Thematic or Repetitious

As I get more and more stories under my belt, I worry that I am getting repetative. Clearly, there are some central themes that you see over and over in my works, but I am concerned that each story will become too close to others. I have read other people's work that is very good to start with, but after a dozen chapters, or two or three stories, I realize that I'm just reading the same thing with a different name, or in some cases, it's completely the same.

In published fiction I've found the same thing. I've read series that became very repetitive, or even worse, an author who wrote three different series, which I really enjoyed, but whose scenes were practically interchangeable.

As a good author (which I strive to be), its my job to make sure that I keep each story different enough. It's often a challenge, because as I've said before, many of my stories write themselves, and even when I planned to go a particular way, I surprise myself by heading back to the familar. At first, this was a good thing; I think it gave the story a more natural flow. Now I think I'm going to have to be careful when I do this, and try to stick to the original themes that I thought were the ones that made a good new story.

M.