There is an official system. I don't know what it is and I can't read Chinese handwriting either, but I am assured that there is a system and, for example, it's possible for a Chinese person to view an unfamiliar handwritten character and be able to look it up by its standard form.
Reading handwriting isn't quite so bad as the stereotypical doctor's handwriting in the west (or is that just an American thing?) but it definitely takes some practice getting familiar with the differences.
There are political attempts to formalize how to write characters, but there is no one correct way, only more common ways and less common ways. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_order#Stroke_order_per_... shows how a very common character is standardized to be written in different stroke orders.
On to strokes themselves, you can see for example that there are multiple ways to correctly write the word for tiger even though standardizations has blessed one particular form:
This is a standard way: http://www.sfzd.cn/gq/3/16/1/1671084904a28_170_0179b.jpg
But important authors have written it in this manner: http://www.sfzd.cn/gq/2/14/1/1669634829a4_919_396.jpg and you frequently see this manner of writing in New Year calligraphy
More examples: historically we have a character most commonly written 䖏, but standardized as (simplified) (CN) 处, (JP) 処, (HK/TW traditional) 處. Historically, 侯 was frequently written like 隹 with diagonal /\ at the bottom as in https://www.shufazidian.com/gq/1/8/46115.jpg .
Sometimes Chinese pedagogy has an air of "one stroke order", "one correct way", but this situation is a lot like with mcdojos where there are multiple idio-traditions that tend to think that they are an authority.