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Quick question, I figured out my MC's but...

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
I have two versions, one would be about the MC's father who became corrupted once mythological supernatural beings started to take over and run havoc across the world, so he holds a no holds tournament battle for the best fighters of mankind to join, with the winner receiving the prize money and the father's organizations best tech weaponry that can help combat the supernatural in the coming war. The MC and his mother are a spider demon and the mother returns as a risen phoenix after the father killed her and he tried to kill the son too. They would be a Japanese family.

This MC's father became a member of a cult after traveling the world to learn different martial arts across the world. He then became full of corruption with his money and power, he had a missing son with a fling he had with a woman from the cult. Once back in the US he met a new woman and settled with having his MC son. But because the mother and MC are both descendents of some type of demon, the father tried to have them killed, the mother died but resurrected as another demon form. The father then finds out his other son from the cult woman and they both together hold this fighting tournament to test who will be the strongest with the plan to secretly take the winning fighters souls. This family would be white Americans.

Do both MC's stories sound too similar? :(
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
I'm confused, what do you mean "two versions?" Do you mean this is the same story and you do not know what set up/backstory you want to go with? Or are these two separate stories? Or two different characters?
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
I'm confused, what do you mean "two versions?" Do you mean this is the same story and you do not know what set up/backstory you want to go with? Or are these two separate stories? Or two different characters?
Two separate stories with two different MC's but they sound similar :(
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
With all things in writing, it comes down to the execution. Rick Riordan has Percy Jackson and Magnus Chase and the characters/premise are very similar...but that was by design. Percy Jackson did well and he wanted to try that with Norse stuff, hence Magnus Chase. "Rick Riordan presents" is an "imprint" for stories that are also like that. But the stories are still very different, the characters are different, but they have the same target audience so there are a lot of similarities, and that's okay!

Tons of writers write stories that are very similar to each other and that is okay. There's certain things we like to write about or tropes we like to use, and that's okay! but if the stories are TOO similar, than YOU run the risk of mixing stuff up. If both stories have the tournament be the meat of the story, well, tournaments are really boring, IMO. It's just a bunch of fight scenes, most of which the MC is not involved in. In anime/manga, it's just filler, which is not very fun to read/watch for most people. It doesn't move the story forward, it just stalls as we wait for all these battles to resolve. Can you come up with that many unique fighters, powers, battles? Probably not, most mangaka can't, and since you only have words, you're even further limited in what you can "show" the reader. The mangaka of One Piece has to use the fan wiki to look up the powers for his own characters because there are just so MANY even HE can't keep them straight. Your readers aren't going to have something like that to rely on.

What makes an action scene compelling is that there are stakes besides "I don't want to die." An epic fantasy battle is epic because failure means the world will be plunged into darkness forever. The superhero needs to beat the bad guy in time so they can disarm the bomb before it blows up the orphanage. If you lose a fight in a tournament, oh no, you're out of the tournament, but are there any repercussions to that? What might be interesting for you to do is to have one story where the MC NEEDS to win at all costs (to save someone/something) and the other story the MC NEEDS to lose (because winning means certain death going into this big war or they're going to be turned into a living weapon or something). Now you have two characters with two VERY different motivations, so how they approach their fights is going to be totally different, so each story will have a very different tone.
 
Do both MC's stories sound too similar?

Yes. For me.

But then again, repetition is its own sort of established trope. I mean, how many Bloodsports do we need? Rambos? Final Destinations? Nightmare on Elm Streets?

The list goes on and on.

Ask yourself another question.

Imagining all the chapters, the scenes, and the various developments in these two stories, how many ways can you make them different?

I think, if we had a contest here and told everyone to take those two ideas and expand on both...you'd be presented with a wide range of stories that are quite different.

The details matter. All the details. Not just the ones that seem the same.
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
If you lose a fight in a tournament, oh no, you're out of the tournament, but are there any repercussions to that?
I was going to say that there would be two major bad things that would happen and the two MC's have their reasons for entering, not just to win a competition but because there are high stakes. The Japanese MC is a supernatural and his dad wants to destroy and control them and show everyone his organization has the best equipped tech to take out the supernatural and this MC must stop his dad at all costs.

The other MC is also a supernatural demon and his dad's tournament is to get ahold of all supernatural not only to control it but use it for his own gain of power and so he himself can become beyond the powers of the supernatural. This MC wants to stop him and also get his revenge for what his dad did to him in the past by trying to kill him and killed his mother.

:(
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
The details matter. All the details. Not just the ones that seem the same.
I can make them different but would it be bad if they both had evil dads that run some type of bloodsport full out battle event? And both their mothers were killed but both mothers were brought back? :(
 
I can make them different but would it be bad if they both had evil dads that run some type of bloodsport full out battle event? And both their mothers were killed but both mothers were brought back?

You can still make these quite different, even so.

It really depends on what you want to do.

Variations on a theme can be appealing, interesting, intriguing, and entertaining. They can also be boring.

I'd suggest writing one, if you want to do it, then see how you feel about the other. You might lose interest. I suspect these two stories will end up being too similar, but that's really up to you and what you do with them. I do think you've more or less already answered your own question, and the way you answered it sends up a warning flag for me, heh.
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
I'd suggest writing one, if you want to do it, then see how you feel about the other. You might lose interest. I suspect these two stories will end up being too similar, but that's really up to you and what you do with them. I do think you've more or less already answered your own question, and the way you answered it sends up a warning flag for me, heh.
What warning flag would that be? Because they sound too identical? :(
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
If in your mind this is still the case even after you consider some differences, the chances are good that any differences you write into the stories won't be enough. I'm just guessing here.
What if one MC was forced to fight and the other one chose to join for a certain cause?
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
You sound like you DO want to write these two things that are very similar. So...just do that. A big part of writing is creating because you love to create and you make something that makes you happy. So if writing essentially the same thing twice is what you want to do, cool! Do that. If you're aiming to be as sell-able as possible then, yeah, we're going to have to have some further conversations about what you should do, but that's probably not the case here.
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
You sound like you DO want to write these two things that are very similar. So...just do that. A big part of writing is creating because you love to create and you make something that makes you happy. So if writing essentially the same thing twice is what you want to do, cool! Do that. If you're aiming to be as sell-able as possible then, yeah, we're going to have to have some further conversations about what you should do, but that's probably not the case here.
But I want to create not just what makes me happy but also what the readers and audiences will enjoy just as much :(

Maybe I can combine both of them into one character? But how could I if one MC is white American, with both white parents and other MC is Japanese, with both Japanese parents? :(
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
Is there a reason why they have to be THOSE races/ethnicities/nationalities? Is there a reason why your MC can't be multi-racial?
 
It doesn't matter.

As long as you haven't written any of the stories, these characters don't exist and can't be similar to anything. So write the first story and then think about what you want to write next. Some people love writing the same story over and over again (just look at any Dirk Pitt novel by Clive Cussler, and he's wildly succesful) and some people want to write very different stories.

Also, as others have mentioned, it all comes down to execution. Just an example, try to guess the story from the follow description:
A young wizard named Harry finds himself an orphan. His adoptive parents are cruel and neglectful. However, he finds out he has magical powers and he learns his most important lessons (those of the heart) from a old, kind, and powerful wizard. He fights a variety of magical opponents and has a definite disrespect for authority. He eventually defeats the evil overlord, but finds the kind old wizard he respected so much wasn't as perfect as he originally seemed.

I bet you guessed Harry Potter (I would be very surprised by any other answer). However, I was actually refering to The Dresden files. A 5 line description is meaningless about the actual story. There are a dozen (actually, probably a lot more) novels where I could use the 5 line description from Lord of the Rings. And they are all different. I could even take one of your descriptions and use that to write a story and it would be completely different from what you put down. So just write the first story. There is no point in actually worrying about anything else in relation to the story until it is written.
 
✧・゚: *✧・゚:* I think the MC's stories are different enough, but for everything happening, you have to show why and how in your writing. How was their father corrupted? Why did he go to America? Why does he want to kill his family just because they are demons?*:・゚✧*:・゚✧

Answer the questions for every action and you will have a good story and it will make sense. I like what you've got. Keep going!
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
It doesn't matter.

As long as you haven't written any of the stories, these characters don't exist and can't be similar to anything. So write the first story and then think about what you want to write next. Some people love writing the same story over and over again (just look at any Dirk Pitt novel by Clive Cussler, and he's wildly succesful) and some people want to write very different stories.

Also, as others have mentioned, it all comes down to execution. Just an example, try to guess the story from the follow description:
A young wizard named Harry finds himself an orphan. His adoptive parents are cruel and neglectful. However, he finds out he has magical powers and he learns his most important lessons (those of the heart) from a old, kind, and powerful wizard. He fights a variety of magical opponents and has a definite disrespect for authority. He eventually defeats the evil overlord, but finds the kind old wizard he respected so much wasn't as perfect as he originally seemed.

I bet you guessed Harry Potter (I would be very surprised by any other answer). However, I was actually refering to The Dresden files. A 5 line description is meaningless about the actual story. There are a dozen (actually, probably a lot more) novels where I could use the 5 line description from Lord of the Rings. And they are all different. I could even take one of your descriptions and use that to write a story and it would be completely different from what you put down. So just write the first story. There is no point in actually worrying about anything else in relation to the story until it is written.
You're right about Dirk Pitt. And I was thinking for a moment Harry Potter, when you mentioned Dresden Files, it made me remember how in a sense they're premises are very similar. So I think I can make both these stories very similar with a slightly different execution?

Like the Japanese MC's father was also some kind of shapesifting phoenix demon and the mother was a demon as well? But the American MC's father was always just a human and the mother was only a demon. Or the Japanese MC's father was human but the mother born a spider demon and the American MC's father was shapeshifting dragon demon and his mother was human all along? I don't know what to do anymore :(
 
Actually, my main point was that you should just start writing the first story and stop worrying about the second. Assuming this is your first novel you're writing, then finishing it can take anywhere from 2 months to a year. In the process you will learn an aweful lot about writing. Once you've finished that first story, you may find that you know how to make the second story better, or maybe that you want to write a completely different story, or maybe that you want to write the first story again but better, or any of another dozen options.

So just write the first story. Until you have that down on paper it doesn't matter if in your head the second story looks similar or not. Since the first story doesn't exist until it is written the second story can't be similar to it.
 

WonderingSword5

Troubadour
✧・゚: *✧・゚:* I think the MC's stories are different enough, but for everything happening, you have to show why and how in your writing. How was their father corrupted? Why did he go to America? Why does he want to kill his family just because they are demons?*:・゚✧*:・゚✧

Answer the questions for every action and you will have a good story and it will make sense. I like what you've got. Keep going!
Thank you. They may be similar but hopefully it's a process I can show how they do differ. Only problem is they don't differ greatly :(

And the American MC's father had traveled, then came back to America, whereas the Japanese MC's father wouldn't of traveled far.
Actually, my main point was that you should just start writing the first story and stop worrying about the second. Assuming this is your first novel you're writing, then finishing it can take anywhere from 2 months to a year. In the process you will learn an aweful lot about writing. Once you've finished that first story, you may find that you know how to make the second story better, or maybe that you want to write a completely different story, or maybe that you want to write the first story again but better, or any of another dozen options.

So just write the first story. Until you have that down on paper it doesn't matter if in your head the second story looks similar or not. Since the first story doesn't exist until it is written the second story can't be similar to it.
I agree, I'll try my best and hopefully something good will come out of it. Is there any advice you can give that can make both MC's and their father's different? Should one of them maybe not be about a fighting tournament or just try and write both as tournaments as my original plan? I know it might do bad :(
 
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