if you're discouraged that the stories you wrote for your characters are "boring, cliche, bland" or "nothing special", you have to remember that every story starts out that way.
i was like this during my teenage years. i wanted to start something big with them, i wanted to write webcomics, i wanted to make people care about my OCs.
i wanted my stories to matter in some way to someone. i wanted them to be remembered as something cool, have people love them.
i spent so many years, tearing down my stories and characters because i couldn't meet my own expectations. it just was never, ever enough.
you have no idea how much i went through because nothing was ever good enough. you have no idea how much i cried over this shit. and i thought it was just dumb, it's just me being shit at story writing and character development, and the only solution is to get good, right?
so i stopped trying for a long time. the past several years, i didn't bother anymore. it was only recently that i began giving OCs a shot again.
here's the thing i did differently: i didn't care whether it was good or not.
i met someone who changed my life, who is now my best friend and partner. we made OCs together. it was the first time in a long time i made OCs who weren't for someone else's sake.
Tes started out as a shitpost character. he was literally a shitpost of the triumphant wes skin from don't starve together. i never intended to make him anything more than that.
so what happened? i had fun. i enjoyed letting him interact with my friend, and through those interactions he grew into the clingy, scared detective he is today alongside my crew of other OCs who started similarly.
all because i let myself have fun and stopped trying to care about meeting expectations. and you know what i found out?
you can write a story as beautiful as you want to the general public, but it will never mean anything unless it means something to you. i was so focused on making other people love my OC and stories, that i forgot to love them myself.
the creators of mlp:fim didn't expect the series to go past four seasons. they didn't think anyone would care enough about their writing that it would go up to twice that amount or have a few movies on it. their show wasn't anything but the average children's cartoon.
attack on titan started out as a messily drawn little concept art manga. it was nothing special. but it is now, isn't it?
today, my characters that i have heavily built upon, i have cried about their emotional scenes while writing their backstories with the most heart wrenching angst. they have meaningful interactions with my other OCs and my friends' OCs.
give your characters, stories, and creations a chance, and by that, do things because you find it fun and it makes you happy. screw what everyone else thinks.
all that matters is that you love your creations.
everything starts out as a little seed. and for it to grow, you have to nurture it, love it, give it sunlight. don't weed out your garden before it has a chance to grow.