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I wrote a long story about a certain character, the following year, i was writing a different story, but the character felt familiar. I realised that, personality wise, he was the same as the other hero, unfortunately, the two storylines could not possibly contain the same character. What do you do then? Surely if you change the personality, you change the story? Anyone else have a view?
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Do a survey of literature, and you will find that, throughout history, there are plenty of characters that resemble others. I see nothing wrong with writing similar characters. BUT if the two stories start to seem very similar as well, then you may be falling into the rut of writing what you know you can write, rather than challenging yourself to do something new. OSC talks about this somewhere, where he was going to write Speaker for the Dead as a music-related book until his wife pointed out that he had done that a few times already. So he needed to break out of that pattern.
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thanks sojoyful. as matter of fact, they both started with character in bed, though at different places and under different circumstances.
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The manga and anime artist Osama Tezuka (he invented ASTROBOY and KIMBA THE WHITE LION for those who remember those among many, many other things, including his manga series about the Buddha which just got translated into English) had a "repetory company" of characters which he would re-use in different roles with slightly different personailties, looks and names. Introduce a character, kill them off, bring them back three hundred years later in the next book, you can do anything in fiction. So, in summary, you do not have change either the story or the character. Do whatever works.
[This message has been edited by azure_galaxie (edited November 22, 2005).]
posted
Just be careful that the two stories are not marketed as related and you can use the same character with a different name.
For short stories, as long as they are not serial, this is fine. Even for novels, this is fine, unless they take place in the same world.
When you become successful, no one will care that you have the same character type in more than one story. Fans will care if two stories set in the same world have different heroes who are exactly the same.
No one really cares that some actors play the same part with different names in different movies. Along the same lines, even fewer people will care if you do the same thing in your writing.
Generally your hero is going to be an idealized version of you, whether you want it or not. Every MC you ever have will be distinguishable as yours to a good reader. Part of why fan's fawn over one author is because they like their style and their style frequently has to do with a degree of repitition of character.
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