4 Ways to (Respectfully) Steal from Shakespeare
Lesson 4 of "Take It from Shakespeare" with Jo Gatford
This week we learn how to respectfully incorporate techniques, phrases, themes and ideas inspired by others, while maintaining our own authentic voice.
In today’s lesson:
How to build on existing works and still leave your unique imprint
Make powerful prose from hidden rhythmic bones
How to sonnet
Everything erasure - transform classic texts through strategic deletion, revealing new stories hidden within the original
The art of "shameless literary thievery" and why Shakespeare himself would approve of your plundering
Hey there, you perfect quintessence of dust.
It’s the final week of the Take it from Shakespeare workshop series, and all throughout this course our focus has been on careful word selection, sentence choreography, and creating layers of meaning through emphasis, repetition and rhythm.
I suspect you’ve come to realise you already have many of these techniques in your writer’s toolkit — but I also hope these exercises have helped you to pay closer attention to the choices you make, draw attention to the most important parts, and experiment with the shape and sound of your writing.
Now, we’re going to set all of that back in our subconscious and let our grabby little hands do the work.
It’s time to do some shameless literary thieving.