Have your students select two of the following models to imitate, using Pete Hamill's method. Remind them that they need to keep the sentence structure as close to the original as possible, but must change the content. For example, the rainstorm in Jan Slepian's passage might be changed to a snowstorm.

          She sat in her room and watched heavy black clouds boil up over the lake, turning dusk to night. Rain began pounding the roof in buckets, and as the wind came up she could make out the trees bent over like it was easy. She could hear the crackling and crashing of branches torn from the mother trunk. Lightning bolted across the sky, turning the world white then black then white again. In that ghastly light she caught a glimpse of the water, a mass of furious waves. The clap of thunderous noise that followed the lightning seemed to come from their roof, making her jump from her window seat. --- Jan Slepian


          The grown males went forward, their leader at the center. The females and young watched from behind, screaming defiance. The males displayed at each other, fangs barred, manes bushed, bellowing not their ritual challenge calls, but older ones, a hoarse repetitive bark which till now they had not known they knew. --- Peter Dickinson


          They left then, stepping carefully through the darkness, eyes trained on the low light the candle flame shed. Pallas, bred in the overlight of Los Angeles in houses without basements, associated them with movie evil or trash or crawly things. She gripped Seneca's hand and breathed through her mouth. But the gestures were expressions of anticipated, not genuine alarm. In fact, as they climbed the stairs, images of a grandmother rocking peacefully, her arms, a lap, a singing voice soothed her. The whole house felt permeated with a blessed maleness, like a protected domain, free of hunters but exciting too. --- Toni Morrison


          Spade turned and with angry heedlessness tossed his glass at the table. The glass struck the wood, burst apart, and splashed its contents and glittering fragments over the table and floor. Spade, deaf and blind to the crash, wheeled to confront the fat man again.
          The fat man paid no more attention to the glass's fate than Spade did: lips pursed, eyebrows raised, head cocked a little to the left, he maintained his pink-faced blandness throughout Spade's angry speech, and he maintained it now. --- Dashiell Hammett


          Of course the ordinary soldiers didn't have much fun. For one thing there was the snow. It came down in a great blizzard about a week after the troops had started to build their encampment. Their huts were not finished and they were forced to work in bitter cold and storm. The cold was a problem. The huts were really just tiny log cabins with big stone fireplaces making the whole rear wall. In cold weather they had a lot of trouble getting the mortar to set. Because of this the chimneys leaked so badly that half the smoke blew back into the room. The snow made hewing wood difficult, too. Sam told us that they were having an awful time getting the huts finished. Even when they were done they weren't much to live in --- twelve soldiers jammed into a 14 by 16 room, breathing more smoke than air and having to stumble over people whenever they wanted to move around. And the snow never stopped falling. By January it covered the countryside three feet deep, so that the stone walls disappeared. You could drive a sled over the snow anywhere you wanted without paying attention to where the roads were. ---James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier


          They murdered him.
          As he turned to take the ball, a dam burst against the side of his head and a hand grenade shattered his stomach. Engulfed by nausea, he pitched toward the grass. His mouth encountered gravel, and he spat frantically, afraid that some of his teeth had been knocked out. Rising to his feet, he saw the field through drifting gauze but held on until everything settled into place, like a lens focusing, making the world sharp again, with edges. ---Robert Cormier

          If students are keeping an Artist's Sketchbook, give them the option of imitating one or two of the passages they collected. Research suggests that students can learn more emulating authors they admire (Kehl 1979, 137-138). If you are working with advanced high school students, an excellent resource is Style and Statement by Edward Corbett and Robert Conners (1999). Their approach is similar to Hamill's and includes imitation models by Dryden, Defoe, Irving, Austen, as well as numerous contemporary writers.