The Secret Ingredient of Original Stories

With all the new books published in the last year alone, you kind of have to wonder if maybe everything there is to be said has already been said. With so many new books churning out every day, surely every idea has been done to death. What room is left for original stories?

You may look at the half-finished manuscript in your computer folder and then click through the latest releases on Amazon and cringe at how similar some of them sound to your own story. Are there any original stories left to be written? And, if so, how do you find one to write?

I’m about to give you the answers, but not without a most important caveat. I have to preface my answer by telling you, in all seriousness, that this is the deepest, darkest of writerly secrets. Originality is achieved thanks to a single super-secret ingredient. Brace yourselves, and try very, very hard not to scream:

The Secret Ingredient of Original Stories Is…

YOU. (Hey, I did warn you it was scary looking.)

Ultimately, nothing is new under this sun of ours. What has been before will be again. The wheel of time rolls on, the seasons cycle, patterns repeat. Struggling against this inevitable truth won’t help you create the next Suzanne Collins-esque trend. In fact, sometimes the more we try to be original, the more hackneyed our stories end up sounding.

The only truly original element writers have within their power is themselves. ThrillerMaster David Morell explained in a Writer’s Digest interview:

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer…. I talk about [how] every writer has a dominant emotion, and if you can identify it and try to understand it, it becomes your subject matter, and it makes you different from everybody else.

Original Stories Are Honest Stories

No one in this world, before or since, possesses exactly your set of gifts and perspectives. No one else sees life precisely as you do. It’s true that, just as most of us learn to read using the same set of letters and symbols, most of us learn to view the world through similar frameworks and points of reference. But just as everyone who reads the same book comes away with a different mental and emotional experience, each of us also translates our knowledge of the world into a unique story.

The best writing is honest writing. Be brutally honest with yourself on the page. Dig deep to find the buried ideas that are yours alone beneath all the chatter and color of those half-million other ideas. If you do this, you’ll never have to worry about originality.

Children’s author Kathi Appelt drove the point home in her interview with The Writer:

…I write to fill the hole in my heart. At any given time, all of us have an empty spot, one that is calling for companionship, for example, or for justice, love, romance, or a belly laugh. When I sit down to write, I look to see what hole needs filling at that particular moment. Sometimes that can be painful—but it can’t be ignored. Flat or uninteresting writing often signals something deeper that is being covered up.

Be honest in your writing. Identify the originality inherent in yourself. Then turn it loose on the page and stun the world.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Have you ever felt you weren’t writing original stories? Tell me in the comments!

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