Fiction Writer’s Toolshed · Practical Tools for Authors
You see a story and think, “I had that idea.” Does that mean the version you wanted to write no longer matters?
I end this show with a toast that includes the line, “And may you count who can make what you make. Only one.” I say it every week. In this episode, I ask whether I can defend it.
My current best approach is that the idea alone doesn’t account for the work you make. Your experiences, influences, taste, and constraints shape the choices that turn it into fiction. A familiar idea can pass through you and become a particular piece of writing.
That’s different from claiming nobody else could ever make something similar. It’s also different from saying the work is good. I want to look at what makes it yours -- and give you a way to look for that in something you’ve already written.
Listen to the episode
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
What Makes Your Writing Original? (Even If the Idea Isn’t) | ep 026
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What this episode covers
- Why a familiar story idea doesn’t account for every choice in a finished piece.
- How influences can pass through a creator and become something specific.
- A short exercise for finding two choices in your own fiction.
- Why evidence of authorship and judgments about quality are different questions.
An idea becomes a chain of choices
Anything you write develops through selections. You notice one thing and overlook another. You remember a joke, love a strange detail, emphasize a character, or leave something out. One decision creates the next set of decisions.
You might misunderstand an influence, change it, improve it, or make something you don’t like until years later. I’ve had all of those things happen. The work changes as you make it, and your taste is part of that process.
That’s why shared ingredients don’t produce identical meals. The books, films, games, memories, and fears you bring to a story don’t simply sit beside one another on the page. They pass through you and become choices.
I’m distinguishing originality from irreplaceability. A premise may have appeared before. My argument is that another writer doesn’t contain a backup copy of the particular version you would make, with all the choices you would make for your reasons.
Pokémon: influences passing through a creator
Satoshi Tajiri’s account of Pokémon gives me a concrete example. In a TIME interview, he describes collecting insects as a child, playing video games, and watching Ultraman. He also recalls imagining living organisms moving through the Game Boy’s communication cable.
Read Tajiri’s account in TIME’s The Ultimate Game Freak (opens in new tab).
I don’t need to claim that no other person could ever have invented something resembling Pokémon. What interests me is this particular route into the world: the things Tajiri experienced, the connections he made, and the decisions he made from them.
The ingredients matter. So does the person making choices with them. That’s the connection I’m asking you to consider in your own fiction.
Take 4 minutes and 44 seconds to find two choices
Choose something you’ve written: a page, a scene, a section, or even a character you know well. Older work can give you some distance. Recent work may help you remember why you made a choice. Use something you can look at closely.
Take 4 minutes and 44 seconds. This is a different kind of look at your writing: you’re searching for evidence of your choices, rather than deciding whether the piece is good.
- Find at least two choices that don’t feel inevitable. It might be a turn of phrase, a reference, a joke, a strange detail, a character nuance, or a name. Look for something you chose when another choice was possible.
- Ask why you chose each one. What memory, influence, preference, or experience might have contributed?
The answer doesn’t have to uncover some profound wounded center of your artist’s soul. It can be as ordinary as “My dad used to say that,” “I love monster movies,” “That felt cool,” or “That reminds me of something my brothers and I joked about.”
Those small things count. Taste and experience became choices, and the choices accumulated into something you made.
Finding your fingerprints doesn’t grade the story
I call those choices fingerprints. They help you see your involvement in the work. They don’t, by themselves, tell you whether the story is better or worse.
Those are different questions. You can notice that a choice came from you and still decide to revise it. The exercise is a way to see what you brought to the piece, without asking every detail to prove that you’re a good writer.
You’re a seasoned cast-iron skillet
I spend much of the episode talking about ingredients. But the vessel they pass through matters, too.
Think of a cast-iron skillet that has been used, heated, cooled, and cared for over and over. It’s seasoned through use. It isn’t a neutral container anymore.
That’s the image I use for a creator. The books you’ve read, cartoons you watched, jokes you remember, and experiences that stayed with you affect how the next influence lands. Things combine and bump into one another. A new ingredient arrives in a person who has already been changed by other ingredients.
You’re bringing that history to the choices you make now, even when you aren’t consciously tracing every influence.
Why I want you to make your version
We can’t know which part of what we make will affect someone else. But the writing, music, films, and games that have mattered to us had to be made before we could experience them. Somebody chose to bring that work into the world.
That’s why the toast still means something to me. I believe the particular person making the choices matters, and I want to see what you write next.
Try looking for two fingerprints in something you’ve already made. Then decide what you think of the argument. Does it help you see a reason to make the version that’s yours?
A related tool for choosing what to write
If you want to look more closely at the fascinations you bring to your ideas, the Creative Core episode offers questions for noticing what interests you and what you might be filtering out.
Listen to and read What Should You Write? A Creative Core Audit for Fiction Writers.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.