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You have a pattern
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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I've written two, too-long fiction books. After the second one, I realized I only have one story to write, and can't think of anything else. I tried to start a third one, and it's just turning into the same story--everything I like. So, I think I'm done writing.
Try writing a story from randomly selected elements. You might surprise yourself when writing under constraints.
Literally! Restrictions make us more creative, I always loved writing prompts for this. You could come up with some elements and number them and roll a die to choose them
Take a look at the Shonen anime community. There's a huge market for the same story repeated over and over.
It's all about whether you enjoy writing it.
Oh my gosh. Or friggin' isekai.
"I Was Dead and Now I'm in Another World That Works on JRPG Mechanics and I'm a _______ ?!?!?!?!?!!!!!????"
Step 1. Fill in the blank with something clever.
Step 2. Too late! Someone already made it, and it's got an 11 episode anime on Crunchyroll that ends abruptly and will never see continuation.
... "Reincarnated As a Vending Machine" is legit good though, the way it leans into its ridiculousness. XD
It doesn’t matter if someone’s already done it, because they are all either stalled or cancelled. Even the good ones are never finished and can be blazed through in an afternoon.
Mandatory magic power classification orb that explodes when touched by the MC
Lol as well as a clever hook gimmick that stops being relevant by episode/issue 2 or 3. XD
Or, my personal least favorite, actually interesting premise followed through on then absolutely ruined by horny weeb nonsense.
As a horny almost-weeb it's the nonsense I'm mostly offended by, to be clear.
This is basically what Brandon Sanderson does and they're all good. It helps that his favorite thing is inventing new magic systems.
Just write the same story in a different setting. If you're good at love stories, try a fantasy love story or a sci-fi love story or an occult noir love story.
Go look up the belgariad and then the other series by the same author. Wonderful writing and enjoyable story but every series is the same story with different characters.
And settings that, ten years after you get done with them and liked the whole thing based purely on the characters, make you go "wait, that was actually super racist and more than a little pedophilic"
Then you find out about the child abuse charges and some things start making more sense.
Yeah, I read them as a teen and really liked them, so read them (well, the Belgariad, at least, then kinda stalled on the next series) to my daughter more recently and didn't find them quite as enjoyable. They were still fun but full of a bunch of questionable shit. I'd say it was very boomeresque with a lot of its humour. Also the weird recurring "oh drat, you have out-negotiated me again, Silk!"
Well damn. That was an unwelcome surprise this afternoon. The more you know I guess.
Michael Moorcock made a career out of writing the same story over and over again.
wait until you realize all stories are basically one story
The same character living the same story in a different setting is way different like the classical white Knight war guy in Arthurian myth or the crusades or the us civil war or each world war are way different then you get past world war two or world war one if he's Russian or Chinese and things get real real different
Like does that setting have a side that's the good guys or both kind of have a point or the whole war is nihilistic stupid or its like a Hitler versus Dracula kind of situation and how does that character change when fights are long affairs with swords or industrial meat grinders with machine guns and chlorine gas like the last gasp of the noble knight guy was von Richthofen and arguably your chuck Jaeger's with shreds of that cultural cachet spilling into civilian astronauts and now you have like sociopath spooky operator guys as the war expert people and how does your white Knight gut fit in with each of those and that's just like stuff closely based on reality how does he cope with fighting a hive mind or giant robots or being a wizard or the same guy but he's more a science hero macguyvering his way with science magic or breaching the warp core or whatever
You can write the same story again and it's still good did you ever watch 'samurai champloo' it can totally work