Why Originality Doesn’t Matter

Your work is not original.

The good news is, that doesn’t matter. It’s not about being original.

I hear this kind of question all the time: has it been done? Of course it has. Listen and listen well. You are not a special snowflake. You cannot originate anything, in the strictest sense of the word. Your ideas do not spring from the void, no matter how little media you consume. You are human and your brain is infected with stories. Why do you think the TV Tropes wiki is such a lumbering monster? You cannot avoid any and every element of trope and still tell a coherent story, because you are human and humans have been doing this thing for thousands of years. Before we could even write, we were telling stories.

It’s not about originality. It’s about conversation, by which I mean responding with your own art to the art that’s come before yours.

That’s why writers will tell you to read, read, and read some more. I’m going to go even farther and tell you to read in your genre. Don’t only read your genre, but you’d better be reading it. How can you write state-of-the-art fantasy if you’re still responding only to Tolkien or Brooks (who was responding directly to Tolkien) or Weis and Hickman (who were responding to Tolkien)? I mean, I love Tolkien, and I still respond to him because that’s what shaped me in a lot of ways, but there’s been so much between him and now that, come on, pick something else, too. Respond to the canon, ask it questions, challenge and twist it.

It’s not going to “corrupt your voice.” I don’t think that’s even possible, but that’s a post for another day. Read and respond, read and respond. How do you think philosophers, painters, musicians do it, anyway? Listen, not even the screeching of demented monkeys as they fling their shit at the walls is original. Monkeys have been doing that for a long time.

Don’t be a monkey. Read and respond. Get into the conversation. Who wants to be a special snowflake, really, anyway? It’s more fun to talk to people.