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What Does It Mean to Write In The Style Of…

By writing in the style of Katherine Applegate, we had to explore and mimic the author’s
stylistic choices, such as metaphor, line breaks, and word choice. Joy hoped that by having us
write like Katherine Applegate did in Home of the Brave, we would gain a deeper understanding
of how she wrote the book, and why she wrote it the way she did. In her interview with Kid Lit
Craft on March 14, 2017, Katherine Applegate said,

“I think the best writing advice [I] ever got was to take a book you love, and then
just copy it. Literally. Type in the words. Feel why the choices were made, having
already read it a couple times so you know it. It’s an interesting exercise–try it
sometime–because you find yourself asking why every choice was made”
(kitlitcraft.com/blog).

This is exactly what happened to us when we began imitating Applegate’s style. As
Applegate learned, we had to “think musically,” and we had to think about “how [each line
break] sounds” in order to figure out where to put those line breaks. We spent classes breaking
down Applegate’s word choices for Kek’s voice and analyzing when she chose repetition or
alliteration as techniques to tell the story in Kek’s rhythm. In conclusion, we feel that not only
have we done a good job in imitating the voice of Katherine Applegate’s Home of the Brave, but
we also learned how authors develop a specific writing style for each book they write.

-- Eliza Raben with Joy Lenters

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