How to Impersonate Claire Franky
Writing a story in the style of another is harder than you think
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One of the great tests of any artist is mimicry. Can you replicate another’s style, their voice, their feelings?
It’s hard. One may say impossible.
But musicians cover songs of other musicians to brilliant acclaim— think Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. Painters reproduce works of art — think Pieter Brueghel the Younger replicating his dad, Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s, works.
But how does one do that as a writer? You can’t just copy out another person’s work. That’s plagiarism (and boring). The only thing you can do is mimic, imitate or parody their style. Or retell their tale.
James Joyce’s Ulysses parallels The Odyssey by Homer. William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury was, in turn, inspired by Ulysses. Jean Rhys emulates Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in The Wide Sargasso Sea. And George Orwell imitated Swift’s Gulliver's Travels in Animal Farm.
To name a few.
For the record, I wrote my own novel, Le Glitch, from passages swiped from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
I don’t claim to be any of the above writers — far from it. But I like a challenge. So I decided to pick an author on Medium to see if I can imitate their style.
I picked Claire Franky because I like her sharp, witty, fucked up sarcastic humour.
I mean, who writes, when describing her daughter’s sudden obsession with Max Verstappen:
It was cute in a brain-damaging kind of way.
Wow!
Can I compete?
Let’s see.
The Day I Took My Daughter to a Zumba Class
What a fuck up
I walked into the village hall with my three-year-old, who insisted on wearing a tiara and one yellow shoe.
Inside were three women in their twenties limbering up. Their matching pink yoga sets were emblazoned on every available curve with the words SOLUNA.
“Who are these people, Mom?” said my daughter, with the stage-whisper of a foghorn.
Dickheads.
“Can I help you?” asked one of them. She looked like Wonder Woman. But thinner.
“I’m here for Zumba,” I said, glancing around the hall.
At one end was a table that looked like it had been there since 1932. On it rested a boom box with someone’s phone attached to it.
The three did a once-over on me like I had borrowed one of their dresses without asking.
“And you are?” asked the second. She had a tattoo on her upper left arm of a whale that looked like it had been microwaved.
Does it fucking matter.
I told her my name. “Am I early?”
“No,” said the third, who had an equilateral triangle inked on her arm, like she was into Pythagoras big time.
“It’s twenty pounds for the hour,” said Wonder Woman. “Pay up front.”
“I thought the first class was free?”
“It’s twenty pounds for the hour,” Pythagoras repeated.
I heard the first time.
“I read on the Facebook page that it was free.”
Wonder Woman puffed her cheeks out slightly as though she was about to blow a fly off the end of a pencil.
“It’s free if you pay for the first ten sessions upfront,” Whale responded while gnawing on what I thought was Biltong, but was a tube of glucose paste.
“When’s the free one? At the beginning or the end?”
It was meant to be a joke, but it dropped like a medicine ball that used to thud on these wooden floors in 1932. Not even a smirk.
“At the end,” said Whale. “The last one’s free.”
“Yeah, the last one is free,” repeated Pythagoras.
Shut up.
“Can we play now, Mom?” asked my daughter, pointing at a deflated Amazon exercise ball.
I smiled down at her, silently praying she wouldn’t grow into one of these women in their passive-aggressive Lycra. “Yes, sweetheart. I just need to pay.”
“You can pay the rest next week,” said Wonder Woman.
Thank you so fucking much!
I dug out a twenty from my purse and gave it to her
“Do you want a receipt?” she asked, holding the note keenly in her fingers like we were negotiating the price of a slab of meat at the butchers.
“I'm OK, thanks.” And went over to a row of ancient wooden chairs and put my bag on one.
“Your daughter can sit there,” said Whale.
What the actual fuck.
“She can’t join in?” I asked.
The three women tensed up like celery stalks and came towards me in a pincer movement like crabs on the beach.
“It’s adults only,” said Wonder Woman.
“Yeah, adults only,” said Pythagoras.
“Is everything OK, Mom?”
No, it’s not fucking OK!
“It’s the insurance,” said Wonder Woman. “It’s the floor.”
“It’s the floor,” said Pythagoras. “It’s wood.”
Shut up you twat!
“Can I get my money back, then?”
Wonder Woman smiled. A slow, cold customer service smile that made me want to throw something. “Do you have a receipt?”
What!
“You know I don’t,” I said. “But my twenty is still in your hand.”
“That’s not proof,” she said. “It could be anyone’s.”
I didn’t wait for her reply. I lurched forward and grabbed the twenty out of dickhead Wonder Woman’s hand and ran out of the door.
When we got back in the car, my daughter asked me what happened. “Are we going dancing?”
“Yes. Just not here.”
Namaste bitches.
Claire doesn’t write on Substack (yet) but does on Medium here
For more half-baked comedy, check out 21st Century Comedy here.
All my posts are free. But if you want to support me, there’s an option of $1 - $5 a month! If not, forget about it.
I've been a longtime reader of the franky. This was on point. Well done
Not bad at all.
For your next piece I want to read about smillew going to Zumba.