In Hollywood, actors and musical artists are in the midst of award season. Unless they’re selecting their outfits to match a theme in what they’re promoting, they have a lot of pressure on them to come up with different gowns and the like to wear to each award show. If they dared to wear the same thing or something too similar to their past fashion choices, they’re setting themselves up for criticism.
In the various forms of art, originality is a guiding force. Nobody wants to be a so-called one trick pony. If actors become known for being the go-to leading lady or gentleman in rom-coms, they usually try to rebrand themselves to avoid getting what they deem a flat reputation. Likewise, we authors may worry about our books blending into one another because they have similar storylines. How can we find the balance between striving for originality and yet sticking to our strengths?
While we wouldn’t want to crank out the same basic plot with different character names, we also need to admit that, for the most part, audiences enjoy similar themes. That’s why we have main genres, all of which have a fan base. People gravitate toward what they enjoyed in the past, and they seek it out on the shelves to relive that cozy feeling they’ve had with similar stories. Nonetheless, they still crave a surprise and would likely get irritated if we just copied a beloved classic. Just the same, we ought not fret over a certain likeness to other works, since they would also be disappointed if we gave them a science fiction novel when they expect a romance.
This also applies to our individual body of work. Like I said earlier, we don’t want our books to run together to the point that people don’t even bother picking them up because they seem like the same story with a different title. Even so, there can be similar aspects of our plots we can weave in that can engage our reader with that familiar feeling.
A few months ago, I read the latest release by my favorite author, and though I prefer his previous titles over this one, I found myself connected most when I recognized elements that were reminiscent of those favorites of mine. Instead of thinking, “Ugh! He’s done that before,” I embraced those similarities. My imagination ended up linking those past storylines with this one, pondering that this character could be a relation or older version of those former ones.
I also learned this lesson from my musical preferences. Before I was born, my family was able to listen to a live performance of Richard Marx. With my mom pregnant with me, one of the songs they heard was his hit “Right Here Waiting”. Throughout the rest of her pregnancy, I would react to the song when it played on the radio, and to this day, it has an effect on me unlike any other song. More than that, though, a couple of other songs have impacted me in similar ways, and not too long ago, I realized why: they were also written by Richard Marx! I never knew it when I listened to them, but I suppose my ears and heart picked up on the similarities to that song.
We may not want to admit, but we are all creatures of habit and enjoy repetition to a large degree. Thus, we need not resent our tendency to revert to a familiar technique in our work or even be afraid someone is going to catch us doing it. Chances are they’ll find delight in that little reminder of our past titles, as long as we don’t make the outcome of them predictable.
Outside of Hollywood, we can all get away with wearing the same or similar outfits. At one point in my life, my whole wardrobe was red! Why do we do that? Because we know what colors and styles reflect well on us. Likewise, it’s not wrong to get comfortable in our own writing or art style. Doing so can help us grow, since we’re not always trying to learn something completely new to us. In turn, it can offer our readers that nostalgia that reminds them of what they enjoy from us. Like an art critic assessing the brush strokes of a famous painter, they’ll come away with the satisfaction of identifying our hallmark style and what endeared them to our work in the first place.
KarinaBartow.com 