 Hello my name's Jackie and welcome back to my channel. If you're new here I'm an aspiring writer and if you're not new here you know the current work in progress is my fantasy hot mess titled as such because it is a hot mess. So for new people, context, this is a book that I first wrote in university, it's now been in my head for the 15 years and a couple of years ago I decided I was going to pick it up again, took a brief stab at it in I'm going to say 2017 and then fully committed to it but also writing in 2019 so in Camp Nana Raimo in July 2019 I finished a new draft completely new. There are only two things that I kept from the original which were the inciting incident or turning point and the final epic dungeon battle scene and the problem is it still doesn't work so I'm currently looking at it again trying to write another new draft and I'm worried that I might have already told this story or I'm telling it again or there are so many elements from this that I've put into other ideas and other work that there's no point in revisiting this story. So to give you context in 2019 and 2020 I've worked on and by worked on I mean either plotted or maybe drafted or started drafting a few different projects. Of these three of them do have a few similarities so they are fantasy hot mess, powerless which is my YA superheros meets the russian mafia book and vampire board games which is a book I plotted for Nana Raimo 2019 and then chose to write powerless instead. In all of these the emotional heart of the story is like a sibling or very close friend relationship so in powerless it's Hannah and her sister Maria. In fantasy hot mess it's Peri and her best friend Madeira who they've basically been together at boarding school since they were five so they're basically sisters. In vampire board games it was going to be the main characters twin cousins and similarly to fantasy hot mess they'd all been living in the same house since they were born so basically really close sibling relationships. Vampire board games I don't have as much information on because I haven't written it but powerless and fantasy hot mess bad things happen to the people that the protagonist is really attached to especially in the build up to the final battle scene then we get into the antagonists and in all of these books the antagonists are the elder parental figures so in powerless it's literally her father or father figure. In fantasy hot mess there is a group of like parental figures they're the masters and one of them is the big antagonist in book one there's also another one from the same cohort of people who's going to be the antagonist in future books and then in the vampire board games book the antagonists were like the elders ultimately and then I also noticed that in my dark night of the soul moments I tend to lock up my protagonists so in powerless Hannah and actually I should I should have said this at the beginning of the video but if you're worried about spoilers don't watch but in powerless the dark night moment is Hannah gets caught by her father and locked up in fantasy hot mess Perry gets caught by the majors who are uprising and gets locked up in the underground dungeon in the vampire board games book the protagonist gets caught by the elders and locked up and I've been a bit worried about this because is there any point in telling multiple stories if I only have one story to tell do I need to change things if the same patterns keep coming up or is it okay and this is what I'm not quite sure about because I recently decided to reread this savage song by V.E. Schwab. V.E. Schwab is one of my favourite authors besides my recent video on the invisible life of Addie LaRue which I was not a fan of but in general I am a big fan of her books and one of the things I noticed though when reading this savage song is that the characters are very similar to some of her other characters so Schwab has this tendency to have soft boys and hard girls or hufflepuff boys and slithering girls so in the shades of magic trilogy she's got Lila Bard who's a thief she wants to be a pirate she's a pickpocket she's very hard she's a very good with a knife she doesn't want to trust anyone then you've got Kel who you know wants to take care of his brother Rye wants to be accepted in the family and here's a little bit hard because he's had to be because of the nature of his job and the amount of magical power he has but there's definitely the soft girl hard boy dynamic in this savage song it's the exact same thing you've got Kate Harker who we meet after she burns down a chapel at the Catholic boarding school where she has been sent and she is determined to prove that she is hard and ruthless and that no one can beat her and this is a big part of her journey is the reputation she wants to establish for herself how tough she wants to prove herself as being in her father's eyes meanwhile the other character in that book August is a monster who wants to be a human and he is soft and sensitive and loves his music and doesn't want to hurt anyone doesn't want to eat because he eats souls and ends up starving himself to his own detriment so again same dynamic and then we get the invisible life of Addie LaRue where you've got Addie or Adeline who is not like other girls she doesn't want to get married doesn't want to have a family I don't think she is initially hard but I do think she becomes a bit harder over time and that's because if you're not familiar with the premise of that book she wants to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets so she doesn't have the luxury of feeling for other people because it's so painful when they go through a door or they go to sleep and then wake up and have no idea who she is but even aside from the necessity of her being hard her hardness is evident when you contrast her with Henry who I didn't realize until I read this savage song again but he is August grown up like they even both have black curly hair but he is um she Veeshwab describes him as a boy who's born with a broken heart and how he always seems to feel too much and give too much and anytime that he isn't enough for someone or someone breaks up with him or he disappoints his parents it's too much for him to bear and he really struggles with feeling too much and he doesn't know how to feel and be happy and I think one of the reasons why Addie seems hard is she has none of that in comparison to Henry who has so much beyond these soft boy hard girl protagonists though when I was rereading this savage song they also noticed one of the antagonists was quite similar to one of the antagonists in one of her other books so one of the antagonists in this savage song is August's brother Leo who is almost fanatical about the work they do he feels it's not described as being sent by God but there's this sense of purpose and almost they've got this divine right to cleanse the world and make it better and that was actually quite reminiscent of Eli in vicious and vengeful so Eli is someone who has superpowers and takes it upon himself to go out and kill other people with superpowers because and it's almost the same thing he has this very evangelical um attitude and believes almost sees himself as the chosen one so on one hand I was going through this loop realizing that a lot of my books have the same stuff similar antagonists similar core relationships similar dark nights of the soul and I was worried that it was a problem and I didn't know whether like I should stop trying to write the books that I naturally come up with and maybe like throw them out and try to write something that's completely different and then I reread this savage song and it got me thinking about how this author who I really admire who does work that I love seems to have tendencies and patterns and habits that come up in her own writing so it made me wonder like is it really that much of a problem and if someone who is written I think 18 books now and is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and has this huge fandom if someone like that can have similar elements in multiple stories and still have that following and still have that success and still you know have books that are not even I don't even want to comment on like the fandom so much because I think there are lots of things with fandoms that are not very good quality but even from like a publishing perspective like her publishers have published multiple books which have the same things so maybe it isn't as much of a problem as I think so I'd be really curious to hear thoughts on this one are you in a similar position to me where you do tend to tell similar stories or the stories you tell have common elements that seem to pop up again and again too do you think this is a problem and is it natural that one author is going to explore similar themes throughout the body of her work or should she be ensuring that each book is completely distinct and unique and then finally do you know any other authors who seem to have these patterns coming up in their work I do have a couple at the back of my mind but I'd be curious to see who you think of so please let me know in the comments below and I will see you next time bye