Small children are usually better at making interesting drawings than older children (and often the adults they become). At a certain point, children often become self-conscious of their drawing performance and take refuge in stereotypes (stick figures, etc.)

They stop simply letting what they see or what is on their minds pass through themselves and emerge on the paper. Once this happens, you can do 500 or 5000 drawings- they will still be subject to the same grasping at stereotypes, the safe, the mediocre.

Learning to draw in art school involves a phase (quite painful for some) of learning to just see again. And more subtle temptations to stereotype will continue.

As with acting. When you are in your head, planning, judging the quality of your or other people’s ideas or performance: the audience is up there with you- and interest flags. First order of business is to learn to be yourself, and then yourself within (or through) the structure of physical impulses of the character.

Writing for the stage requires inhabiting the characters, including letting their tensions emerge, entwine and ramify. Even though eventual pruning is healthy, trying to completely master or understand a character risks leading to flattening and stereotype.

A character that still gives the author something meaty to chew on does the same favour for the audience.