: Re: How to keep yourself from writing the same story? I've been planning out the same story and revising it over and over since I was a child (that makes it 10 years now) and finally after so

A popular meme going around is that there are only five/seven/ten/whatever different stories. For example, every love story is the same story. The genders of the players will be different and the specifics of the obstacles that stand in the way of the lovers will be different, but they meet, they have a falling out, they prove their love for each other, and they live happily ever after. What makes the story interesting to the romance reader is the cleverness of the variations on the theme. Vary from that pattern and incur their wrath.

Pick another genre and another pattern is likely to appear. I follow several best selling authors who keep telling me the same mystery or thriller tale. I keep following them because I like the characters and because the authors decorate the story with different looks. It is not mindless fluff but it is also not mind-twisting-plot convolutions. I do not want to read fluff every day but when I need to be comforted, it is just the thing.

These story patterns work. Whether it is a love story or the hero's journey or some other well-worn trope, readers (and other consumers of fiction) understand what they are getting. A few facts about an unfamiliar topic, some innovative complications and resultant solutions, and a sprinkling of non-turgid dialogue make this version of the story (pattern) fresh and enjoyable (but not necessarily challenging).

Perhaps you are fretting over something that is not really a problem. I would suggest that you spend your time on basics of the craft. Create stories that work and that have clever decorations. Accept the fact that you, especially when you are starting out, are going to tread familiar ground. When that ground starts to get too familiar, add in some additional craft aspects: multiple point of view, flashbacks, multiple story lines, different tenses, different characters, and so on. Rinse, repeat! I suspect that you can follow that path (along with faithful readers) for a long time.

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: Re: How to keep yourself from writing the same story? I've been planning out the same story and revising it over and over since I was a child (that makes it 10 years now) and finally after so

More posts by @Carla500

: Describing shapes and objects While I absolutely agree, that descriptions should be experienced through the narrator's / protagonist's eyes in terms of personal involvement, I oftentimes find myself

: How to write mishearing/mispronouncing without lying to the reader? Sometimes the plot requires communication to partially break down between characters. A misheard or mispronounced word can have

: Preposition at the end of sentence Is it wrong to have a preposition at the end of sentence? In the context of writing a statement of purpose, I cannot of any substitute for the following

: Is Grammarly's "Engaging" metric trustworthy? Grammarly has an "engaging" metric on its web page when you submit a document for autocorrection. Is this metric trustworthy? What is it based upon?

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