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Authentic Writing: Going Beyond “Originality”

August 19, 2024

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

creativity, fiction, literature, writing

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.

authentic writing. image of a singer screaming
From the audience’s perspective, it doesn’t really matter if the artist (whether a writer or a musician, as in the photo) actually feels their art or they pretend they do. However, from the artist’s perspective, it makes your job a hell of a lot easier if you, quoth Bill Hicks, “play from your fucking heart”
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Simple Analytics that Respect Privacy: a How-To Guide

July 29, 2024

Home For Fiction, Programming

creativity, home for fiction, marketing, programming, society

A programming post for today, but with a little twist. We’re not making a story planning program or an interactive fiction “game”. In a way, we’re not even making anything concrete – though I will share with you some code samples. Instead, we’ll take a more theoretical look at what I term simple analytics, with respect for privacy in the foreground.

As you perhaps recall, I recently revamped both the main Home for Fiction site and the blog itself. Doing so, one of the things I wanted to do was to completely eradicate all forms of privacy-invasive analytics. So I threw out Google Analytics as well as Jetpack analytics for WordPress.

Let’s take a look why and, mostly, what could one do if they’d like some simple form of stats/info that respects users’ privacy. I’ll also throw in a story about grandpas’ underwear for good measure – trust me, there is a connection hidden in there!

simple analytics; image of chair on Greek island
Simple analytics, Greek style!
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Understanding Depth in Fiction

June 3, 2024

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

creativity, fiction, literature, reality, writing

For most people, depth in fiction sounds like a good thing, right? Just as we conflate vivid descriptions or rich vocabulary with high-quality writing, having a deep narrative must be a great thing, right? Right?

The thing is, there are so many fluid variables in the statement “Depth in fiction is a good thing” that it’s impossible to answer that in any sense-making manner before we truly focus on what it is we’re talking about.

That’s what I’m planning to do in this post.

I’ll first offer some definitions and reflection points on what constitutes depth in fiction and whether it’s always a good thing (sneak preview: it ain’t), and then I’ll list some ways that could add depth to your narrative – if you decide you need it.

depth in fiction. image of woman looking at the sea
This might seem just like a random stock photo to convey the concept of (visual) “depth”, however there is a subtle element crucial to my argument on depth in fiction. Namely, the balance between depth and width. If the camera angle was wide (imagine a drone image, high above the person), we wouldn’t quite get the same sense of depth as we do here.
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