Copywork is an exercise where writers just copy verbatim another writers work.

If you haven’t done it, it is an extraordinary way to see how the greats work.

It also tends to improve your own writing skills - at least as long as you are copying from your betters.

This seems like the web design version of this.

Related, Raymond Chandler says in his letters that he taught himself to write a novelette by copying one (by Erle Stanley Gardner). He took the original story and wrote a detailed synopsis, then wrote a novelette from the synopsis, compared it to the original, did rewrites, and so on until he understood what tricks Gardner had used to make the scenes work.

Also connected: many composers would write out previous great works, to learn them more deeply. Bach as I recall would do this.

Jazz musicians also copy each other's solos for learning and practice purposes, but they would never actually perform more than a couple well placed quotes or licks from another player.

A bit tough to say this, but transformers are trained the same way.

This also works in drawing and painting. One of my painting teachers used to admonish us: "copy, copy, copy".

i have a vague memory of hunter s thompson talking about sitting down and typing out the great gatsby to see how it would feel to write a great american novel

This was my first thought as well. Hunter S. Thompson used to copy Hemingway by hand to internalize his cadence.

Obligatory link to a relevant Jorge Luis Borges story: Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (about an author who copied Don Quixote word for word)

https://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/Engl10/Pierre-Mena...