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Concerned my stories have very similar paths for the MCs

I have four stories that I am working on, hopefully to become novels. While the worlds, magic, and genres are all different, they all have a MC who is reluctant or uninterested, or even interested for the wrong reasons, to go on the quest/adventure and it is through the struggle of the conflict and the comradery of the side characters that they grow and evolve into accepting not just vocational responsibility but moral and ethical responsibility as well. I know the reluctant hero is a staple of the traditional 'hero's journey' trope, which in of itself isn't bad by any means, I am just wondering if my stories and main characters will be too similar if they are all "reluctant heroes". I know that like most things in writing it comes down to execution. But have any of you struggled with thinking your MCs or their archetype is too similar?
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
We've got a rep for being a bit rough on parents. Also, everybody's gay. Also, everybody's a girl. Also, everybody's white (this one kills me).

If you're feeling something's off, then yes, you need to fix it. This is an internal issue. We (Scribes) can give all the advice you can swallow, but at the end of the day it's you asking your characters and yourself if you're pushing hard enough, far enough. Are you reaching for your limits or paddling around in your comfort zone? Only you know the answer to that. But, when you ask, you have to accept the answer the characters give you. It will mean a lot more work, but that's okay. We can do work, here.
 
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In my opinion, all that matters is that you enjoy writing those stories. If you love writing stories where you always have a reluctant hero, then go wild and write a million of them. If however you feel that it's repetitive and you don't enjoy writing it, then change it up.

From a reader perspective it doesn't matter. Some readers love reading the same story over and over again. Some hate it. Some people will read two of your novels, read something else, and then read another one. Every reader is different. Just as an example, you will find very specific Romance genres, where you pretty much need to hit specific story beats otherwise the readers will dislike the story. The Hero's Journey is another example. You can keep writing Hero's Journey stories and they will keep finding readers. They're not everyone's cup of tea, but for some readers they're all they ever need.
 
You might also find that only one of your stories is ever finished and published (maybe after mining some ideas from the ones that wind up on the cutting room floor).

Problem solved.
 
Thanks for the advice. I get very self conscious when it comes to trying to make my work original. I take so much inspiration from other sources I often am concerned that I am instead copying or ripping them off. I know the sayings of "there's no original stories" and the like. I also what looking at it from the perspective of would it annoy a reader to see the same author repeat the "same" story over and over. I am the world's greatest worrywart and often times get paralyzed with indecisiveness. But actually working on my projects is helping me boost my confidence in myself.
 

Daan Doornbos

Minstrel
Thanks for the advice. I get very self conscious when it comes to trying to make my work original. I take so much inspiration from other sources I often am concerned that I am instead copying or ripping them off. I know the sayings of "there's no original stories" and the like. I also what looking at it from the perspective of would it annoy a reader to see the same author repeat the "same" story over and over. I am the world's greatest worrywart and often times get paralyzed with indecisiveness. But actually working on my projects is helping me boost my confidence in myself.

I agree with most of the advice given above. Basically, if there's doubt then there is something that you need to act upon. It's a challenge to find readers. All you can do is give your personal best. At the same time, enjoy the process.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Having the same characters, plot, and story lines has been a staple of Dream Works for a very long time and its not hurt them any.

If its the story you want to tell, go and tell it. You would have to break out into a pretty large fanbase people to notice anyway. If you get there, mission accomplished ;)

If you want to increase the range, do a another book.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Another thing to keep in mind is that at least some of your readers will have read a *ton* of whatever trope you use. They will likely insist your prose be brilliant, your use of the trope be surprising, and so on.

Another portion will have read little or nothing in the sub-genre, and will be surprised and delighted (assuming you tell the story well) by most every aspect of your tale. Meanwhile, still other will have experiences that fall somewhere in between and will have a whole range of expectations and reactions.

To thine own self be true.

I just made that up. Pretty good, huh?

But it's what you'll hear from most everyone around here. First write your story. Make it as good as you can make it, and don't worry too much about originality, which is absolutely not an absolute.

The main thing, the first and last and everything all the way through thing, is this: care about the story. Care about the characters. Get as close as you can to them. Put yourself into every moment. Look around the room, survey the field. Enter into every character present and think, how does this character react in this precise moment? If you do that, if you put yourself deep into the story, then all these other considerations will fade away.

Don't worry. They'll be back, later. But at least they won't keep you from writing as honestly as you possibly can.
 
Another thing to realize is that the story frame matters less than your prose, plot specifics, and setting.

What I mean there is that plenty of stories that feel very different use the same story structure. Just take the Hero's Journey. Star Wars 4, the Hobbit, The Rage of Dragons, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and The Eye of the World all follow the Hero's Journey pretty closely. And yet, they're all very different stories. Because of setting and prose and plot specifics.

Some readers will spot the similarities. Often people who studied stories more closely. I've read books where after 2 or 3 chapters I noticed that I was reading a Hero's Journey type story, and I could easily spot all the specifics as they came along. I still enjoyed the story in the same way you can enjoy watching a movie for the second time or re-reading a book. And I'd recomend it to someone else.

And I agree with skip.knox that whatever you write, it will be someone's first encounter with it. Eragon (another hero's journey) was very derivative. However, it was new for a lot of readers (mainly YA, with their first encounter with hero's journey), and it became a big hit. Similarly, I once read a complaint Terry Pratchett received from a young reader, who said he'd enjoyed the story, but he felt the Unseen University was a rip-off from Hogwarts. Terry Pratchett published the first Discworld novel 14 years before Harry Potter came out, but the reader had no clue about that. It was just the order he read the books in.
 

dollyt8

Troubadour
I don't think it's a bad thing to write similar character archetypes, but it can strengthen your writing abilities to widen the scope of your works. If you do want to stay with those archetypes, my suggestion would be to make everything else as interesting as possible, like the setting, magic, and side characters. Then I don't think it matters as much if your main character is similar across several works. It also depends on how many you're planning on actually publishing.

But I would say it's probably a good exercise to try experimenting with some other story frameworks as well. You can try to deviate from the Hero's Journey or do a different spin on it. For example, I had an idea for a comedic story that instead of doing the traditional reluctant hero has a hero that's all in and the folks who got him into saving the world in the first place start to regret it because he leaves so much chaos in his wake. I never wrote the story, but I started with the idea of the Hero's Journey and thought "how can I get away from the traditional way of handling this?" Or you could think in terms of a good revenge story, since that's a very well-known arc that you can follow while stretching your writing a bit.

Maybe consider looking for other types of stories that you enjoy in media and following those formulas, just as an exercise and to see if you like it. Any time I watch a movie or read a book, I'm thinking of something from it that I can use. Write down the main story beats and see how much you can differentiate from the source material when you tackle the same story beats.

TLDR: There are lots of different types of heroes, and experimenting with writing about them can help you stretch your writing.
 
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