How To Avoid Unintentional Copying As A Genre Fiction Writer

Unintentional copying is more common than you might think. Our subconscious sometimes provides us with ideas that we believe are our own but are not.

If you read a lot, you continuously feed your subconscious with ideas, formulations, and concepts. Most of it we forget quickly again — at least we believe so.

But our subconscious remembers everything. When we write, we often desperately search for fresh formulations, new ideas, and original concepts.

Often our subconscious then delivers precisely what we are looking for by merely tapping into its vast memory. In this memory are also the long-forgotten words from books that we have read.

When these words and ideas come into our consciousness, we no longer know where they came from. We then believe we have a unique idea of our own, even though it is from someone else.

As an author of genre fiction, you must avoid sounding like other authors of your genre. The easiest way to prevent this can be read in my article Why I’ve stopped reading thrillers since I started writing them myself.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.