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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48021
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48021
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

I'd venture to guess that you are caught in the worldbuilding trap. Worldbuilding is a perfectly fine hobby. You can make up characters and people and kingdoms and creatures. You can draw maps. You can imaging histories. This is all a perfectly fine way to keep yourself occupied on long rainy days. But it is not storytelling.

Storytelling is about putting a character to a test, forcing them to make some choice they don't want to make or to do some task they don't want to do (which is really the same thing). The character and the choice are made for each other. You need a choice that will be particularly painful for a character, and, equally, a character who will find a particular choice or task particularly painful.

The painful choice then gives you the shape of your story, as the character at first resists getting involved in the task that will lead them to the choice, then tries to get out of making the choice, and then is finally forced into making it, and then proves that they have (or have not) truly made it.

Every other event in the story is creating the conditions under which the main character will be forced to make that choice. Every other character in the story is there to play a part in creating those incidents. Everything bends toward that one climactic moment of choice and the denouement that proves the choice was made. (You can recast this in terms of task rather than choice if you wish. That image seems to be more palatable to some.)

It is really not about making your characters different, therefore. It is about making characters that fit the roles they need to play in building the arc of the story. If you work every character out in advance, there is a pretty good chance that they are not going to be the right characters to shape the story in the way it needs to go, and/or that you will simply have more than you need. But if each character plays a unique role in shaping the story towards its desired climax, chances are they will be different enough from each other to not cause concern.

In other words, design you characters for the job they have to do. If the characters fit their jobs, chances are you won't have a problem with duplication or sameness.

Original score: 22