and blending the toxins into one another.
Original: Her wedding, she later pointed out, turned out to be one more of my lettuce-cocktail moments.
Imitation: Her job interview, she later pointed out, turned out to be one more of my violence-heavy moments.
Rodriguez:
Original: Once more inside the house I would resume (assume) my place in the family.
Imitation: Once more outside my cell I would disguise (reprise) my place in the chaos.
Original: I'd wait to hear her voice return to soft-sounding Spanish, which assured me, as surely as did the clicking tongue of the lock on the door, that the stranger was gone.
Imitation: I'd wait to hear his screams return to aching whispers, which comforted me, as surely as did the dripping of the broken faucet, that the monster was far from gone.
Perhaps it’s the approach of Halloween this week, but this felt like a wonderful opportunity to cause some mischief with Didion and Rodriguez’s sentences. Turning another’s words into your own can feel like plagiarism, or trying to unethically disguise the original source. It’s not something which sat too easily with me, until I simply gave myself over to the task of mischief and just decided to have some fun with their original work. Going word by word, not in search of synonyms, but more how each word could be used in isolation to twist what would need to come afterwards, often into something much more sinister than the source. And then going back over the emergent ‘new’ sentences to twist them, and twist them again. These are the best moments in writing for me, where you can lose yourself to the joyful craft of a mischievous sentence. Something which might raise a smile, both to you in the moment as writer, but also brings the reader along for the ride. Something which takes the reader in one direction, and then delights in pulling us both in another.
