Is authenticity something we can control?

[AG31]

I was set to post some advice in Are we here to get people off that @RandomTask should write what he feels compelled to write. He should strive for authenticity, and find whatever audience is out there that responds.

But then I began to wonder of authenticity can be achieved through a decision, through the will of the author. Maybe, by definition, it needs to be something that impels the author. Maybe it's more common for the first book to have that quality, but not subsequent ones?

Here are some quotes from a post I made a little over two years ago. If this makes sense to you, do you think an author can set out to be authentic? Or do authors just need to accept it when it comes, or doesn't?

I'm perfectly aware that there are many other legitimate definitions for authenticity (e.g., verisimilitude, true to life). I'm just using it to talk about a quality in writing that I find interesting.

For the purposes of this essay, authenticity is a quality in a story such that it seems as if the author were writing from within, from the heart or from the viscera. It sounds like a story the writer had to tell.

And from this week in AH @ElectricBlue said, "It's when I let my arousal/horniness creep in that my writing goes to the next level, and my sex scenes start smoking."

 

[NotWise]

I'm not sure whether you have a question or not.

An author can try to achieve authenticity, but he might not succeed. Authenticity is, after all, in the eye of the reader.

The author may include features he believes are authentic, but which a reader won't "get." That's especially true with details of arousal. What's arousing to one reader may be unrealistic to another. It isn't limited to that. The same thing can be true for a range of unshared experience.

 

[StillStunned]

I see people refer to "authenticity" a lot. But I really have no clue what it's supposed to mean.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

I'm perfectly aware that there are many other legitimate definitions for authenticity (e.g., verisimilitude, true to life). I'm just using it to talk about a quality in writing that I find interesting.

For the purposes of this essay, authenticity is a quality in a story such that it seems as if the author were writing from within, from the heart or from the viscera. It sounds like a story the writer had to tell.

And from this week in AH @ElectricBlue said, "It's when I let my arousal/horniness creep in that my writing goes to the next level, and my sex scenes start smoking."

I agree with this 100%. I don't know if authenticity is quite the right word but I think I understand what you mean and I think you're correct.

Speaking for myself, I cannot adequately convey the sexual intensity of a situation with words unless I am deeply aroused by the thought of that situation at the time of writing. I obsess over turns of phrase, rhythm, choice of word in order to capture that delicious quicksilver of arousal that I feel.

And I would imagine that someone who is aroused by the same erotic situations as me will pick up on that. If I'm any good at writing then I'll trigger their arousal too.

It is purposeful, intended. It's an attempt to be true to the feeling that you are truly feeling. And that's why it's authentic.

Edit: to answer your question - can we control it? - hmmm, no, I can't force the writing to be authentic to the feeling if I'm not actually feeling it. But I can make myself feel it with the right kind of stimulation. Arousal/good erotica writing mood is about getting oneself into a kind of fugue state, I think.

 

[AG31]

I obsess over turns of phrase, rhythm, choice of word in order to capture that delicious quicksilver of arousal that I feel.

Bingo.

It is purposeful, intended. It's an attempt to be true to the feeling that you are truly feeling. And that's why it's authentic.

Double bingo.

 

[Imstillfun]

Most of my stories are things that could have happened to me or my husband under the right circumstances. Is that authentic?

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm not sure whether you have a question or not.

An author can try to achieve authenticity, but he might not succeed. Authenticity is, after all, in the eye of the reader.

The author may include features he believes are authentic, but which a reader won't "get." That's especially true with details of arousal. What's arousing to one reader may be unrealistic to another. It isn't limited to that. The same thing can be true for a range of unshared experience.

I agree with this. As an author, you only have so much control over how the reader perceives your story.

I don't fret much about "authenticity," and I don't think most authors should, either, unless there's something in particular about the story that makes authenticity important.

For example, Andy Weir's novel The Martian is considered a "hard science" story in which the drama of the story was created by the many scientific challenges that the protagonist, left alone on Mars, faced. It was important to get at least a lot of the science close to being authentic for the story to work. Even so, the author took some liberties, notably at the beginning where the storm on the surface of Mars that caused the problem was depicted in a way that we know, as a matter of science, is not authentic. Even Weir knew this was a problem, but he went with it anyway to move the story. Most readers, I think, gave Weir a pass on this.

In an erotic story, I think it's fine to depict many things in an "inauthentic" way. It's important, though, to depict the way the characters act and feel in a way that achieves verisimilitude within the terms of the story itself.

I personally don't believe that it is at all necessary that the author himself or herself must genuinely share these feelings. A good author can fake it.

Even so, when I write an erotic story I will draw upon many of my own thoughts and feelings in crafting how I think the characters would respond. I think that helps sell the story, but I don't worry too much about whether every reader is going to be sold.

I think one can overthink this.

 

[AG31]

Most of my stories are things that could have happened to me or my husband under the right circumstances. Is that authentic?

Not in the way I wanted to discuss it here, I don't think. Unless you're referring to the writing flowing because of it's strong meaning for you, personally. It's certainly a legitimate use of the word.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Not in the way I wanted to discuss it here, I don't think. Unless you're referring to the writing flowing because of it's strong meaning for you, personally. It's certainly a legitimate use of the word.

Authenticity, as I think you mean it - I'm not sure you can separate it from a writer's natural style. They've either got it, or they don't. I suspect the more a writer labours to be "authentic", the more they'd show that they're not.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Authenticity for me relates to 'Character.' You create characters, give them personalities, physical appearance, sexual identities, ethics, morals (Or lack there of).
Then you create a plot, a series of events...
Authenticity comes if the characters stay inside their given personalities. They act as described...
If they suddenly change tack, do something outside their given roles, the story loses 'Authenticity'.
If characters just follow the plot randomly. The story loses the feel of plausibility... As a reader you might say. "That seems strange, they wouldn't do that."
You have lost the reader, at that point...
The hard part is keeping your characters inside their allotted traits....
Just my thoughts...

 

[Britva415]

I began to wonder of authenticity can be achieved through a decision, through the will of the author

An author absolutely can make decisions which result in inauthenticity. With that in mind, I can't conclude otherwise but that authenticity is also intentional.

I mean, it's also possible for both to be accidental. Not intentional. Unconscious.

But that doesn't rule out intentional authenticity.

 

[SmilingLez]

The Greek word - Authentikos means original or genuine, so it depends on whether your work is original or genuine (from your soul). Most work in Literotica is original, not so sure about genuine. So authenticity depends on your definition choice

YMMV

 

[TheIntrepidBoyager]

If by authenticity we're talking about being true to ourselves, then I'm not sure how you couldn't be? I mean, even if you write something you might never actually do, you still thought it up, so in some way at least, it is a part of you.

Or are we saying "you" just write some stuff you totally disagree with in real life but just do it for clicks/ratings/etc? Still, that's authentic because "you" clearly prioritize or at least want to feed your ego or make people happy or whatever. It's still you and some motivation by you.

Is it authentic to the scene, the reader, the characters?

I don't know how to answer any of that but for me personally it isn't the question. For me, the question is, is it plausible? I want the reader to feel like something, even if it is a stretch, is plausible. I just don't want their minds to be able to check the "yeah, sure, okay, that could happen now how's the sex" box.

 

[Britva415]

Let's also observe that authenticity and quality live on totally different axes. Implying or disimplying one doesn't imply or disimply the other, except to the extent that someone tried and failed.

 

[MrHereWriting]

Is authenticity something we can control?​

I've faked orgasms and never been caught, so yes.

 

[Britva415]

The Greek word - Authentikos means original or genuine, so it depends on whether your work is original or genuine (from your soul). Most work in Literotica is original, not so sure about genuine. So authenticity depends on your definition choice

YMMV

To me it's less about originality and more about verisimilitude. To "write what you know" is a road to authenticity, while pretending and posing is inauthentic. Same with being transparent and true to oneself: An author can dare to write what they believe or feel, or they can lack the brass to do so. One is inauthentic, the other is authentic.

It's the difference between truth and truthiness. It's being real versus being deliberately fake.

Hopefully nobody will mistake this for some kind of statement about fiction versus nonfiction, because it's totally not.

 

[SmilingLez]

To me it's less about originality and more about verisimilitude. To "write what you know" is a road to authenticity, while pretending and posing is inauthentic. Same with being transparent and true to oneself: An author can dare to write what they believe or feel, or they can lack the brass to do so. One is inauthentic, the other is authentic.

It's the difference between truth and truthiness. It's being real versus being deliberately fake.

Hopefully nobody will mistake this for some kind of statement about fiction versus nonfiction, because it's totally not.

100% agree. I find word origins fascinating

 

[redgarters]

I'm not sure about that word. Are my stories original? Yes, in the sense that they're mine, but but they are tropey as fuck at times, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. They are inspired by the writing style and stories of writers that I admire, on and outside of Lit, some of them more obviously than others.

Are they still "authentic", despite this? I think so, in the way that the characters behave within the story, are consistent and beliavable within that environment. Others might disagree. Authenticity means very different things to different people.

 

[liliput1]

I would just like to reiterate that the number of kleenex I use here for their intended purpose versus the purpose you'd expect they'd be used for in this place is too goddamned high.

This complaint has fuck-all to do with which authors I've chosen to follow, but I would like to file a complaint anyway.

You can write characters who are trying to be inauthentic and end up giving themselves away in their thoughts and actions, enough that people still get invested in how their stories progress. But bravado can only titillate, and the novelty can wear off pretty fast. Particularly when your other option is authors who manage both.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Authenticity means very different things to different people.

I think what's being referred to by AG31 in this instance is whether the writing conveys something that the author is truly feeling, that it is an expression of an authentic feeling inside the author. Rather than the author trying to mimic it.

If you were trying to write a scene to make your readers horny but you weren't feeling aroused by that scene yourself as you wrote it then, by this definition at least, that writing would be inauthentic.

I believe that's why she referred to ElectricBlue's line about his writing going to the next level when he allows his arousal to creep into the writing.

Personally, it works for me.

The other stuff is verisimilitude and internal logic and characters feeling believable and consistent. That's a different kettle of fish.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Most readers, I think, gave Weir a pass on this.

Still mad about it.

Granted, it's not as bad as a neutrino blast taking out a ship's systems without absolutely obliterating everybody in the vicinity because they have to be literally next to a supernova to get that kind of effect, Alien: Covenent, you twat.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Authorial authenticity is a weird thing. I'm not convinced it's something that a reader can really sense except in cases where it's very clear the author put no effort into what they wrote and have a total and utter lack of care. But even then, that could just be them not being very good at writing, which could be very authentic, E.L. James.

I'm spicy today...

I don't think it's really worth focusing on how authentic an author is unless they're deliberating trying to mislead someone about caring about a community and like they know anything about it... *cough* E.L. James. *cough*

What's authentic is how you make the reader feel. That's what's real to them. Otherwise, we're just talking about degrees of how closely something meshes to the author's existence. Writing a gender that isn't yours, is that inauthentic? It's perhaps less authentic than someone who knows what it's like to be that gender, but it can still be authentic in other ways, because we exist as multidimensional creatures with many, many layers of depth and bredth.

My issue with "oh, this is written how the author feels, so it must be authentic" is people like me, with low emotional variability, writing high-emotion stories. Does that make me inauthentic because I didn't feel the pain and sorrow of my character? Their joys? I'd bristle at that characterization, because I feel I write very authentically, not to my own self, but to the truth of the story itself. The story exists separate from myself, despite me having created it, because my feelings are not explicitly tied to it. The same way I wouldn't say that a wood carving I made isn't part of me. It's still an expression of my creativity, but was it created with authenticity? How would you even measure that?

So, then, where does that leave us? Trying to measure the immeasurable, and judging writers against what we perceive to be their authenticity, based solely on how we define it. It's useless, and only serves as a tool to tear people down.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Authenticity comes from the story told. The characters and their actions. It comes from drawing the reader into the scenes and situations you created. Making them feel it could be real, the emotions described, the actions of the characters. It is a feeling of believability. Of feeling involved and invested.
Authenticity comes from you the reader feeling it as if it happened to you...

 

[Britva415]

Authorial authenticity is a weird thing. I'm not convinced it's something that a reader can really sense

I agree, "not-always," but I think they (we) can a lot of the time.

I also think they aren't necessarily the same thing. I believe an author can produce something which a reader perceives as authentic without it necessarily being the author's authentic life experience. And vice versa: Sometimes readers don't believe or feel moved by what the author put genuine blood sweat and tears into from the bottom of their heart.

I think it's a lot like acting. Actors get praised for "authentic performance" for roles which are light-years away from their real-life world, and flamed for acting too much like their own real-life self. Different people relate to different elements of the human condition.

I watched The Usual Suspects recently. There's a scene where five criminal guys in a police line-up are goofing around and not taking the proceedings seriously because they had bad-boy attitude out the ass. Turns out, that's how the editing salvaged a disastrous day of shooting. For that scene, the actors couldn't stop breaking. Something kept making them crack up and the more they lost it, the more they kept losing it. So every take had someone snickering because they couldn't help it, or deliberately over-acting to make the other guys crack up.

I guess my point is, what the viewer perceives feels pretty authentic: These come off like a bunch of irreverent crooks with "fuck pigs" attitude. It seems authentic. Whereas the reality is the director and the actors were nowhere near doing that on purpose. The fact that an unserious shoot could be turned into an effective scene with a feeling and atmosphere very different from what they were aiming for highlights the gulf between what's authentic for the artist versus what's authentic for the audience, sometimes.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

I agree, "not-always," but I think they (we) can a lot of the time.

I also think they aren't necessarily the same thing. I believe an author can produce something which a reader perceives as authentic without it necessarily being the author's authentic life experience. And vice versa: Sometimes readers don't believe or feel moved by what the author put genuine blood sweat and tears into from the bottom of their heart.

I think it's a lot like acting. Actors get praised for "authentic performance" for roles which are light-years away from their real-life world, and flamed for acting too much like their own real-life self. Different people relate to different elements of the human condition.

I watched The Usual Suspects recently. There's a scene where five criminal guys in a police line-up are goofing around and not taking the proceedings seriously because they had bad-boy attitude out the ass. Turns out, that's how the editing salvaged a disastrous day of shooting. For that scene, the actors couldn't stop breaking. Something kept making them crack up and the more they lost it, the more they kept losing it. So every take had someone snickering because they couldn't help it, or deliberately over-acting to make the other guys crack up.

I guess my point is, what the viewer perceives feels pretty authentic: These come off like a bunch of irreverent crooks with "fuck pigs" attitude. It seems authentic. Whereas the reality is the director and the actors were nowhere near doing that on purpose. The fact that an unserious shoot could be turned into an effective scene with a feeling and atmosphere very different from what they were aiming for highlights the gulf between what's authentic for the artist versus what's authentic for the audience, sometimes.

That's an interesting example. But I think you can take the opposite lesson from it: the actors were actually authentically laughing and fucking around. And that's what the scene required and it does in fact come across.

If they had acted it then it might not have been so successful.

AG31's question is an interesting one in that example: could the actors control for the authenticity? If they had to do it again the next day, would they be able to break authentically, like they did the day before, or would they just have to simulate it?