Do you ever use other novels directly during your writing to help you with a transition?

[suckitandseealready]

Really hard to describe, but if you need to write about a fight, for example, or an awkward meeting. Do you sometimes look at either of these things in another novel and how the author has done it and then steal a few stylistic ideas and perhaps the odd turn of phrase.

I feel like I am writing in bad faith when I am doing this and plagiarising someone else, but when it actually gets to the finished product it is not similar to what the other novelist has written..

Just wanted to know if others do this...

I don’t mean specifically writing about a “fight” or an “awkward meeting”, it could be anything. But just something which requires a transition to create a different feeling. Could simply be the words other writers use to describe something you are trying to describe or a more distant narrator, suddenly which is needed to give a bird’s eye picture.

For eg in my current novel I needed to depict two sisters who previously hated each other meeting again after a while. I read for inspiration books by Tessa Hadley and Elizabeth Strout, specifically scenes which had this se elements - to see how they did it. And I got some ideas from it.

All. The. Time.

In fact, I rarely read a book or watch a show/film where I don't make a mental ( and often a physical) note of something that worked well either to use on a current project or to store for the future.

Oh god yes.

I need to introduce a bunch of characters fairly quickly and looked out The Secret History because she does that really well.

It's surely more about reminding yourself what good form looks like than anything else isn't it?

I don't know if it's reminding myself though. I feel like I just don't know how to write it, so I look at what other novelists have done and copy that, just with my own setting and character and plot.

Do you think it's a bad thing or a good thing?

Well I suppose that depends a great deal on what you mean by 'copy'?

It's obviously good practice to read very widely and note how authors use language to create effects - varying sentence lengths and types for example or using imagery.

But it sounds as though you mean something more than that.

Example?

Looking at your op I think stealing 'the odd turn of phrase' may be going too far. Just because you're not writing your scene then iyswim?

I understand what you mean to some extent. When I read I try to understand how another writer's narrative progresses, so that I can see if my work can also flow well, or I want to understand how an idea is expressed. But I wouldn't go as far as copying a 'turn of phrase', that would be imitation IMHO

I did this just yesterday whilst editing a kissing scene I’d written. It’s a YA novel, so I looked at a few different scenes in other YA novels (search function on Kindle), to check the tone and how explicit it was.

Let me try a simple example.

I read a paragraph where the protagonist's heart sinks when she notes that it's the first time in 2 years that the smell of freshly baked bread in the cafe has made her not feel nauseous that morning. Followed by "The doctor said 'don't think of it for six months.' But it never happened."

Obviously we can work out that she has had repeated miscarriages/wants to have a baby, but it is not spelt out obviously.

Would it then be wrong to describe a past trauma like that? Eg. a war trauma (and this is not my example - just made it up on the spot)

He was sat at the far end of the room, but the sound of the glass doors slamming shut as people entered and left was like a gun shot, and he found himself digging his nails into the palms of his hands in fists which made his knuckles white and drained. 'The brain doesn't work that way,' the psychologist had said, 'it's been over a decade. We evolve. We move on." But he had found himself right back where he started.

I think that's fine. You've appropriated a structure. It's not in any way identifiable and you've made it your own.

If you start looking to very distinctive authors for those kinds of things though it might be more difficult. I'd steer clear of experimental modernists for example!

I don't. When I'm actively writing I avoid reading literature as much as I can. I know that I have a lot of influences in my memory of course, but I wouldn't seek them out. It doesn't sit right with me.