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Many writing gurus (🤮) keep parroting the mantra that originality in writing is good. They often don’t even bother to explain what originality is or why it’s good. When they do, rarely, it’s almost always about plot. As a result, we get overrated plots that are “original”, in the sense they are chaotic and nonsensical. Originality (especially when it comes to plot) is much less important than something else: authentic writing.

Sometimes people use these two words interchangeably, but there are crucial differences. Originality refers to rarity, whereas authenticity refers to something much more complex, which I’ll explore in this post: self-honesty.

Beyond Originality

Before I talk about authentic writing, a word on originality: As I said in the introduction, for most people originality in writing refers to very unique plots; storylines that nobody has written before.

For example, Shakespeare’s plays were not original in terms of plot. Indeed, they were based on previous stories. But they were original in terms of narrative, that is, they were offered in ways that were unprecedented.

Whether true originality of plot is even possible is debatable. I believe all stories have already been told, and what we see is variations of archetypal myths. What used to be stories about dragons and monsters have now become stories with cyborgs and AI.

Originality Leads to Loss of Control

In any case, the crucial thing to remember is that the more original the plot, the easier it will be for you, as a writer, to lose control of it. And I don’t mean that in a creatively positive way, where your subconscious take over. Rather, this refers to a narrative becoming incoherent.

Whenever you read a book (or watch a film) and you think that there are plot holes the size of a bus, that’s usually a sign of a writer who aimed for an original plot and lost control of it. Pantsers are particularly susceptible to this. Basically, every new building block of plot originality contributes to an increasingly less stable edifice, which – in a truly self-feeding mechanism – requires increasingly more peculiar, ad-hoc, deus-ex-machina elements in an attempt to keep it together.

What Is Authentic Writing

Authenticity, on the other hand, has nothing to do with whether a storyline – or even the narrative as a whole – is original, that is, unique or at least rare.

In other words, truly authentic writing can even be very mundane in its plot and even in its narrative. That is, it can feature a very ordinary story told in a very mainstream, “regular” way. It can still be authentic.

As I said in the introduction, authenticity is a more complex factor of fiction writing than originality, because it revolves around self-honesty. This makes it, quite by definition, more subjective.

Just as an author is the only true authority on their work, they’re also the only ones who know deep inside (sometimes too deep!) whether they’re being honest to themselves when writing.

But what does that even mean?

Defining Authentic Writing Self-Honesty

So far I haven’t quite defined authentic writing; I’ve only replaced it with the term “self-honesty”. Though it’s perhaps somewhat revealing, a proper definition would help us here.

Authentic writing is the result of writers who are honest to themselves when writing, which I define (somewhat periphrastically, I admit) as follows:

• having a clear idea of why they write. Is it about art or about selling books? Likely it’s somewhere in-between, but there must be a priority here. I’ll return to this in the concluding section.
• respecting this idea. This might sound self-evident, but the more an author’s attention and focus is divided – usually having fallen victim to the dreaded “I want to please everybody” – the likelier it becomes to mess things up.
• reflecting on this idea. Okay, so you wrote the book (and edited it, and perhaps shared it with others). You still need to reflect on what happened – ideally, some time later – so that you can understand whether it represents your initial intentions. It’s perfectly fine to end up somewhere different (indeed, that’s very often the case), as long as the respect still remains. It’s one thing to begin a narrative visualizing a character’s death and then realize they should live, and entirely another to begin writing hard sci-fi and somewhere along the way switch to fantasy.

As you can likely notice, there is a certain linearity here; a path from one item to the next.

Ultimately, authentic writing means to write with full consciousness of what is happening and embracing it with its flaws and all.

Why Authentic Writing Matters

Authentic writing – that is, basically, understanding what and why you’re writing – is first and foremost a methodology. By focusing on authenticity (rather than originality) you’re basically making your job much easier.

In some sense, writing authentically means to write being aware of your limitations. As a result, by focusing on what you can do, you allow it to emerge more easily while avoiding the pitfalls (and trouble) of writing as someone you’re ultimately not.

When you write with authenticity in mind, you don’t need to squeeze your mind through spaces it doesn’t know how to navigate.

Picture a romance fiction writer trying to write hard science fiction, or a literary-fiction writer trying to write cozy mysteries. Or, to go beyond genre, picture me trying to write a three-page description of a brick wall (yeah, you got my favorite example again). It certainly can happen, but it will be harder for the writer, and it increases the possibility of something going wrong.

Understand What You Want: Marketing vs Art (Again)

This is basically the caveat I mention in every such post, but it’s so important. It’s also even more direct with authentic writing because it’s directly connected to being aware of what you want.

Generally, the closer you art to the art end of the continuum, the less the restraints. I mean, there are all kinds of experimental-fiction novels that are basically unmarketable. They don’t need to follow any “rules”.

This isn’t the case when you’re tilting toward the marketing side of things. If you’ve decided to write fantasy fiction, it’s not advisable (from a marketing perspective) to start doing things too… originally. To mention the example in the fantasy fiction post linked above, you “can’t” have a wizard hacker infiltrate a data center to hack the server using a terminal, in order to obtain info on someone.

Ultimately, knowledge is power. Understand what you do and why you do it. Realize the implications. And respect this idea, sticking with its core dynamics.