Don't Be Original

Or: Better Writing In Five Easy Steps

Welcome to another edition of Fiction Notes. You can find previous essays here—topics range from idea generation to the importance of talent, to outlining a novel. If you like what you read, please hit reply or shoot me an email. And if you haven’t, please sign up!

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Happy Friday!

This week I'm going to give you some advice that might sound a bit counter-intuitive. So bare with me, and try to read 'till the end before you close the email and swear me into oblivion.

(Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash)

Going Against The Grain

I've seen a struggle take place in the minds of many writers. Especially beginners. This can be summed up in the first questions you'll ever hear if you attend a Creative Writing seminar: How do I know what my voice is? How do I know if I'm being original? Do I even have a voice when I write?

Sometimes I like to do the exact opposite of conventional wisdom just to see what happens. In this case, conventional wisdom tells you that, to find your voice, you should try to write the way you speak. Or, it tells you 'don't worry if you don't have a voice right now, you'll develop one as you improve.' Other times, it even tells you not to read anything akin to what you are writing while you write—you don't want to taint your story with style's other than your own.

So today we're going to do the opposite of that. Today, I'm going to tell you to stop trying to be original, stop trying to have a voice. In fact, if you want to get better at writing, you should do the exact opposite. You should copy other people's writing. I mean this both literally and figuratively. Because, after all...

Your voice is the stuff you can't help doing. — Neil Gaiman

Better Writing In Five Easy Steps

Let's begin with the literal interpretation of that advice. What you should do is the following:

Step 1: Choose a book, essay, chapter that you deeply admire. The kind that makes you want to scream in a mixture of agony, jealousy and joy when you read it.

Step 2: Choose your favourite passage out of that book. Start small. Maybe a single page, or a couple of paragraphs.

Step 3: Open up a new word-document. Or grab a blank piece of paper and your favourite pen.

Step 4: Start typing (or writing) the selected passage. Word for word. Concentrate, but make an effort to not be mechanical. Don't let your mind ease into the automaticity of the task at hand. Let the writing flow through you—feel the words.

Step 5: If you've followed steps 1—4 correctly, you will feel an impulse to do things differently. To end a phrase with a different noun, or to have the character react with a different verb. When that happens—Stop.

Ask yourself: What was that? Why would I write something different here? Most likely, this is the master's hand at work, with a turn of phrase you never would have thought possible. Or maybe, just maybe, it is your own voice, your own style, trying to surface. Whatever it is—when the exercise is done, you've learned a thing or two about writing.

Don't believe this can possibly work? It's worked for me, at least. No, I'm not crazy. And I'm not the first one to try this out, either.

Feel Great Writing Go Through Your Fingers

Here are some examples:

Hunter S. Thompson re-typed the entirety of The Great Gatsby, and parts of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms 'just to get the feeling of what it was like to write that way.' Yes, I know he was crazy. But, he wasn't the only one. Hemingway himself did this, and so did John Fante and Tobias Wolff. Marketer turned Philosopher Ryan Holiday cites them all as his inspiration behind this practice:

It was from Hemingway and Tobias Wolff and John Fante that I learned about typing up passages, about feeling great writing go through your fingers. It’s a practice I’ve followed for… 15 years now? I’ve probably copied and typed out a couple dozen books this way. It’s a form of getting your hours, modeling greatness so that it gets seeded into your subconscious.

If this is making you a bit nervous, you can always follow my advice in a more figurative fashion. Benjamin Franklin (yes, that Benjamin Franklin) did something similar to improve his writing. When he was young, Franklin admired the Spectator. He dreamed of someday penning prose of such quality, and possessing the clarity of thought evident in the authors of the pieces he most liked. So he got to work.

He didn't re-write entire passages word-for-word. Instead, he took it a step further. He first chose an article he liked. Then, he read it several times and proceeded to write down descriptions of the content in each sentence. After waiting for a couple of days, just to give himself some distance from the text, he tried writing the article in his own words, but imitating the style and quality of the writing belonging to the original author. Then, as per his autobiography, he "compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them."

"BUT, WAIT" I hear you ask already. "I don't want to copy other people's writing. What about my voice? What about what I sound like?" My answer to you is:

Originality Is Overrated.

In fact, I'm not even convinced such a thing exists. I touched on this topic in the first edition of this newsletter, actually, where I wrote:

Fantasy juggernaut Brandon Sanderson said in a recent live-stream that humans are not necessarily good at coming up with original ideas, but instead are spectacular remixing machines. And he is right. The best artists are just experts at stealing the best ideas from what they see, read, listen, suffer, etc.

And I stand by that statement. Let me explain using another example, which also happens to double as writing advice along the lines of the one given above. In a recent interview with Tim Ferriss, writer/hunter Steven Rinella advised writers do the following:

First, read everything you can get your hands on. "Pay attention to the things that make you feel like you want to die." Find the "handful of writers that make you feel that way" and then try to capture the style that made you want to die in the first place. Try to mimic what they are doing.

But don't worry about success. What you are aiming at, in fact, is failure.

"They're too smart to be emulated. You can't copy them. They're geniuses. In trying to copy them, you will, if you’re lucky and you’re good, you will come up with something new because you will never succeed in copying them."

And that is the thing, isn't it? You will never be like those writers you admire. That is just not possible. Even if you, too, are a genius—you can't possibly hope to become someone else. Just like Hunter Thompson did not turn into a cheap replica of Scott Fitzgerald by copying The Great Gatsby, you won't sound like a watered-down version of your own writer-heroes.

You will fail at imitating them, in whatever way you try to do so. And that is the point of these exercises.

It is through that failure that you will discover what your writing is like. What you can't help doing. And hey, you might even pick up a few tricks along the way. So stop thinking about 'being original' or 'being yourself.' You can't help but be yourself—that should be obvious enough. And you don't need to be original. As W. H. Auden would say:

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. — W. H. Auden

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That's it for today... Have a wonderful weekend.

Best,

Matias