In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and even today, most practitioners assert that automatic writing represents communications from disembodied entities, usually the souls of deceased human beings. In the contemporary metaphysical subculture, many people have claimed to have received such messages from embodied beings, including extraterrestrials. For example, the leader of the group that was featured in the classic study When Prophecy Fails received her messages from the Space Brothers via automatic writing. As currently used, the expression “automatic writing” is often used to refer both to automatic writing and inspirational writing.

The actual recording of characters in true automatic writing is not under the control of the writer, so that the handwriting is often quite different from her or his ordinary handwriting. In inspirational writing, by way of contrast, words and ideas flow into the writer's mind, so that she or he acts as a recorder (as if one was a court reporter, recording whatever was said in a courtroom). In inspirational writing, the handwriting and sometimes even the writing style is the said to be the writer's own; only the content of the writing is from the Other Side. In true automatic writing, the writer usually does not know what she or he is writing. A tingling is sometimes felt in the hands or arms. Most often, automatic writing takes place at a greater speed than one's normal writing.