How To Write Like Cormac McCarthy
Want to write like an all-time great? Here’s how to do it…
Cormac McCarthy is one greatest writers in American literature. His name is often mentioned with other greats like Faulkner and Hemingway. But the truth is McCarthy actually has a style that is all his own. Here are some of the main characteristics of McCarthy’s writing.
Step 1) Think poetry as much as you do prose.
I think this is better explained with a clear example as much as talking about it, so here are the opening sentences from Cormac’s most popular works.
I sent one boy to the gas chamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times.
The deputy left Chigurh standing in the corner of the office with his hands cuffed behind him while he sat in the swivelchair and took off hi hat and put his fee up and called Lamar on the mobile.
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.
See the child. He is…
