International audience This article presents the first results of a research on the relationship between imitation and invention in the writing process amongst young writers. The study aims at observing the recovery modes of textual resources provided by the circumstances of production. The experiment was designed to observe the acquisition of a genre. Teaching tools have been proposed to several French classes of Primary school. They were literary texts derived from Robinson-type stories, that were available either immediately when writing, or during the time of a secondary writing. The research shows how students use two contrasting methods, the reinvestment of the lexicon as well as rephrasing. The data highlight the expected reuse of characteristic words of the genre, and reveal the ingenuity of writers in the restructuring of language materials. Some strategies reflect the difficulties faced by the pupils who have had to interpret the literary lexicon and then to transfer it into their own story production. Different rephrasing modes coexist that we can categorize according to a more or less successful appropriation of the genre considered.