The following is to be regarded as an opinion piece. Since it's my opinion, naturally I think it's pure gold, but I don't necessarily expect others to hold it in equally high esteem.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the subject of originality, where it comes from, and how we can achieve it.
Over the years, I’ve been in a position to read a lot of unpublished work, and to hear new writers discuss their ideas. And one thing I’ve noticed is how very, very often the writer who is straining every nerve to write something utterly original and redefine the science-fiction/fantasy genre ends up writing something that looks amazingly similar to most of the work produced by most of the other writers who are trying to be original, too. (Meanwhile, somebody else, without even trying, produces original and distinctive work as a matter of course, and seemingly without much effort.)
I have a number of different theories about why this seeming paradox exists:
In some cases, the reason is obvious: either they don’t read very much in the genre -- or if they do, it’s all of the same kind (usually heavily inspired by role-playing games). They have a very narrow idea of what the genre already encompasses; as a result, they think that something actually quite commonplace constitutes a major revolution. (“I have this crazy idea: I’ll write a fantasy without any elves or orcs.”)
Or perhaps they’ve intentionally curtailed their reading, because they don’t want to be “influenced” -- with the unfortunate side effect that they are overly influenced by books they’ve already read.
Or they never read anything except science fiction or fantasy, and they have no other influences to draw on; their minds are strait-jacketed by genre conventions. Or worse, what they imagine to be genre conventions. (“You can’t have a setting with both magic and technology.” “Fantasy always involves castles and heroic farm boys and princesses.”)
Or they’ll be tremendously impressed by a book they consider tremendously original (and it may well be), decide that this is where originality lies ... and consciously or unconsciously copy it.
But none of these, not even any combination of these, provides a complete explanation. Because I’ve also seen instances where a writer starts out with a wonderfully unusual and intriguing concept -- something that leaves me wondering “why can’t I come up with ideas like that?” -- and then they leave that fabulous premise just lying there flat on the page, and go on to tell an otherwise stereotypical tale with stereotypical characters. I don’t know whether these missed opportunities signal a creative lapse or a failure of nerve. (They may think they have a better chance of selling a stock story about an evil wizard and a talisman -- but their heart isn’t in that one, and it shows.) On the other hand, I’ve also seen writers take what looks at first glance to be a familiar premise, develop it in unexpected directions, place their own personal imprint on the material, and come up with something that is very distinctive indeed.
So often, new writers will visit Chronicles or some other forum, give a list of their characters and a brief idea of their plot. and ask, “Do you think this is original enough?” And I always want to say (and yes, sometimes do say, but how many times can I say it without becoming obnoxious?), “How can we possibly tell, when you give us so little to go on? It’s not the idea that matters as much as the execution.” (Note that I put that word in Bold instead of my usual Italics. I’m tempted to also give it extra punctuation: !!!!!! ) Because beginning with an out-of-the-ordinary idea is not nearly enough. It may not even be necessary, although it’s certainly a very good start. What matters most of all is what we do with an idea once we have it, because originality arises from the development of a great idea. (Another temptation to use extra punctuation: !!!!!!)
The truth is, even when we start out with something new, there is an unconscious urge to begin developing it along conventional lines. We haven’t yet filtered out all of the influences and ideas so deeply engrained that we literally (and literarily, too, alas) take them for granted. But the longer we are willing to look at our characters, our plot, and our setting, and examine them from different angles, and work out all of the possibilities in terms of plot and character development -- to allow our initial idea to take us where we never expected to go, down crooked lanes and the occasional blind alley (but we can always turn back and try again), along ill-lit corridors, and up secret staircases, into basements and attics hitherto unexplored (all right, I think we have had quite enough of that metaphor) -- instead of just dashing off the story as it first occurs to us, the more likely we are to come up with ideas that are out of the ordinary.
We all know that many, if not most, fantasy and science fiction stories owe their origins to the question “What if ____?” Yet we shouldn’t be content to leave it there, because it’s a very good question to ask at every single stage of the writing process. “What if, instead of what I had originally planned, this character decided to do this?” “What if, instead of following the obvious course, I choose to follow one of the other possible and plausible consequences of this character’s situation?”
I’ll give an example of how this last question might work: Say that your main character is born with some physical malformation that makes him incredibly ugly. Now most writers would take this premise and write a largely predictable story: he would go through life being unfairly persecuted by the ignorant and the wicked, while all the truly good people would instinctively recognize his inner beauty and treat him accordingly. Ultimately, it’s revealed that he has some special gift or talent, or that he’s of high birth, or that he’s been born to some high destiny. In any case, he discovers that he is not only different but special. He ends up living happily ever after, among people who love and respect him for who he truly is. But is this the only possible scenario? What if -- instead of being the source of his every misfortune -- this same ugliness led to great benefits? Supposing that his deformity, combined with some particular intellectual or artistic gift he happened to possess, brought him at a very early age to the attention of a powerful and generous patron. He grows up rich, admired, wealthy, and conceited -- until some entirely unrelated circumstance comes along and wipes out his comfortable existence. Everything that happens to him afterward gradually wears away at his inflated self-opinion; he learns that he is not, after all, immune to the trials and heartaches of ordinary human experience. Unlike the other story, this one is not a journey toward self-acceptance, but toward humility. You can see that both of these tales have their origins in the same basic premise -- an individual is born deformed but gifted -- but by choosing an equally plausible but less obvious consequence, the story takes the reader (and probably the writer, too) into unexpected territory.
And this is why I think it’s less important to start out with a startling premise than it is to start with something that excites us so much, that moves us so much and on so many different levels, that we’re willing to live with it, work with it, dream it, for the time it is going to take to develop it into something extraordinary. I believe that originality is less a matter of sudden inspiration than of deep thought, leading step-by-step to a series of inspirations and revelations, whose sum can be far greater than any single inspiration could ever be And if, throughout the writing process, we are continually surprising ourselves, how can we fail to surprise the reader?
There are two other things that I think are important. The idea that we can avoid or shed all influences is unrealistic. (I’m not even sure that it would be a good thing if we could. “The proper study of man is mankind,” said Alexander Pope. As science fiction and fantasy writers we are also writing about alien-kind, and supernatural-kind, and who-knows-what-else-kind --but in the end it really comes down to a study of human nature; to human hopes, aspirations, and fears; to the whole package of our complex nature. And since we are each one of us only privileged to see and experience a small part of all that, it makes sense that we would wish to broaden our understanding by collecting some other viewpoints.) And because we are going to be influenced, we should make every effort to gather those influences from as many different places as possible. We need to read widely, inside and outside the science fiction and fantasy fields. We need to get our ideas (ah, the ancient question!) not only from fiction but from non-fiction as well. Because ideas react off of each other; aside from personal experience, this is the only way that new ideas are generated. If we get all of our ideas from similar sources, there are only so many different combinations that we can make of them -- and all of those are going to be fairly predictable. On the other hand, ideas that come from widely different sources and widely different perspectives, will interact in unusual and surprising ways.
The other thing I want to say is that even while we are keeping the reader in mind -- that is, trying to choose the words that will draw other people into our created worlds, trying to write clearly enough that they will see what we want them to see, feel what we want them to feel -- we also need to personalize what we are doing. (This, of course, can be an uneasy balance.) As we polish our writing mechanics and our storytelling skills, we should still allow our own voice and our own style to develop. If you spend much time among people who are talking about writing, you will hear a lot about the rules of good writing: stay away from adverbs and adjectives, avoid saidisms, and so on and so forth. And these are good rules; you should definitely pay attention to them. People who don’t know them or who ignore too many of them all tend to end up sounding alike -- and not in a good way.
But that doesn’t mean that you should follow every single one of these rules, or even that you should follow any particular one of them all of the time. (Believe me when I say that agents and editors do not keep calculators on their desks so that they can keep a running total of adjectives as they read; neither do they keep garlic and crucifixes on hand, so that they can ward off adverbs.) Those who do follow the rules too slavishly (quite often these are intermediate writers with boundless enthusiasm) end up sounding alike, too. While there is nothing bad about such writing -- it’s actually pretty good -- there is nothing distinctive about it either. When they loosen up a little bit, they will become even better writers. You may have noticed that great writers often have idiosyncracies. (I am not referring to may own practice of incorporating so many dashes, italics, and parenthetical remarks into my writing -- oh you noticed? -- which is just a bad habit.) I don’t believe that they knowingly cultivate these idiosyncracies -- in which case they would merely be affectations -- I think it is simply a matter of not suppressing what comes naturally only for the sake of a rigid conformity. In developing your personal style, write to communicate, not to impress.
And the very best writers of the very best books have it all. They begin with an extraordinary premise. They explore it in depth (not just skimming the surface, or tacking it on as decoration). And they relate that story in a style that is theirs alone.
After putting all of these thoughts down in writing, I think I have reached a conclusion, and it is not (good heavens!) an original one. Originality in writing comes from being yourself -- though not, I hasten to add, your ordinary, everyday, come-as-you-are self. I mean your most thoughtful, intellectually and artistically adventurous, skilled and knowledgeable self -- a self that may not even have fully developed yet. But it still comes from telling the story that only you can tell, in the way that only you can tell it.
© 2007 Teresa Edgerton
ON ORIGINALITY (WITH SOME ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE SUBJECT OF STYLE)
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the subject of originality, where it comes from, and how we can achieve it.
Over the years, I’ve been in a position to read a lot of unpublished work, and to hear new writers discuss their ideas. And one thing I’ve noticed is how very, very often the writer who is straining every nerve to write something utterly original and redefine the science-fiction/fantasy genre ends up writing something that looks amazingly similar to most of the work produced by most of the other writers who are trying to be original, too. (Meanwhile, somebody else, without even trying, produces original and distinctive work as a matter of course, and seemingly without much effort.)
I have a number of different theories about why this seeming paradox exists:
In some cases, the reason is obvious: either they don’t read very much in the genre -- or if they do, it’s all of the same kind (usually heavily inspired by role-playing games). They have a very narrow idea of what the genre already encompasses; as a result, they think that something actually quite commonplace constitutes a major revolution. (“I have this crazy idea: I’ll write a fantasy without any elves or orcs.”)
Or perhaps they’ve intentionally curtailed their reading, because they don’t want to be “influenced” -- with the unfortunate side effect that they are overly influenced by books they’ve already read.
Or they never read anything except science fiction or fantasy, and they have no other influences to draw on; their minds are strait-jacketed by genre conventions. Or worse, what they imagine to be genre conventions. (“You can’t have a setting with both magic and technology.” “Fantasy always involves castles and heroic farm boys and princesses.”)
Or they’ll be tremendously impressed by a book they consider tremendously original (and it may well be), decide that this is where originality lies ... and consciously or unconsciously copy it.
But none of these, not even any combination of these, provides a complete explanation. Because I’ve also seen instances where a writer starts out with a wonderfully unusual and intriguing concept -- something that leaves me wondering “why can’t I come up with ideas like that?” -- and then they leave that fabulous premise just lying there flat on the page, and go on to tell an otherwise stereotypical tale with stereotypical characters. I don’t know whether these missed opportunities signal a creative lapse or a failure of nerve. (They may think they have a better chance of selling a stock story about an evil wizard and a talisman -- but their heart isn’t in that one, and it shows.) On the other hand, I’ve also seen writers take what looks at first glance to be a familiar premise, develop it in unexpected directions, place their own personal imprint on the material, and come up with something that is very distinctive indeed.
So often, new writers will visit Chronicles or some other forum, give a list of their characters and a brief idea of their plot. and ask, “Do you think this is original enough?” And I always want to say (and yes, sometimes do say, but how many times can I say it without becoming obnoxious?), “How can we possibly tell, when you give us so little to go on? It’s not the idea that matters as much as the execution.” (Note that I put that word in Bold instead of my usual Italics. I’m tempted to also give it extra punctuation: !!!!!! ) Because beginning with an out-of-the-ordinary idea is not nearly enough. It may not even be necessary, although it’s certainly a very good start. What matters most of all is what we do with an idea once we have it, because originality arises from the development of a great idea. (Another temptation to use extra punctuation: !!!!!!)
The truth is, even when we start out with something new, there is an unconscious urge to begin developing it along conventional lines. We haven’t yet filtered out all of the influences and ideas so deeply engrained that we literally (and literarily, too, alas) take them for granted. But the longer we are willing to look at our characters, our plot, and our setting, and examine them from different angles, and work out all of the possibilities in terms of plot and character development -- to allow our initial idea to take us where we never expected to go, down crooked lanes and the occasional blind alley (but we can always turn back and try again), along ill-lit corridors, and up secret staircases, into basements and attics hitherto unexplored (all right, I think we have had quite enough of that metaphor) -- instead of just dashing off the story as it first occurs to us, the more likely we are to come up with ideas that are out of the ordinary.
We all know that many, if not most, fantasy and science fiction stories owe their origins to the question “What if ____?” Yet we shouldn’t be content to leave it there, because it’s a very good question to ask at every single stage of the writing process. “What if, instead of what I had originally planned, this character decided to do this?” “What if, instead of following the obvious course, I choose to follow one of the other possible and plausible consequences of this character’s situation?”
I’ll give an example of how this last question might work: Say that your main character is born with some physical malformation that makes him incredibly ugly. Now most writers would take this premise and write a largely predictable story: he would go through life being unfairly persecuted by the ignorant and the wicked, while all the truly good people would instinctively recognize his inner beauty and treat him accordingly. Ultimately, it’s revealed that he has some special gift or talent, or that he’s of high birth, or that he’s been born to some high destiny. In any case, he discovers that he is not only different but special. He ends up living happily ever after, among people who love and respect him for who he truly is. But is this the only possible scenario? What if -- instead of being the source of his every misfortune -- this same ugliness led to great benefits? Supposing that his deformity, combined with some particular intellectual or artistic gift he happened to possess, brought him at a very early age to the attention of a powerful and generous patron. He grows up rich, admired, wealthy, and conceited -- until some entirely unrelated circumstance comes along and wipes out his comfortable existence. Everything that happens to him afterward gradually wears away at his inflated self-opinion; he learns that he is not, after all, immune to the trials and heartaches of ordinary human experience. Unlike the other story, this one is not a journey toward self-acceptance, but toward humility. You can see that both of these tales have their origins in the same basic premise -- an individual is born deformed but gifted -- but by choosing an equally plausible but less obvious consequence, the story takes the reader (and probably the writer, too) into unexpected territory.
And this is why I think it’s less important to start out with a startling premise than it is to start with something that excites us so much, that moves us so much and on so many different levels, that we’re willing to live with it, work with it, dream it, for the time it is going to take to develop it into something extraordinary. I believe that originality is less a matter of sudden inspiration than of deep thought, leading step-by-step to a series of inspirations and revelations, whose sum can be far greater than any single inspiration could ever be And if, throughout the writing process, we are continually surprising ourselves, how can we fail to surprise the reader?
There are two other things that I think are important. The idea that we can avoid or shed all influences is unrealistic. (I’m not even sure that it would be a good thing if we could. “The proper study of man is mankind,” said Alexander Pope. As science fiction and fantasy writers we are also writing about alien-kind, and supernatural-kind, and who-knows-what-else-kind --but in the end it really comes down to a study of human nature; to human hopes, aspirations, and fears; to the whole package of our complex nature. And since we are each one of us only privileged to see and experience a small part of all that, it makes sense that we would wish to broaden our understanding by collecting some other viewpoints.) And because we are going to be influenced, we should make every effort to gather those influences from as many different places as possible. We need to read widely, inside and outside the science fiction and fantasy fields. We need to get our ideas (ah, the ancient question!) not only from fiction but from non-fiction as well. Because ideas react off of each other; aside from personal experience, this is the only way that new ideas are generated. If we get all of our ideas from similar sources, there are only so many different combinations that we can make of them -- and all of those are going to be fairly predictable. On the other hand, ideas that come from widely different sources and widely different perspectives, will interact in unusual and surprising ways.
The other thing I want to say is that even while we are keeping the reader in mind -- that is, trying to choose the words that will draw other people into our created worlds, trying to write clearly enough that they will see what we want them to see, feel what we want them to feel -- we also need to personalize what we are doing. (This, of course, can be an uneasy balance.) As we polish our writing mechanics and our storytelling skills, we should still allow our own voice and our own style to develop. If you spend much time among people who are talking about writing, you will hear a lot about the rules of good writing: stay away from adverbs and adjectives, avoid saidisms, and so on and so forth. And these are good rules; you should definitely pay attention to them. People who don’t know them or who ignore too many of them all tend to end up sounding alike -- and not in a good way.
But that doesn’t mean that you should follow every single one of these rules, or even that you should follow any particular one of them all of the time. (Believe me when I say that agents and editors do not keep calculators on their desks so that they can keep a running total of adjectives as they read; neither do they keep garlic and crucifixes on hand, so that they can ward off adverbs.) Those who do follow the rules too slavishly (quite often these are intermediate writers with boundless enthusiasm) end up sounding alike, too. While there is nothing bad about such writing -- it’s actually pretty good -- there is nothing distinctive about it either. When they loosen up a little bit, they will become even better writers. You may have noticed that great writers often have idiosyncracies. (I am not referring to may own practice of incorporating so many dashes, italics, and parenthetical remarks into my writing -- oh you noticed? -- which is just a bad habit.) I don’t believe that they knowingly cultivate these idiosyncracies -- in which case they would merely be affectations -- I think it is simply a matter of not suppressing what comes naturally only for the sake of a rigid conformity. In developing your personal style, write to communicate, not to impress.
And the very best writers of the very best books have it all. They begin with an extraordinary premise. They explore it in depth (not just skimming the surface, or tacking it on as decoration). And they relate that story in a style that is theirs alone.
* * * * *
After putting all of these thoughts down in writing, I think I have reached a conclusion, and it is not (good heavens!) an original one. Originality in writing comes from being yourself -- though not, I hasten to add, your ordinary, everyday, come-as-you-are self. I mean your most thoughtful, intellectually and artistically adventurous, skilled and knowledgeable self -- a self that may not even have fully developed yet. But it still comes from telling the story that only you can tell, in the way that only you can tell it.
© 2007 Teresa Edgerton
