Any other writers having this problem?

[Sage_of_the_Forlorn_Path]

I've been writing since I was a kid, mostly fantasy with some horror and sci-fi, and now that my patreon is taking off, I want to start posting my older works. The problem is that as I look back through the stories, I realize that I have a bad habit of reusing certain plot devices and character archetypes.
It's more than just a love of specific tropes and themes, and it's taken me a long time to even notice I do it, but it's like my stories require these similar components in order to function, even if the reasons and conception are entirely different.
For example, in a fantasy series I worked on through high school, one of the main supporting characters was a female archer, who I designed with a ranger-style/Robin Hood-esque aesthetic, and she and the misanthropic MC form a brother-sister type relationship, where she helps him reconnect with humanity. In my current series, the MC befriends a woman who also uses a bow. I gave her the bow because the main love interest uses a sword, and I made her a lesbian because I wanted to give her and the main character a strong, purely platonic friendship without tainting them with will-they/won't-they tension.
Two women with different backgrounds, personalities, and strengths, but in the end, they are both, ultimately, female archers who form strong, nonromantic relationships with the main character. I took them on different paths for different reasons, but I still wound up at the same destination.
Does anyone else have this problem? I don't want my earlier stories to gather dust in the back of my hard drive, considering all the time and effort I put into writing them, but now that I've noticed this problem, I'm terrified of someone pointing it out.

 

[NotWise]

Is that really a problem?

Some writers never stray out of a single universe and use the same characters over and over for different stories.

Personally, I don't have a huge range among my characters. They (men and women) are usually college-educated professionals. The SF&F characters are made from a different mold, but one character appears in two different stories.

I don't think you need to worry very much about using similar characters. Also keep in mind that you probably see more similarities between them than you readers will.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Why is it a problem? I'd say most writers have a set of recurring tropes that reappear in one form or another, over time. I know I do. It never occurs to me to worry about it.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

If you’re worried about it, there would seem to be three choices;

• Don’t publish (mentioned just for completeness)
• Change some details. For instance, you gave one character a bow because the MC had a rapier; just give her something else, like a sling or her own sword.
• Throttle to the floor - do a bit of rewriting to make the most of seemingly-overlapping characters, maybe going so far as to write your own world for them.

 

[SimonDoom]

I wouldn't worry about this at Literotica. Repetition is not a sin here. Readers enjoy reading the same plot themes over and over. If you enjoy writing the story and want to publish it, do so without worry about whether you are repeating yourself. Your readers probably will not notice or care.

 

[TheRedChamber]

As others have said, it's probably not a real problem. Becaue readers often like the same kind of character archetypes again and again and because it seems like you are confident in your own mind about why these two are different.

It's probably worth looking at the whole woman = bow fantasy trope. Not because it's inherently bad, but because its worth understanding what's going on.

It seems to me like it springs from the idea that, because women aren't typically as strong as men, they tend to be given the range weapon and rely on the skill of accuracy and being able to move quickly and unseen. This kind of ignores the fact that bows do require a significant amount of draw strength to fire properly, but it does side-step the image of your heroine going to toe-to-toe with the typical mountain of muscle mooks you get in these adventures (which some people seem to get really worked up about for some reason). Especially if you're describing/casting someone 'dainty' rather than a Brienne of Tarth style character. Your MC is probably going to go with the sword (+ shield) as the typical main hero weapon, it's nice to have a range of abilities, so why not give the bow to the chick? (alternatives including making her the magic user, or the rogue who moves in a tornado of daggers). And then you probably add into the mix the huge meat-slab friend who wields some sort of massive club/morning star type weapon. (or dwarf with axe etc.)

Again this is all fine, but I'm heading into generic fantasy territory here.

I'd suggest its probably better to define your characters in terms of the military training (if any) they've got rather than the one specific weapon they use. Have them use a range of tactics and weapons during the encounter (or maybe just moan that they don't have ideal weapon availiable to them). Have ALL your characters use bows until the enemy is on top of them and then switch to close-range weapons. Have your characters use a range of tactics - the bow didn't work against the dragon last time, so lets try thrown spears. Having a party of six characters where five characters are fighting melee and then having one character bow at those same enemies from range seems to be pretty common, but actually doesn't make a whole bunch of sense and so on. Even if your character ends up using the bow 5 times out of 6, if there are clear stratigic or coincidental reasons for it, it'll make the character stronger.

 

[lovecraft68]

Its not a problem. Many readers like repetition, they like the same type of story, type of character and similar scenarios. On a site like this you're more likely to get some mixed reviews if you have the nerve to deviate from accepted tropes.

 

[Duleigh]

Two great rules:
1. Write what you know
2. Write what you feel good about
If you follow these rules, the readers will know and enjoy your work, the rest is just punctuation and grammar

 

[rosebudliquor]

I'm here to echo that I don't think it is a problem. Perhaps after other replies you've thought "Yes, but..." because the female with bow thing is just one example you gave. Set that aside. It isn't a problem. If a reader points out the similarity or repetition, that means they liked your stuff enough to read a high volume of it. If the other elements keep them reading, most readers would be happy to read about the exact same characters doing almost exactly the same things over and over and over. Writers get bored before the readers do.
Share your past work; you're not doing it for the money.
If you see the repetition as a problem now, take it as a challenge as you go forward.

 

[Defluer]

And if you know that it's happening, you can purposely explore it in different ways. There is a band I like that I watched an interview and somebody asked the main singer/songwriter why a lot of his themes dealt with water. He clearly had not put it together (I hadn't really thought of it either but as soon as it was asked it was right there, like 80% of his songs had bodies of water in them, mostly rivers.) it visibly rocks his world. I think that would be worse, doing it and not knowing. Now who knows what kind of songs he's gonna write? Is he going to embrace it and write more or be scared of it and write less, it's gonna affect their songs.

So you have the advantage of seeing it yourself and I guess asking here, almost all of us say, "So what?" A good percent of my stories, published or not, have the idea that it's been a while for the woman/women. I think early on in my writing I had to convince myself a woman would do the stuff they end up doing, it's my mental shortcut to convince myself. The idea that "She's horny as fuck!" is all the excuse needed really, plus all the other implications of not getting any for a while. I see it, it doesn't really bother me.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I think most of us create (main) characters who are somehow reflections of ourselves one way or another. Whether it is our ideals and dreams, or our experiences, doubts and bitterness that are reflected in those characters, they are still images of ourselves. So you making such similar characters, even after many years, doesn't seem surprising at all... nor do I think that it is much of a problem really. Change the character from what naturally came from your mind and it will be forced and you might even start disliking it.

 

[ronde]

I've been writing since I was a kid, mostly fantasy with some horror and sci-fi, and now that my patreon is taking off, I want to start posting my older works. The problem is that as I look back through the stories, I realize that I have a bad habit of reusing certain plot devices and character archetypes.
It's more than just a love of specific tropes and themes, and it's taken me a long time to even notice I do it, but it's like my stories require these similar components in order to function, even if the reasons and conception are entirely different.
For example, in a fantasy series I worked on through high school, one of the main supporting characters was a female archer, who I designed with a ranger-style/Robin Hood-esque aesthetic, and she and the misanthropic MC form a brother-sister type relationship, where she helps him reconnect with humanity. In my current series, the MC befriends a woman who also uses a bow. I gave her the bow because the main love interest uses a sword, and I made her a lesbian because I wanted to give her and the main character a strong, purely platonic friendship without tainting them with will-they/won't-they tension.
Two women with different backgrounds, personalities, and strengths, but in the end, they are both, ultimately, female archers who form strong, nonromantic relationships with the main character. I took them on different paths for different reasons, but I still wound up at the same destination.
Does anyone else have this problem? I don't want my earlier stories to gather dust in the back of my hard drive, considering all the time and effort I put into writing them, but now that I've noticed this problem, I'm terrified of someone pointing it out.

If repeating plot devices and character types was a bad thing, there wouldn't have been much literature of any type written since the beginning of story telling. Depending upon which resource you read, there are only a few types of plot and each type of plot tends to have the same type of characters. The reason for this is exactly the same reason you state - to make the lot function and to weave the characters together into a tale readers will believe.

For example, if we look at early stories of the Old West, we will always find three characters main to the story. We will have a strong character and a character who is threatened by a thing or situation. The plot involves introduction of the characters and the situation, the ultimate threat to one character and the resultant "saving" by the strong character.

Moving forward in time we find the same plot and characters in the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming, the Star Trek franchise of Gene Roddenberry, the Jurassic Park franchise, and a host of others. The scenery, sex of the characters, and the threat may change, but the basic plot remains the same - the strong helping the weak against some adversary.

 

[LissyW]

I definitely recognise this tendency in my writing and, as someone pointed out, it's not easy to change without the writing becoming 'forced' and thus less natural and engaging.

I'm glad so many don't think it's a problem!

So many good and thought-provoking replies here!

 

[Duleigh]

I write to people that want to feel good, my characters are smart and funny, they fall in love, have wonderful sex, raise beautiful, smart children. I've put them in an enchanted forest full of elves and bunny girls, I've made them spies that are fighting a high tech enemy, I've made them soldiers with PTSD, Dairy farmers, school teachers, rich, poor, similar people in differing circumstances and I love it. So do my readers.

ONCE I wrote a nonconscentual story. It gets a lot of page views but the score is very low and I regret publishing it and I remain writing what I like to write because I'm writing to entertain me primarily.

 

[SirBurnInside]

My stories are mostly stand alone, one off tales designed to just be stroke material for those looking for a good time, I don't write complex character driven pieces where I really give my creations a deep and thoughtful personality that evolves over multiple chapters.

Thus, I don't really put that much thought into is this character the same as the others? I just create someone I think fits in with what I'm trying to do this time and run with that. If they are different great, if they are similar to another character I used that's fine too.

 

[tenyari]

I've been writing since I was a kid, mostly fantasy with some horror and sci-fi, and now that my patreon is taking off, I want to start posting my older works. The problem is that as I look back through the stories, I realize that I have a bad habit of reusing certain plot devices and character archetypes.
It's more than just a love of specific tropes and themes, and it's taken me a long time to even notice I do it, but it's like my stories require these similar components in order to function, even if the reasons and conception are entirely different.

That's not always a bad thing if you learn to work it.

If I am looking for a specific theme, and when I go for erotica I very much am doing just that, I get overjoyed when I find a writer who appears to be a one-trick pony that's sending out the pony I want to ride.

When I see writers that try their hand at every possible theme, that might be great in general fiction or even better in non-fiction (most of what I read actually). But for erotica it does nothing for me.

 

[Zenith77]

If you’re worried about it, there would seem to be three choices;

• Don’t publish (mentioned just for completeness)
• Change some details. For instance, you gave one character a bow because the MC had a rapier; just give her something else, like a sling or her own sword.
• Throttle to the floor - do a bit of rewriting to make the most of seemingly-overlapping characters, maybe going so far as to write your own world for them.

4) Shrug and forget about it. What you fear may never happen, and even if it does it doesn't mean people won't like the stories.

I'd go with that option, personally.

 

[Zenith77]

I get overjoyed when I find a writer who appears to be a one-trick pony that's sending out the pony I want to ride.

Nice to see someone really getting into the non-human category.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Two great rules:
1. Write what you know
2. Write what you feel good about
If you follow these rules, the readers will know and enjoy your work, the rest is just punctuation and grammar

That said, this does not mean walking down the street in the real-world with a sword or bow.

“Phew!” Just saved you some legal trouble in future there @Duleigh

You’re welcome.

 

[Duleigh]

That said, this does not mean walking down the street in the real-world with a sword or bow.

“Phew!” Just saved you some legal trouble in future there @Duleigh

You’re welcome.

Yes, but the rules say Write, not Do. (That should stand up in court, right?) Of course I live in rural areas, you don't see swords very often but guys with bows during hunting season is not an unusual sight here in the hinterland villages

 

[Djmac1031]

Stephen King has been writing horror for how many years now? Seems to work for him .

As others have said, I wouldn't worry about it, especially here.