How do you avoid repeating yourself?

[WeShallUnclench]

I have this growing suspicion that I tend to write the same sort of dynamics and situations over and over again.

Not only that, but there are specific phrases and expressions that I wanna put in multiple stories. If I'm being really harsh, I might be a one-trick pony.

When I come up with a joke or a snarky line, I often agonize a little over "wasting" it on a specific story rather than keeping it for a better one. Thinking that once I have used it, that's it, it's used up.

So here is my question to all of you: How do you draw the line between what you consider to be your "style" and blatandly just recycling yourself /being unoriginal?

Content-wise, do you abandon story ideas when you sense they might be too close to something you have already written?

Do you make sure characters from different stories do not resemble one another too much, and if yes, to what degree?

 

[AG31]

I just blatantly re-cycle myself. I really only have one "thing." (I hate the word kink.)

 

[MillieDynamite]

Let me make this perfectly clear: I don't repeat myself. No, I don't, I never every repeat myself. Let me say that one more time, I don't repeat myself.

Oh, shit, I'm repeating myself.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

If the reoccurring details have symbolic importance in the story then the "motif" is a perfectly acceptable literary element for you to employ.

 

[WeShallUnclench]

I just blatantly re-cycle myself. I really only have one "thing." (I hate the word kink.)

Positively speaking, it might be a good idea to write many similar stories, especially for relative beginners like me.
The point being that hopefully, over time, you get better and better at your "thing".

I read somewhere that one of the worst things you can do is torture yourself over writing one single, monolithic thing that you need to be Perfect, rather than getting practice with many imperfect creations.

I believe they made an experiment with two pottery groups - one with the assingment to make as many ceramic pots as possible, one with the task of making just ONE, perfect pot.
In the end, the "quantity" group produced better pots than the "quality" group.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Let me make this perfectly clear: I don't repeat myself. No, I don't, I never every repeat myself. Let me say that one more time, I don't repeat myself.

Oh, shit, I'm repeating myself.

You can say that again...

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Easy answer is, I think to some extent you don't.
Somethings are just going to be similar.
A story in one of my series involves the MMC giving the FMC a beautiful formal dress for Christmas. Their relationship has been secretive to that point and it's symbolic of his desire/willingness to change that.
So, now I have to write a story where they attend some sort of black tie affair.
While that was percolating, I got inspired/side tracked writing another story, and for reasons I won't go into it necessitated a black tie event.
So, I wrote one, using the ideas I was saving for the other story.
Back to square one.
Then inspiration for my Valentine's Day contest entry hit, and... yeah...another formal event.
First time I've ever written about one and now three in a month and change.
Are there similarities?
Of course, because those events follow a script of their own. But there are differences too.
It's how you find details and change them that keeps it from being repetitive.
Pasta is pasta, but the variety of meats and sauces you use with it keeps it from being boring.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't fret about it. With my incest stories, I know I'm to some extent re-plowing familiar territory. It's fun, so I don't care. But I try new things quite often, stories that depart sharply my norm, and that's enjoyable too. I'm not a one-kink pony.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Every single story I've published so far seems to end up with someone coming. I don't know what it is. I just can't break out of this rut!

 

[samhasstories]

I don't avoid repeating myself; I just do it. There are only so many ways to describe large breasts being ejaculated on - and I very much enjoy describing that, so I just go right on doing it. Often many times in a row.

 

[KeithD]

With some 1,600 entries here, it's quite evident I repeat myself. If it fits what I'm then writing, though, I don't sweat (or delete) it.

 

[Jay142]

One way I tried to get away from writing similar stories is to challenge myself to write in different categories. It helps to expand the viewership of other stories too. I tend to lean toward Group Sex or Exhibitionism stories but I try to come up with different plots. I've limited the number of chapters in my stories because I found myself being redundant.

 

[StillStunned]

The easiest way is just to give your characters different names.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Depends on the context of repeating oneself. In the broadest terms of stories in general, no, I don't, even if they're the same sort of premise. My two mom/son incest stories aren't the same, the three or so bro/sis incest aren't the same. The people aren't the same. Although I did notice couch sex was starting to edge into repeat mode, between my latest incest story, the updated one, and the not for here novel. The first having... three couch scenes, four if you count masturbation, one in the second, and two in the last. So six/seven between three stories. So I've been paying attention to it. I was going to make an accompanying joke about repeating oneself and bed sex scenes, but I'm just not in the mindset.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't worry about it. I repeat tropes, but so what? They're always things that do it for me, so I'm hardly going to deny myself.

Anyway, if I did start doing that, @SimonDoom would have to can #54, and my philosophy is always to support other authors. Well, most of them.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Every story, at its heart, needs something - call it a spark, or a point, or a unique selling point.

If, during the conception of the story, you can nail down what it is about this story which makes it worth writing, you probably don't need to worry too much about repeating yourself.

Some of these from my writing:

A plain Jane character has to deal with jealously/suspicion after a Playboy model moving into her boyfriend's house.
A bimbo asks a nerd to fix her vibrator late at night.
Henry VIII would make the perfect protagonist in a Loving Wives story.
Sharing a bathroom leads a new couple wordlessly towards a watersports fetish.
Doggers and witches are often out in the woods late at night dancing or fucking naked.
After a thread about demonizing prosistutes, what if street walkers were actual demons.

And so forth. I guess I usually set out to do a unique concept rather than other people who maybe start wth 'I want to do Brother/Sister incest' now how do I make it different? I have very occassionally taken a vague trope and tried to write variations on it - e.g. stories where the girl makes the move on the male MC out of no-one.
By the time I'd tried three of those in a row I was over it.

 

[HeyAll]

The key is to open your mind and realize that plot points and ideas exist everywhere.

Keep your mind open when you look at the news, movies, tv shows, random articles. New angles are everywhere.

 

[ronde]

Depending upon which reference you trust, there are 5 basic plots (Gustav Freytag), 7 (Christopher Booker), or 36 (Georges Polti), to a dramatic work, so repeating yourself as well as repeating every author since people began telling stories is inevitable. It's what the writer does with that basic plot and the characters that differentiates each story. There is no difference between the plot of a story about the cattle wars of the Old West and Star Wars, yet both stories can be unique.

That, of course, assumes the story has an actual plot. Many porn films do not other than a meeting and then the plugging and chugging.

​

 

[SimonDoom]

This is genre fiction, like detective stories. Let's face it, if you've read one Jack Reacher novel (I've read several), you've read 'em all. There's nothing wrong with that. Many authors are here to offer stories that deliver a certain type of fun, sexy experience, and if they keep doing it the same way, that's fine. There appears to be a never-ending appetite for Mom and Son getting it on in the backseat, and somebody's got to feed the bulldog. If you want to break free of conventions or go outside your comfort zone, that's fine, too.

 

[AlexBailey]

Could you imagine if there were only so many ways to have sex? It would get boring awfully quick and no one would want to do it anymore.

The only reason I went queer was because I used up all of my hetero creativity.

 

[yowser]

Since finishing university and starting worklife, my lunch has almost invariably been the same thing: a cheese sandwich.

Boring, right? Maybe even hopeless. Unimaginative.

But consider this: in a given month my sandwich routinely has these options:

Three different kinds of bread.

Two choices of mustard.

Four or five cheese selections.

Items from the vegetable kingdom: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, seasonal.

Pickles, at least three possible choices.

The variations are not infinite, but quite large (I leave the calculations to others more qualified than I.) In a month I might have an exact duplicate only a few times. (Not even mentioning choice of drink, accompanying side foods.)

But more importantly, as the creator of the sandwich, my job to you, the reader, is to describe how wonderful and special that sandwich was.

Did the bread crust crackle when I took my first bite? Was that just a hint of salt on the cucumber? Did a bit of mustard leak out part-way through the meal?

The reader wants to know all this, to trust your descriptions, have confidence in your perceptions, and most of all, find out how satisfying that lunch was. If you're saying the same things over and over, you are just not noticing the details, the special sauce, the elements that made that day's sandwich different from all other sandwiches.

 

[AlexBailey]

Since finishing university and starting worklife, my lunch has almost invariably been the same thing: a cheese sandwich.

Boring, right? Maybe even hopeless. Unimaginative.

But consider this: in a given month my sandwich routinely has these options:

Three different kinds of bread.

Two choices of mustard.

Four or five cheese selections.

Items from the vegetable kingdom: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, seasonal.

Pickles, at least three possible choices.

The variations are not infinite, but quite large (I leave the calculations to others more qualified than I.) In a month I might have an exact duplicate only a few times. (Not even mentioning choice of drink, accompanying side foods.)

But more importantly, as the creator of the sandwich, my job to you, the reader, is to describe how wonderful and special that sandwich was.

Did the bread crust crackle when I took my first bite? Was that just a hint of salt on the cucumber? Did a bit of mustard leak out part-way through the meal?

The reader wants to know all this, to trust your descriptions, have confidence in your perceptions, and most of all, find out how satisfying that lunch was. If you're saying the same things over and over, you are just not noticing the details, the special sauce, the elements that made that day's sandwich different from all other sandwiches.

If you want to take a walk on the wild side you could try alway toasting the bread.

 

[SmokingFap]

Could you imagine if there were only so many ways to have sex? It would get boring awfully quick and no one would want to do it anymore.

The only reason I went queer was because I used up all of my hetero creativity.

With all due respect, that's hilarious. If I had never been allowed to have anything other than missionary style sex with women, I would still be fucking them as often as humanly possible.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

To the point of recycling specific phrases, I’m reminded of the West Wing’s dialogue, where Aaron Sorkin constantly recycled “I know” as a way to cap off those quick witted exchanges.

In a similar vein, I’m trying to train my brain to refrain from using “fair enough” in the same way.

 

[Paul_Chance]

So here is my question to all of you: How do you draw the line between what you consider to be your "style" and blatantly just recycling yourself /being unoriginal?

Genre fiction is a consumer good. A great many of those consumers (readers of Lit) don't care that you're recycling yourself. Each piece is found, read, and discarded for the next piece. As was mentioned earlier, this is kind of the purpose of genre fiction.

Content-wise, do you abandon story ideas when you sense they might be too close to something you have already written?

I might, depending on the story, but so far I haven't.

Do you make sure characters from different stories do not resemble one another too much, and if yes, to what degree?

I don't really worry about it. At a certain level all characters resemble other characters. What life is breathed into a character is all in the small details.