How Do You Incorporate Techniques From Other Authors? – Book Research #2

I make a point to read the books by authors that I want to emulate.

Not only their success, but their manner of narration. I look at the kind of stories that they tell and the emotion that they draw out, but also how they do it. How are they revealing details? How crowded are their characters? What mechanisms do they use to connect the through line? What do they explicitly tell me in the story and what do they imply with their descriptions?

Who do you want to be like? Read their books and look for what they do.

It is tough to describe because you may want to emulate different authors than I do, but I will re-read specific chapters to see how a character was introduced. Were they given a perfunctory introduction? Or were they given one or two traits and my mind was left to shade in the rest.

One thing that I have tried to incorporate from The King, Stephen is that he has what I call a totem in his works. Sometimes he has more than one. It is a phrase that will repeat in different scenarios. If you read 11/22/63 he does this very well, I would highly recommend the book itself as a good read, but for technique notice how several phrases are repeated and how that totem calls back to your mind the feeling you had from the last time that you read it in the book. I think it can be very powerful and I try to use it as he does.