What's a writing weakness you've grown out of?

[Leyelle]

when I was younger I used to make almost all my male leads fall into one visual design, and they all dressed according to my preferences too. Since I've gotten older, I've broadened my reference points, and learned to include a lot more different styles into my characters' aesthetics as well. Not all of them dress in ways I particularly like (I'm looking at you Carter Cruz) but it does help make things more unique and visually appealing. If 13 year old me had her way every ML would look like Yoon Jeonghan and dress in a soft boy-like aesthetic. My OC Jinwoo (who I designed back then, but have since revamped the story for) still has the same visual design in terms of features but his aesthetic is a lot more unique now.

And then there's Carter Cruz (Chili,) who is not traceable to any real person, though he does have an odd amount in common with this guy:

[thepenmonster]

Trying to remake DragonBall Z like everyone else has been for the past 40 years.

[AmysGames]

One I've been noticing lately is this sense of like, "I don't know how this works so I'm not even going to attempt to write about it" that plagued a lot of my teenage/young adult writing. Like especially with "grown-up" stuff, I was so terrified of accidentally revealing how much of an idiot I was that I ended up just not talking about certain topics very much.

Then I got old enough to realize that most adults are just faking it anyway.

[moontokkym]

"A friend of mine compared my character to a popular existing character, THAT MEANS I'M NOT ORIGINAL, I HAVE TO CHANGE THEM."

Learning that comparisons like that are usually meant as compliments from a bunch of people and having the confidence to know that despite some similarities, my characters are their own person and are different to similar-looking characters really helped me actually write more coherent characters and not reactions to perceived slights.

[Leyelle]

yeah, every character is going to have something in common with someone, it's basically unavoidable lol.

[annuskabriar]

I wouldn't say I've fully grown out of it, because its still an issue to a degree, but I've definitely at least cut back on the amounts of characters and scenes i plan, aha. Kill your darlings and everything.

that, and what @moontokkym said. I used to have a knee jerk reaction if someone compared my ocs to pre-existing characters; I assumed it meant I was unoriginal. Now I'm much better with that - nothing is going to be truly original, lol

[UnTalAugustus]

I don't know, I guess I'm better at writing dialogue than I was before. Specially when it comes to relying information, both to the reader and the characters.
It's hard to explain why I'm better at it, but basically each characters says what makes sense for them to say in the moment they said it.
Also, less redundancy and more synonyms.

[Oriflamme]

I don’t think I’ve grown out of it completely, but I have the problem where there is no plot, stuff happens that is completely separated from the characters' action. I think this is the result of me often becoming distracted by worldbuilding, and wanting to showcase/explore all the ideas I had. This is part of the reason I went for the current story in my comic and not my original idea. At least now, my story is limited to the choices and actions of a few characters, and there are a few guard rails in place to prevent me from having complicated lore be plot relevant.

[kyupol]

Dialog. Still not the best but I've gotten better

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Worrying too much about using commonly used tropes and cliches, or if my concepts and characters are unique enough.

"I found a series with similar premise, I feel worthless because I can't come up with something original."
"Guys, is it okay to start a story with a character waking up? I know it's cliched and makes my story bad."
"I'm gonna subvert this trope in my story because it's overused and bad, so I'm a better writer by doing that."

Taking each person (strangers who don't even know my series exist) opinion too deep to the heart.
Like when I saw a post of hating the (genre/trope/style I use) in writing, I felt bad and thought on improving it according to that single person's preference.

I still need a lot of catching up in the technical said, never been a particularly good writer, but at least I am now (relatively)freed from mindsets that's preventing me to write.

[MelancholicOtaku]

I haven’t grown out of any of weakness yet ,it’s a chapter by chapter process that I’m still working on. Dialogue is something that I feel like I struggle with as well as finding the right balance of pacing. Also not using the same words over and over again.

[Vassia]

My first mc was 100% a Mary sue who was perfectly perfect now all of my characters are flawed to hell and they're beautiful for it, even the more problematic ones

[jwabeasley]

One of mine was scene transitions. I'd easily get bogged down and spend way too much time getting from scene to scene. Giving myself hard page limits fixed that quickly!

Dialog. Still not the best but I've gotten better

Absolutely, dialog is such an art form by itself. The more I learn, the more there is to learn.

Trying to remake DragonBall Z like everyone else has been for the past 40 years.

Yep, no point in being a second rate something that already exists. Gotta take what you liked and turn it into something new!

[moontokkym]

Yeah I feel like it's a reaction a lot of us have and then grow out of. One of the things that really helped me get some perspective is that people were comparing my characters visually to characters that
1) personnality-wise weren't very similar to my character
2) I'd never seen or heard of before sometimes and
3) that all had visual and sometimes personality/plot arc similarities between eachother and that didn't stop them from becoming popular in their own right.

Once I realised that the pros' characters had a lot in common, sometimes more than between my character and any one of them, it really took the pressure off :3 That and realising that in 99% of cases those comparaisons weren't accusations, just pattern-recognition, and that it was my own insecurities about being derivative that was making them into something hurtful.

[MK_Wizard]

For me, it was doing M rated and up stuff. I realized that I am not my characters and it's not me who is doing the stuff. It's just drawings and if it's ok to do that stuff to drive the plot forward. I still prefer to leave a lot of stuff to the imagination, but I am not that shy anymore.

[DanielRKM]

Oh man, the list of my flaws is soooooo long

Well, being succinct in dialogue is now a guiding light for me. I've really worked on paying closer attention to the dynamic rhythms of dialogue between characters in order to drastically cut back on making everything a series of pithy monologues.

Also, I'm focusing on writing with the visuals in mind so much more. I've always been driven by characters and dialogue first, but there are moments it's gotten me into real trouble when the visuals and the mood of the dialogue don't match as well as they did in my head (and by big trouble I mean- the artist I worked with already drew it, the tone of my dialogue doesn't match, and now I need to re-write the scene because it shouldn't have to be redrawn because I was being a dip. It's a fun puzzle, but it's stressful).

Finally, it's been great to be liberated from feeling so precious about how a scene should go. I've found that if a scene isn't working the way I want it to, I now take a look at who else is in the room and what else is happening (not just the main character) to I see if a change in perspective can get us to where we need to go (and sometimes I've found some real gems that way).

[Leyelle]

I get so annoyed when I can't think of a word other than "said" or "asked" to use that doesn't feel weird or clunky.

Also, I'm focusing on writing with the visuals in mind so much more

I write novels more than comics, but totally forgetting to describe parts of the visuals of a scene (usually what people look like and their expressions) was a big issue of mine. I'm still working through not having overly long narrations, which, since they're in first person are technically monologues I guess lol.

[NickRowler]

I guess the whole everyone's an unsupervised orphan trope.

It pops up in a lot of media, like Naruto, which might have originally inspired me.

But as I grew older, I realized it not really that realistic. Even kids with no parents or estranged parents still tend to have a caregiver. It's also not realistic to make every child character to be an orphan unless there is a huge in universe reason for it. Like it makes more sense just to have kids with at least one parent, and maybe the parents aren't present in the story but implied that they are there. Like being mentioned in dialogue. The kid is still the main focus without having to do the orphan trope.

[Leyelle]

whenever I have unsupervised kids in my stories I try to explain it in a relatively realistic way, and most of them are not orphans. Family dynamics are so relevant to most people's lives that it only makes sense to me for family to have some level of relevance 90% of the time

[jwabeasley]

Yeah, that's something I'm addressing in Etherwood too. It makes sense to have single parent households from a story perspective - one parent to do all the "parent" character roles, and a dead one to provide easy drama and help explain the relative freedom that you need for adventures.

I chose to accept a limitation of having both parents be alive and well - it's taken me in a different direction, at least.