How to Writelike

Highlighting a pattern

If you look at any piece of writing, you can find patterns.

Here's a pattern:

All right. So you want to hear the story of the ghost on the dunny. Everybody wants to know about it, so I am going to tell it for the last time. I will put it on this tape recording.

Unreal!(1985)

What might you use this pattern for?

You could use this for hyping the beginning of a tall story, like this:

I can’t believe I’m telling you this. This is the story of how aliens stole my chemistry teacher. Not many people know about it, everyone I tell thinks I’m crazy. But this is one voicemail I hope you’ll listen to.

That's one way you could use it.

You could also use it to script a scammy YouTube ad:

Hey! Are you looking to earn cash online? It’s easy to make hundreds of thousands of dollars every day just by drop-shipping high-end sneakers! Click the link for my free video where I’ll tell you how!

You could use it to begin an important political speech to the nation (and you might even rearrange the segments to find a new structure):

In my hands I hold a document. This document contains information about the greatest threat in human history, a threat that is not imagined but real, and upon our doorstep as we speak. What is it? Aliens.

You get the idea.

This is basically what Writelike is about: looking at snippets, finding patterns, and then writing variations to get the hang of them.

It's like practicing sport or music: small exercises, building skills that you can later use in performance.

Let's get back to that snippet from Gone.

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