Have you notice a pattern with your characters or stories?

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Mismatched couples. Wounded hearts get rescued.

[DualDragons]

They tend to have spiky hair if I am not careful with designing them. That's it.
(though to be fair I have been doing less characters with spiky hair in my later designs)

[feuersichel]

Somehow, all of my stories end with a war or a big fight... Wanted to do it different this time but... yeah.

[igneriss]

Okay, here we go cx
- magic, magic everywhere;
- loud or energetic main female characters and more calm main male characters;
- almost non-existing romance;
- characters that look like they have a plan but actually don't know what they're doing and they just go with the flow;
- happy ending? the best I can do is not-so-sad or could-be-worse ending;
- usually someone dies;
- the most innocent looking characters are the most dangerous;
- breakdowns, betrayals and characters nope-ing out of the situation deciding that their life is worth more than this (while leaving other characters behind);
- certain interests for characters- usually someone is interested in things like medicine, herbs etc, also writing and gaining knowledge in general; sports? arts? what's that?
- at least one character that other characters find kinda annoying but they still stick around

[arxianfall]

Loneliness.
Lone wolf types.
Hot blondes.
Hot tall blondes.
Cuddle redheads.

Heh, I wonder why.

[BoomerZ]

I'm of the option your stories should be different, otherwise you fall into being type casted to a story theme. Think of M. Night Shyamalan movies or Tarantino dialogue. It all becomes the same after a while. You can use those characters and themes once because it fits the story. But after that, create new characters to make the new stories different. Most people use similar themes and characters because they don't wanna leave their comfort zone to write things they don't know. If you find yourself always writing strong women, write a weak one. Sweak man all the time, same thing, try strong. Successful writers write different themes to make their stories different enough for people wanting to read them. Why read a story if you can guess where the author is going to go because they have done it 5 times before. Recognize what you are doing over and over and stop.

[Lensing]

What makes you think successful writers do that?

[igneriss]

I don't think it's a bad thing when there are repeated patterns in author's stories. Especially like things that I see listed in this topic. The story is still different, characters still make different choices, just that certain vibe and themes are repeated. And personaly as a reader, I often read other books from the same author because I want to read something similar. If everything is completely different, I'd feel disappointed. I have my favourite writers because of those repeated patterns, but also writers whose books I avoid because I know there would be themes I don't like there.

Now, that works only as long as the story is actually different and not just the same book but with different characters names, but repeating certain patterns in character creation or mood of the story is fine.

[Lensing]

The same for me, that´s why I was wondering why BoomerZ wrote that.
For me patterns are an important part of the style of an artist and using patterns doesn´t mean boring storywriting

[bulgariansumo]

-8 main characters
-Friendless background
-Characters that act somewhat childish/childlike for their age, but can be mature if needed
-An organization of some kind, usually with wishy-washy management
-Pairs of brothers who are opposites in some way
-Youngest cast member having severe mental health issues
-Characters who have weird experiences with gender
-Characters who are terrifying to everyone except their designated bestie
-Little to no romance
-Roughly half of the cast being aspec
-Found family
-Trust issues
-Socially awkward characters
-Multilingual characters
-Token cast member who was famous before the events of the series
-Token weirdo cast member
-Weird family dynamics

[TheLemmaLlama]

Why read a story if you can guess where the author is going to go because they have done it 5 times before.

Honestly, I get that. I've merged a lot of my previous story ideas because I felt they were too similar and covered too many overlapping themes. Aside from probably being boring to read for prospective long-term fans, it's also boring to write. I can only complete so many comics in my lifetime, so I'd rather be efficient and not use 2 of my lifetime-comic-allocation to explore a certain topic when I can do so with 1.

Recognize what you are doing over and over and stop.

If you find yourself always writing strong women, write a weak one. Sweak man all the time, same thing, try strong.

That said, I don't think forcing diversity is a very good solution to this. Writing about stuff that your heart isn't into just to be different from your previous work would just lead you to having a diverse but shallow body of work, where each work is unlikely to stand out over other people's work of a similar nature because someone who actually wants to write those thing is more likely to do a good job at it than you are ^^;

Again, I recommend merging! If you have something else to say about a theme you're already writing about; don't abandon it for something different OR start a new story based on that theme (yet)! First ask yourself: "Can I fit this into a story I already have in the works?" Often you'll find the answer is 'yes', and it'll add more depth to your existing work and fill in some gaps that you were previously straining your brain to come up with solutions to. Amazing stories aren't built in a day; sometimes it takes years of accumulation to develop an amazing take on a theme that someone else would certainly have explored, but none as thoroughly as you have This way you'll get a smaller body of higher quality work, which has the added benefit of being completable within your lifetime Depth over breadth is the way to go, imo :]

Now, that works only as long as the story is actually different and not just the same book but with different characters names, but repeating certain patterns in character creation or mood of the story is fine.

Also this; a pattern in character creation or mood doesn't make the story more predictable because it isn't isn't a plot point any more than a setting is a story! For instance, my 3 stories that have a 'girl with a martyr complex' all carry that trait in fundamentally different ways that doesn't let me merge them without losing something important:

• Anwen is your textbook Well-Intentioned Extremist who has dedicated her life to changing the world on a large scale

• Dolly, in contrast, is a relatively powerless person with delusions about how far her influence reaches, and so isn't nearly threatening enough to have a similar role in the plot as Anwen

• Cleria's whole deal is "I will protecc my friends' smiles", so she isn't going to do something world-shaking like Anwen (that'll get her friends wrapped in and make them worry about her), and she's too 'in control' and good at hiding her feelings to play a similar role to the more obviously erratic and unstable Dolly.

And don't get me started on 'adorable, quirky guy', which is so general that it can manifest in any number of ways XD

[BoomerZ]

To reply to the question what makes you think successful do different stories, its simple. Writing is a craft. You should have a story to tell and then you tell that story. Once you have told that story you move on to a new story. That new story should have new themes and characters different from the old story or you are just rehashing old themes. Everything about your first theme should have been explored in the first story, or as much as needed to tell the story. After that, its done. Look at Joss Whedon, he has a thing for small 105 lb girls kicking the crap out of dudes and a dialogue pattern for his characters. It worked in buffy, then he did it in angel (ok you can give him a pass, it's the same universe), then he did it in Dollhouse, then Firefly.... It's a now boring. The Marvel movies all have the same meta jokes that Tony started doing as his personality. Now every character is snarky, and its boring.

That said, I don't think forcing diversity is a very good solution to this. Writing about stuff that your heart isn't into just to be different from your previous work would just lead you to having a diverse but shallow body of work, where each work is unlikely to stand out over other people's work of a similar nature because someone who actually wants to write those thing is more likely to do a good job at it than you are

The point here is do the research and be more interested in more than one type of theme. You should have so many different ideas that its hard to just get them down on paper.

Doing familiar themes is comfortable and fun if you like those themes, but do you want to be a writer? If an artist drew nothing but cars, wouldn't you call it boring after a while? It's called expanding your horizons to new things. Plus your next theme might be even better than you current theme. My point was simply don't get stuck on themes.

[Caro]

I feel like making statements about what a writer should or shouldn't do is a little myopic. There are people who work to just perfect a set of ideas, concepts, and themes and there are people who just want to make a body of work that covers a wide range of ideas just to try them. Both have pros and cons but both are extremely valid methods of creation. They're literally just different approaches to craft.

People will go to the writers who play with the same ideas because they have a fanbase of people who know what this creator delivers and enjoys it. If people were entirely uninterested in repeats, then why would so many of these types of writers be massively successful across nonfiction and fiction, in both mainstream and intellectual circles?

Some people will inevitably find it boring but also numbers don't lie.

Side note, even people with seemingly very different-looking stories end up having a lot of thematic overlap across completely different aesthetics and genres. I've found that to be true for me, personally which is weird because my work ranges from goofy lil strips to horror graphic novels. But I think because of that, the readers I have for one genre or one book make a pretty easy transition between most of my works even if it's not exactly up their alley at first.

[R.n.P]

My main protagonists are always morally ambiguous individuals( I'm referring to the MP and not the supporting cast that may also be considered main protagonists)
They are never viewed as a good person in my story by the cast but rather someone that has potential to do good

[TheLemmaLlama]

do you want to be a writer?

Ah, I guess that's where we differ. These days I'm no so interested in being a writer as much as I just want to get the ideas in my head out and make them exist. Basically, as @Caro put it, I want to "just perfect a set of ideas, concepts, and themes". If I get those ideas down within my lifetime and never have anything new pique my interest ever again, I'm happy to set down my writers tools for the rest of my life

The point here is do the research and be more interested in more than one type of theme. You should have so many different ideas that its hard to just get them down on paper.

Most people here seem to be interested in about 3-17 different themes. Is that enough for ya?

Jokes aside, it's generally not feasible to just one day decide "oh, I'm going to be interested in that theme". Interest is an emotion, and it's not something we can control. Granted, some people do get 'stuck' and have to go out of their way to seek out new things in order to broaden their interests, but even for them, not everything they seek out is going to 'stick' and become something they're genuinely interested in.

For me personally, this 'shotgun approach' isn't very efficient; I'd say I probably have less than 10% success rate for acquiring new interests just by seeking out random new things, and thus more than 90% of the time I spent feels like a waste. I find it more efficient to branch out from my existing interests, because stuff that's adjacent to my current interests are more likely to interest me as well.

An artist who draws cars all the time might play around with the designs for the frame, which leads them to looking at frames of other vehicles like boats and planes, perhaps just for inspiration at first, but then develop a full fledged interest in boats or planes and start drawing them as well.

And so people's interests are going to shift over time anyway, even without actively seeking out new things! The world is changing around us, and we ourselves get bored when we explore all there is to explore of our old interests, and of course we're not going to force ourselves to keep sticking to those old interests if even we're bored of them! And conversely, if we naturally feel like sticking with the same themes we know and love, it probably means there's more to be explored. (That, or market forces have pigeonholed us into a niche and it's others who are pressuring us to stick to the old themes, but we can worry about that when we become famous XD)

Everything about your first theme should have been explored in the first story, or as much as needed to tell the story.

(emphasis mine)

So then, if only a fraction of the theme is needed to tell a story, what do you do if you want to explore everything else about the theme? Make a new story, probably (Of course, I think it's optimal to merge your stories so that you have a robust enough story to support everything about the theme, but you also don't want to shoehorn irrelevant aspects of a theme into a story that would be tighter without it, so half-explored themes might be kind of inevitable if you care about the structural integrity of your story XD)

---

So I guess I can see why diversification would be important if you're a career writer who needs to put out a large volume of work (and indeed are even capable of producing a large volume of work since you're only responsible for the writing and have a team to handle everything else like art etc.) Sometimes forcing yourself to broaden your horizons might be necessary to keep your work from being repetitive.

But for independent creators who do everything themselves (and plan to stay that way), I feel like our output rate is so slow that once we finish a work, our interests would've naturally shifted enough such that our next work is going to be different whether we like it or not

[Swamp]

-People attempting to adjust to a new normal after lifechanging disaster
-Unlikely allies who become the most important people in each other's lives
-Empathy for things judged unimportant/monstrous
-Brilliant person with a big heart but no social skills teams up with a charming person who's secretly a trainwreck
-Magic system based on symbolism and social perception
-Somebody loses the skill they thought made their life important/meaningful

On the thread discussion on whether you should vary themes
1. I don't think there's anything wrong with popcorn stories. I love Sherlock Holmes stories, and some of them have messages, but some are just fun mysteries.
2. If you do want to write something that communicates a specific idea/message/vibe, that's not the same thing as a theme. Like... I do a lot of stories about adjusting after disaster. It's a theme I'm really interested in, but they aren't all saying the same thing. You can write a million novels about, like, the death of a loved one that explore grief, yet are about ENTIRELY different things. Some of my favorite authors like to take one theme and hold it up at different angles to explore each facet.
3. Sometimes, especially for web stories which can operate more like TV shows than novels, a series is a platform to play with a lot of ideas!

[Bearkorps]

I'm going to throw my hat in the ring for better or for worse. @BoomerZ I think you're getting things mixed up and convoluted here (though to be fair, I still agree with your comments on character typing and it does seem a fair bit of respondents on this thread have said they gravitate to certain archetypes which is right to point out is a concern). It feels like you're conflating plot with theme, or in other words theme and execution. Your Whedon (and frankly Tarantino and Shyamalan examples too) is simply complaining about how they execute their stories rather than their themes. A counter example might be Nolan who has had arguably clear themes on father-son relationships and filmmaking that pervade his movies, but even if you're not a fan of his work it's hard to argue that the prestige feels like dunkirk feels like inception, feels like the dark night rises, feels like memento.
In another way i think this distinction becomes important especially when you bring in style into the picture as things become increasingly complicated. A good defining style can make an artist, and often people will flock to an artist, writer, director because of the style. For example, Edgar wright is arguably popular due to his clear visual comedy stylistics such as quick cuts and self-referential movies, but it would be ridiculous to call these themes or even equate it to say because you know these are coming his work is boring or predictable.

But I agree with what I think is your point, regardless of style or themes (even if your trying new things) if you find yourself executing in the same way, leaning on the same kinds of story beats, character archetypes, or even arcs it may be beneficial to try to force yourself to read or write something out of that comfort zone and broaden yourself (which is just a good thing to do anyway).

Okay, back to lurking

[Lensing]

We all know more examples of successful writers who always have the same themes and characters than writers who
change their themes and characters with every story.
Yes writing is a craft but that has nothing to do with the fact that the people who practice the craft don´t use
patterns and reuse characters and themes

[smokesalty]

For me

• Main characters that have a close relationship to the villain. This is a big trope in my writing because I find writing character dynamics like these insanely interesting (ofc each relationship is different in terms of the personalities as well as whether the relationship is platonic, familial, authoritative, romantic etc...) that also being said:
• Villains that practically are secondary main characters
• A generally dramatic and serious storytelling style (I do include humour but most of what happens is supposed to be taken seriously)
• Murder/ murderers
• Life or death stakes
• Main characters dealing with some sort of past trauma
• Family drama
• Morally grey/ weirdly sympathetic villains

And also in regards to the very interesting discussion here- I think there's a balance of stepping out of your comfort zone while still making something you enjoy. I know that if I find a story is too similar to something I've previously made, I'll usually find another route for the story to go.

But like a lot of people have their own interests and I know for me personally I wouldn't wake up and go "I guess I'll write a slice of life comic where the conflict is that the mc misworded their love confession!" because I do not enjoy writing stuff like that. There's absolutely ways to make each of your stories different from one another while still sticking to your interests, but at the end of the day enjoying what you make is the most important.

That doesn't mean you can't try doing something different, but it will most likely align with some of your writing patterns because it's usually based on what you enjoy writing.

[PapaDom]

I guess for me, those are the things that do (and will) pop up in my stories when I write:
-female leads
- at least one "too cool for school" character
-slightly annoyed or snarky main or side characters
-brown haired leads or having green color in their design
-funny faces or comedy in general sprinkled in there
-not admitting being super best friends despite the fact they can't live without each other
-classic shirt and jeans outfits
-Mostly only happy (or bittersweet) endings : P
-Dorks
-some sort of moral but not being in a preachy way with story arcs
- and some sort of sad backstory for some characters

I guess that is all unless I forgot something (again...).