For me, I simply like the story I am telling.
I am not trying to create some grand master piece, I do not have any sort of goal-type criteria of what the story must be, or any other sort of 'meta' goal in writing. There is no hyperbolic "artistic vision" to follow or master.
I am simply writing a story that I would like to read. I have main characters that I like, and whom I would not mind meeting IRL. They are generally doing things that I would be fine with a friend doing, i.e. they have morals/ethics that are reasonably similar to my own, though certainly not the same as mine, especially given their different personalities. The characters have goals they are pursuing, and generally trying to live a happy life.
But no world is perfect, and sometimes they have to deal with stuff they don't want to deal with. It makes things more interesting.
That said, sure, there are sometimes sections or chapters that do not flow easily and that I have to re-write later to be satisfied with, but that is a technical issue with the writing itself. The story stays the same.
I like reading stories like this, so I wrote a story in the style of the stories that I like to read. Which pretty much summarizes my advice: Read a lot, figure out which stories you enjoy reading the most, write a story like those stories.
Don't try to be 'different' just to be different. Do things differently simply because they match the world you want to build and the story you want to tell, and if there is no singular thing that happens to stand out as 'different', that's fine too. There are a million ways to tell any sort of story concept, and your writing is unique to you
Stories that go out of their way to be different just to distinguish themselves tend to be annoying, because it is clear what the author is doing and in the process they are sacrificing good writing on the altar of 'different'.
