With this I mean If your characters or stories have a lot of things in similar
I got so many characters with mommy/daddy issues
or a missing father or mother figure (the new disney princesses :
and also tragic loves
And well I´ve been wondering if this repetitive things in your stories could be wrong ._.
What about yours?
Jun '22
Jul '22
*Some characters are missing both, but I only have one character who is missing only their mom and they have yet to be introduced.
For sure. However, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.
I recently read an article about how almost every Hayao Miyazaki work has themes or visual motifs of flying, beautiful scenery, the relationship between humanity and nature, innocent unspoken love beginning as friendship, wisdom of the old, and a young female protagonist with a sidekick. This doesn't detract from how great his stories are though. :]
My own stories often have the following:
- gentle, easygoing father figures
- fantasy/magical elements
- family bonds
- loss of innocence and corruption
- childhood friend love interests
- beauty of natural world
- female protagonists
- motherhood
- desire for peace, harmony, and a simple life
- protagonist is forced into a conflict against their will
- loneliness and death of loved ones
- morally grey, well-intentioned "villains" who tempt MC to join their cause (and sometimes succeed)
- sibling relationships, especially sister duos with a focus on the responsibility of the older sibling to protect/guide the younger
I have nine siblings (mostly sisters) and they're my best friends, so it'd make sense that last one appears in literally everything I've written. Always felt strong 'oldest sibling' pressure to look after the littler ones growing up when my parents were busy or absent, so that theme works its way into my stories a lot. ^^
The stories we write are rather self-revealing, aren't they?
When I rp I notice how my characters are usually emo and mean with missing fathers, (common pattern eh?) and when writing actual stories those qualities translate to the actual world, where now the side characters are either being mean to the main characters or the vibes are dark and "emo." I also notice when writing stories my characters become one dimensional.
Having started 'collecting' my works on Tapas I have noticed a few things:
- constant return to time warping (dilation or compression)
- a lack of personal agency or ability of the individual to assert any meaningful change. So I suppose a theme of inconsequence.
Also I think the second thing flies into the general lack of characterization I put in my stories - the eyes open being an extreme of this. As a friend once said: You can spot one of [Woof's] stories easily since [their] characters are there to simply suffer.
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)
Somehow, all of my stories end with a war or a big fight... Wanted to do it different this time but... yeah.
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
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.
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.
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
-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
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.
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 :]
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
