-> "Each player takes a different volume of The ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant, and at the word "go" all open their books at random and start leafing through, scanning the pages. The winner is the first player to find the word "clench"."
->-- Nick Lowe, ''[[http://news.ansible.co.uk/plotdev.html The Well-Tempered Plot Device]]''

Authors have styles. It's common and acceptable that, when people write often, they start to develop a distinct way of writing, or an [[TheWesley arbitrary favouritism for one of their characters]], places, or even a specific name.

Some authors, though, have internalized a single style to such extent that it's noticeable in anything they happen to write, co-write, or in extreme cases, even inspire. There are extreme cases in which, without knowing who wrote the work you're watching/reading, you can say "Hey, it has to be !", because his/her style is too distinct and famous ''not'' to recognize.

Related to AuthorAppeal, AuthorCatchphrase. Compare HeyItsThatGuy.
----
!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

*Kunihiko Ikuhara (''SailorMoonS'', ''RevolutionaryGirlUtena''): lesbians, classical themes, and rose petals of invincibility.
*Chiaki J. Konaka is such a fan of HPLovecraft, he'll often place references to the CthulhuMythos in any series he works on. ''TheBigO'' had an episode featuring a megadeuce called "Dagon," ''DigimonAdventure02'' had an episode based on "The Call of Cthulhu" using Dagomon instead, and ''DigimonTamers'' had a small reference to a university often seen in Lovecraft stories. He also reuses several names (Alice, Juri, Reika) across most of his works, and he's also a fan of {{Reaction Shot}}s of the {{GASP}} and EyeTake kind (e.g. ''SerialExperimentsLain'', ''{{Texhnolyze}}'' and ''GhostHound'').
**Also in ''{{Digimon}}'', the Hypnos organization with their Yuggoth and Shaggai creations. Plus the very Lovecraftian variations on D-Reaper and its [=ADRs=]. ''Tamers'' was pretty much "Lovecraft For Japanese Children."
* Koichi Ohata always uses superhumans as main characters, and all his stories are TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture and feature cyborgs of some kind. Cases in point: ''MDGeist'', ''{{Genocyber}}'' and ''BakuretsuTenshi''.
** ''MDGeist'', despite claiming to be TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, is actually very, very far into the UsedFuture according to the manga... so it's a slight subversion of Ohata's style.
*The manga team {{CLAMP}} is known for HoYay, LesYay, dramatic CherryBlossoms, battles in TokyoTower, {{Crossovers}}, and CuteMascots, among others.
** Let's not forget their propensity for drawing people with very noodle-y looking bodies. It's only become more exaggerated as they've gone on.
* MohiroKitoh will use kids for main characters. And then he ''will'' [[HarmfulToMinors mess them up]] [[BreakTheCutie beyond compare]], while making a HumansAreBastards aesop out of it.
* {{Gainax}} will have seriously insecure characters complete with quasi-philosophical monologues. And [[MostCommonSuperpower large]] [[{{Gainaxing}} bouncy]] [[MostCommonSuperpower breasts.]]
* [[BeeTrain Koichi Mashimo]]'s protagonists have a distinct tendency to be strong-willed, [[BadassAdorable adorable, and deadly]] young women with a slightly [[BiTheWay ambiguous sexual identity]], a ton of [[GirlsWithGuns handguns]], and even more LesYay in-between. Also, the man just loves to use {{Subtext}} instead of spelling things out.
* NaokiUrasawa has a thing for {{Jigsaw Puzzle Plot}}s pitting ActionSurvivor protagonists against MagnificentBastard {{Big Bad}}s, all while giving both GenericCuteness and ContractualImmortality [[CastOfSnowflakes the]] [[AnyoneCanDie finger]].
* Pick a RumikoTakahashi manga. Any RumikoTakahashi manga. It'll have OnlySixFaces, LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, and the protagonist WILL be caught in at least a LoveTriangle, if not the LoveDodecahedron to end all [[LoveDodecahedron Love Dodecahedrons]]. Generally at least one of the prominent characters (if not several) will be an outright JerkAss to the rest of the cast while [[KarmaHoudini not getting called for it]], and another prominent character will be a raging pervert.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* ChrisClaremont could be said to have such characteristics, most notably his famously distinct yet uniform dialogue in which characters, regardless of education or current situation, inevitably speak in complex sentences, seldom finishing in less than a paragraph, using [[SesquipedalianLoquaciousness verbiage reminiscent of an educated Englishman]], with influences of culture and personality appearing only as interruptions in or minor affectations to otherwise wicked smooth speech. This, however, inevitably strives to capture the essence of the character, despite the abandonment of a unique speech pattern in favor of a common one, by exposing opinions, motivations, and past details that might otherwise have been difficult to illustrate.
** As well, certain phrases known as "Claremontisms" show up repeatedly in his work, and his foreign characters speak perfect English except for random interjections in their native language, tovarisch!
**A helpful list of typical Claremontisms [[http://stason.org/TULARC/art/comics-xbooks/68-What-s-a-Claremontism.html here]]. Also, as noted below, Claremont characters tend to be well-versed in myth, and a larger than strictly plausible number of them are SF lit geeks.
** Claremont is also well-known for creating strong, powerful heroines. Who happen to be ludicrously attractive.
* FrankMiller is famous for his ''hard-boiled'' narration, including a play-by-play on every punch, broken rib (it was always a broken rib) and the even nastier things the ''hero'' would do to the villain. This was parodied to death during the first black-and-white comic boom, until the market crashed and burned.
* That would be Adam Warren ''Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone.'' Who loves his even more over-the-top pseudo-Miller bits. His recurring favorite. "DON'T.. GO.. INTO.. SHOCK.."
* With '''James''' Robinson, it's not so '''much''' writing style as it is a tendency to [[BoldInflation emphasize words completely]] '''at''' [[BoldInflation random]] such that most of his '''characters''' must sound '''like''' the bastard child '''of''' Mr. [=DeMartino=] from ''{{Daria}}'' and [[ManosTheHandsOfFate Torgo]].
** Robinson also has a propensity for long narrations, either [[InnerMonologue internal]], or regular.
* Comics written by GrantMorrison tend to have endings that go way too fast so that everything can get tied up. The ''World War III'' arc of ''[[JusticeLeagueOfAmerica JLA]]'' -- his last on the book -- features ''all of humanity'' developing superpowers. We get to see it for three pages. However, works featuring his own characters rather than pre-created ones tend to have better endings.
*WarrenEllis' comics often feature corrupt government officials, shamanism, cutting-edge technology (and humans enhanced by the same), and a protagonist who is at least two of the following: ill-tempered, British, a chain smoker, or addicted to drugs or alcohol.
** Don't forget "foul-mouthed and wearing a trenchcoat".
* Any character created, or heavily influenced by Steve Ditko, will be hated by the general populace. Because the masses are stupid, and the hero is morally (and, consequently, physically and mentally) superior to them.
* AlanMoore will usually have older characters, who are retired or who have such a large body of work they might as well be retired. This is so they can discuss the good old days of their youth (and Moore's childhood) with nostalgic detail.
** Bonus points if they have sex for no apparent reason.
*** With a character much, much younger and hotter.
* JackChick will usually have [[StrawmanPolitical anyone who doesn't agree with him]] portrayed as working for {{Satan}}, or literally being {{Satan}}. He is also known for working in his message [[{{Anvilicious}} with all the subtlety of a sumo.]] Strangely, despite most of his comics taking place in 21st century America (or other first world country), people who are non-Christians are usually non-Christians out of ignorance or malice. In other words, most of of the non-Christians in his stories honestly never heard of Jesus or read any scripture, and are [[EasyEvangelism very easily swayed by the evangelists words, despite no arguments or evidence whatsoever.]]
** The sad thing is, Jack Chick thinks this crap is ''realistic''.
** He also '''really''' likes to emphasize '''words''' in his characters' '''dialogue''' using [[BoldInflation a]] '''[[BoldInflation bold]]''' [[BoldInflation font]].
* Simon Furman, who has, '''of all the dirty jobs''', the position of writing approximately 85% or so of all ''{{Transformers}}'' comics since the mid-80s, has a number of "Furmanisms" that will inevitably crop up, hanging above the reader like '''some vast, predatory bird'''. '''You won't believe the things he can do''' with them: this constant shoehorning of odd phrases into the texts '''never ends''', so '''what chance do we have''' of avoiding them? One would think he needs a '''short, sharp lesson''' in better writing, but the fans seem to enjoy his odd quirks, and he has '''reaped the whirlwind''' of popularity he's gained. He writes virtually everything with these "Furmanisms" and more; '''can ''we'' do any less?''' ([[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Furmanism A full list]] can be found at the Transformers Wiki.)
** [[http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20070926.html Parodied]] in ''{{Shortpacked}}!''
** [[http://www.insecticons.com/insecticomics/v3/223.html "Insecticomics" spoofs it too!]]
* [[MarvelComics Stan Lee]] writes ''everyone'' as a LargeHam. Although he is this way in RealLife too ([[AlterEgoActing or at least in interviews]]) [[SelfInsertFic and in his cameos]] so that makes sense.
* Fabian Nicieza tends to write long, intricately structured monologues enlivened with lots of dashes -- and he also loves [[EveryoneIsBi bisexuals]], genderbending, and HoYay.
*Jhonen Vasquez's works tend to lie far in the cynical end of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism, set in {{Crapsack World}}s where most of the populace are either {{Jerkass}}es or TooDumbToLive. There's also a lot of references to tacos, piggies, bees, doom and other InherentlyFunnyWords, and he likes adding sci-fi elements like space ships or mech-suits even when the story probably doesn't really need them. Expect NightmareFuel, too. Lots and lots of NightmareFuel.
* [[{{Hellboy}} Mike Mignola's]] art style is immediately recognizable: the use of circluar and angular shapes (especially the way he draws people), and the way things are defined by large shadowed area more than anything else. His writing style/plotting tends to focus on both Lovecraftian themes, antiquity, and the like.
* One of Jack Kirby's most distinguishing art features is the aptly-named [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby_Dots Kirby Dots]]. Kirby's overall artistic style is perhaps more of an ur-style, being the style of Jack Kirby, distinctly recognizable to just about any fan of comic book art. He ''loved'' to create characters who embodied cosmic power if not outright godhood, a trait which seems to bear some relation to equally cosmic-looking hats. As an example, one of his most well-known characters is Galactus.
* Sergio Aragones (''GrooTheWanderer, MadMagazine'') is easily one of the most distinctive cartoonists/caricaturists around. His art style favors thin lines, swooping curves, and an eye-watering level of detail. His men tend to have spindly legs and flat feet, while his women are either fat matronly mothers or curvaceously thin waifs sporting bubble breasts.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* QuentinTarantino films are talky, often with [[SeinfeldianConversation long, rambling, roundabout conversations]] full of old pop-culture references and hipster philosophy that somehow feel natural while still containing dialogue no normal person would ever speak. Most of his films are pastiches of other films and genres, and often feature cinema or the entertainment industry itself as a recurring subject. Some of his films are episodic in plot structure, with "chapters" or chunks arranged out of order. Due to AuthorAppeal, women's feet will often be highlighted. Tarantino is also fond of a particular shot where the camera passes through a wall or ceiling, which is only later revealed in a subsequent shot.
* JohnWoo uses slow-mo, GunsAkimbo, and lots of [[DisturbedDoves doves flying]] in his HeroicBloodshed movies. Themes in his movies usually focus upon family, loyalty and betrayal, and usually feature two brothers or other people on opposite sides of the law who develop a bond of friendship and usually have to join forces against a mutual enemy who is threatening both.
* The films of Guillermo del Toro will often favour a specific and small palette (amber for ''{{Hellboy}}'', blue-green for ''[[PansLabyrinth El Laberinto del Fauno]]'', yellow/blue for night/day in ''{{Blade}} 2''), will frequently go BeneathTheEarth, put something slimy in a jar, and always always ''always'' include some reference to Roman Catholicism.
* If Alexandro Jodorowsky directed a movie, you can expect [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic more religious symbolism than you'll find anywhere else]] and a ShootTheShaggyDog ending. (sometimes -- like in ''Fando & Lis'' and ''The Holy Mountain'' -- played for laughs)
** Don't forget his comics. You know, Quentin Tarantino can get away with his foot fetish because feet are something you expect to see occasionally in a movie. But when your fetish is ''bald women,'' it's a bit harder to keep hidden.
** In his films and comics, Jodorowsky displays a keen style of absurdism and everything absurdly symbolic, probably meant as a mockery of various religious beliefs and contemporary practices. His work mixes the celebral and intense with the satirical. I mean, beyond anything else, The Holy Mountain was just so funny. This troper bets Jodorowsky's films make him laugh a lot.
* Things written by [[HotFuzz Simon Pegg]] and [[ShaunOfTheDead Edgar Wright]] tend to have clever foreshadowing and dramatic-ironical dialog. Phrases will be repeated, once innocent, once really sad or menacing. ''Spaced'' had redonkulous ''StarWars'' references.
** Things directed by Edgar Wright tend to have lots of fast editing and close-ups.
* WoodyAllen movies generally feature a nebbishy, fussy Jewish New York comedian/writer/detective, who spouts self-deprecating one-liners and IngmarBergman references while wooing an attractive woman who is [[ManicPixieDreamGirl inexplicably attracted to him]].
* AlfredHitchcock films have a number of recurring features. Often there's a guy or girl unjustly accused, on the run from someone, who has at least one dysfunctional parent, and/or who suddenly vanishes when the love interest takes center place. The motif of abuse of hospitality (either by the guest or the host) is also prevalent. Most female main characters will be blonde, due to AuthorAppeal. Hitchcock famously made a nonspeaking cameo in every film. In fact, his cameos became so widely known that he was forced to do them in the beginning of his films so viewers wouldn't be distracted from the plot while they looked for him.
* The CoenBrothers like to make pastiches of other works. Their films often play with language, using heavily stylized dialects from various locations and time periods. Proper heroes are few and far between, with even the most sympathetic characters being criminals or morons. They like to use exaggerated camera movements, an influence from their time working with Sam Raimi.
*John Milius (of ''ConanTheBarbarian'' the movie fame) apparently never met a monologue he didn't like, we have to keep those damned commies out of America, and guns/swords are good. Very, very good.
* If awkward sexual dysfunctions/kinks and CrapsackWorld suburban mundanity abound, you're probably watching a film directed and written by ToddSolondz.
* If you are watching a TimBurton movie you ''will'' stumble into at least two of these elements: [[LooksLikeCesare Pale characters with dark hair]], German Expressionism, mutilated or unusual hands, gothic-style spirals, characters with parental issues, grim and surreal settings, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking dogs]].
* Danny Boyle's films are frequently marked by the use of sky-high levels of contemporary pop and electronic music, and protagonists emerging from or entering into a toilet.
* When MichaelBay wakes up in the morning, he moves quickly to get out of his exploding bed, before eating his cereal and tossing out the exploding box. He drives to the studio, jumps out of his exploding car, and then speaks to some dangerous looking government agents, military troops, and disproportionately attractive computer experts, who all promptly explode. He then takes a gun that fires explosions and has a duel with Megan Fox, who also explodes, and then throws away the exploding gun. Finally, he finishes a hard day's work by riding into the sunset on a helicopter, while LinkinPark is playing. The helicopter then explodes.
*** You mean his cereal ''doesn't'' explode too?
** Highly amusing MemeticMutation aside, Michael Bay does like explosions, but not quite to the extent that the meme says he does... more accurately, he makes almost stereotypical summer action movies, which means there's likely to be a situation for at least a few explosions. He also tends to include very positive portrayals of the American military while not being quite as kind to more secretive government agencies or career politicians, somewhat goofy black characters (which some have called UnfortunateImplications on), and at least one or two characters that talk in his own particular variety of BuffySpeak.
** [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/baywatch-the-hunt-for-meaning-in-the-films-of-mich,32009/ Here's an interesting article on Micheal Bay's "style".]]
** Don't forget the control room. Michael Bay can't do a movie without control room sequences (most of the stories he tackles can readily justify such sequences.)
* If you're watching a film by legendary Japanese film director, [[{{Godzilla}} Ishiro Honda]], chances are the film will feature people being overwhelmed by either armies, giant monsters, or some other antagonist. This stems from him being drafted into the Japanese Army during WWII. It's safe to assume the whole ordeal left a HUGE impression on his psyche.
* Oliver Stone films tend to include a lot of stock footage
* Dario Argento's trademarks include masked killers, dark gloves, women being pushed through plate glass, tracking shots, and heroes who are involved with some sort of artistic/creative profession who are usually foreigners.
* Zack Snyder and his slow-mo. To a lesser extent, using extensive green-screening and CG to create very rich images that look almost like art.
* Yasujirō Ozu is known for his very personal style. Most of his films are family dramas. He uses a number of distinctive shots over and over again, including low-angle shots about 1-2 feet off the ground and shots of characters looking directly in the camera. His editing, transitions, and use of music also follow very specific rules.
* Spike Lee often makes films about race relations in America, and often uses New York as a setting.
* Sam Raimi films, especially his early ones, often had a fast-moving POV shot rapidly zooming toward a character. He is also fond dolly zooms, in which the landscape behind a character seems to change size in relation to the character. He often combines the hyperactive camerawork with slapstick humor. He frequently casts his brother Ted Raimi and his longtime friend Bruce Campbell in small roles.
* The films of AkiraKurosawa tend to have dramatic camera angles, either very low or very high, using telephoto lenses to flatten the perspective, with a distinctive "{{Wipe}}" transition; weather elements used to heighten or contrast the mood of a scene; minimalist music; tragic heroes or anti-heroes who have either risen from a lower status, or fallen from a higher, often returning to their previous status; and explorations of the human psyche and condition, particularly among the poor and marginalized. They're also very likely to include ToshiroMifune in a starring or prominent role.
* Any Wuxia directed by Zhang Yimou are [[TrueArtIsAngsty guaranteed to have]] a DownerEnding, if not a KillEmAll, a small main cast of four or five people and about...a bazillion extras. See: {{Hero}}, HouseOfFlyingDaggers, CurseOfTheGoldenFlower.
* JeanLucGodard is one of the most important French filmmakers of all time, and despite having a wide variety of styles, he has a lot of recurring styles- Red White & Blue (the colors of the French flag) prominently together in a single shot, strongly colored lighting, Anna Karina, in-dialog references to other films, cameos of other filmmakers (FritzLang, SamuelFuller, etc.), voice-overs, abrupt silence, unexpected nudity, and adults doing goofy and childish things.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* JK Rowling's only written [[HarryPotter one series]] to date, but she's sure [[ParentalAbandonment fond of killing off parents and parental figures]], to the point that not many people were surprised when [[spoiler:Mad-Eye Moody]] got killed off within the first hundred pages of ''Deathly Hallows''. Just about anyone Harry could rely on to help fight had to be either jailed, put on the run after narrow escapes, or killed.
** On a lighter note, she also has a fondness for socks as comedic devices.
** She also uses four periods in ellipses instead of three. When two different "leaked" versions of ''Deathly Hallows'' hit the web, fans knew which was real due to the ellipses.
*** As much as this is a nice story, my UK Hardback copies of the book use 3 periods to an ellipsis.
* PeterDavid is quite fond of incredibly drawn-out, horrible puns (for example, in ''Sir Apropos of Nothing'', taking a full page to explain why a group of crazy bird-men descended from harpies are called the Harpers Bizarre) and IronicEchoCut chapter breaks. He's also very fond of the adverb "nattily": if his work is set in modern times, expect everybody to be "nattily dressed."
** David also enjoys the RunningGag. One notable example from one of his ''StarTrek'' novels had a Vulcan character simply trying to go from one part of the ship to another and constantly running into a string of people, from fellow crewmembers to an alien ambassador, who all insisted on telling her their current personal problems. She finally blows a gasket and demands to know why everyone was telling ''her''. (Well, the closest to gasket-blowing a Vulcan usually gets, anyway.)
** Another aspect of his ''StarTrek'' writing is a very thorough knowledge of the show, with in-jokes, [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]], and obscure references everywhere. This is epitomized in Morgan Primus, who is, effectively, Majel Barrett Roddenberry. Primus has been mistaken for, compared to, or otherwise tied to each of the characters Majel has played in the ''Trek'' universe: Number One in the original pilot, Nurse Chapel, Lwaxana Troi...and so on. She eventually [[spoiler: has her mind downloaded into the ship's computer. It takes a while for the crew to realize it, though, because guess who voices Federation computers on the show?]]
* Robert Rankin's style makes it obvious that he's [[IndyPloy making it up as he goes along]], as he [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] in one book, pointing out plot threads that don't go anywhere. Sometimes it works, and sometimes... it just doesn't.
* TomHolt has incredible fun with metaphors, cliches and truisms; if the book is full of metaphors taken to extremes, it's probably him. He also tends to feature mopey, nerdy males and rock-hard, super-efficient females. His stories also have an extremely cynical view of love, which is often portrayed as more of a nuisance or a disease than anything actually ''good''.
* TerryPratchett is fond of irony, wordplay, and justifying the natural laws of his worlds as being literally governed by tropes and cliches, which people can use to their own advantage if they're GenreSavvy enough. The fact that his characters can usually predict what happens later in the story via recognition of tropes and cliches actually makes the stories ''less predictable''. His books also very rarely use conventional chapters. His earlier works in particular like to play with the idea of unearthly eyes, and particularly the idea that the eyes are the only thing that no magic can disguise, providing a window to the true nature of the soul. He is also well-known for his use of comedic footnotes, even requiring a Footnote character in the play version of some books, and one of his compilation books is titled ''Once More°''.
** ''With Footnotes''
** Footnotes spanning several pages stick in the mind; [[ThisTroper this troper]] merely can't remember ''which'' books...
*** The difference in writing voice between Pratchett and [[HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Douglas Adams]] can be distinguished mainly by frequency of footnotes. Although Adams has a few as well.
**** Another giveaway is that Adams doesn't sound like imitation Douglas Adams as often.
*** To be fair, he's lightened up considerably on the footnotes over the years. ThisTroper isn't even sure there's a single one in the last five books (and if there are, they aren't complete digressions like they used to be).
****There are a fair number sprinkled through the later books. This troper loves them and wishes he would bring back more.
**** And he seems to love the words 'strata' and 'apologetic'.
*****"It is a pune, or play on words." pops up a lot.
*** Speaking of Punes, Terry is inordinately fond of characters who immediately [[DontExplainTheJoke try to describe why a certain thing is funny]] before other characters could even react to said joke.
* PiersAnthony is another fantasy author with a great love of wordplay and cliche; however, the two authors' styles are recognizably different in that, if Pratchett's wit is like a rapier, then Anthony's is like a 12-pound sledgehammer. His ''{{Xanth}}'' series, in particular, is one great big HurricaneOfPuns after another, but his other works can be similarly [[{{Anvilicious}} blunt and heavy-handed]] at times. Other heavy-handed examples of his style include making nearly every protagonist a [[CanonSue moral paragon]] who never does anything wrong and never fails at anything, and a desire to revisit old plot points ad nauseam.
** Some would point out that this is just the TheoryOfNarrativeCausality in another form.
** Another reoccurring theme in Anthony's works is nudity and sexuality, even in his young adult / teen series, ''{{Xanth}}''. Anthony is pretty frank about his beliefs -- he doesn't believe human nudity is harmful or shameful at all, and he remembers that most of the people of his target audience's age are actually quite curious about sexuality, despite what their parents may think. His works are never outright pornographic, but it skirts the boundaries enough (mermaids turning into humans and not knowing about clothes, princesses having to trade their clothes for a magic sword, that kind of thing) that he's been accused of being a pedophile on several occasions.
*** Um, not outright pornographic? He actually wrote a book named ''Pornucopia'', and another named ''3.97 Erect''. And at one point, in a letter to a young teenage girl, talked about writing about a five-year-old having sex. (See the book ''Letters to Jenny''.) The accusations are really no one's fault but his own.
** And, like Claremont, everyone sounds the same and seems to have the same knowledge of relatively obscure myths and legends that most people wouldn't acquire unless they were very into it and had possibly taken college courses (even if that someone is a junior high dropout who's spent his whole life as a hired goon). For example, in his ''Incarnations of Immortality'' series, it's not all that rare for someone to see the Incarnation of Death and blurt out "Thanatos!"
** And also the use of children/extended family of characters he's already used, to the point where the Royal Family of Xanth is on something like its fourth generation.
** Not everybody uses the word "demesnes." Piers Anthony uses it ''frequently.''
** It is perhaps easier to think of Anthony as like TerryPratchett, but less mature. Or perhaps the other way around.
* L. E. Modesitt, Jr. tells the same story over and over again in most of his books. It's a good story, though, so this troper keeps reading them anyway.
** And MercedesLackey, several of whose trilogies consist of telling the same story three times in a row, and who has even written a trilogy with a center book (''Owlknight'') in which essentially nothing happens (a barbarian invasion turns out at the climax to be boring peaceful settlers instead).
*** Another Mercedes Lackey signature: taking a character who has grown up living in serious misery without family, usually without real pleasures or more than one or two friends, then having them get swept up, as in a ChangelingFantasy, and taken to somewhere with good people and comforts, where there is hard work and good food. Said character basically never brings along the optional friend, nor do they ever go back, and they always turn into Standard Lackey Hero characters, who are all uniform in their goodness. There is a long period of adjustment where the character makes friends, and towards the very end there is a rushed conclusion. Seriously, this happens in very nearly every book, more often now than in her earlier work. It's alleviated significantly when she collaborates with different authors, though the book she wrote with PiersAnthony was cringe-worthy.
*** A key Lackey trademark is her standard protagonist development sequence, which has been summarized as "make the readers love and adore the hero, and then tear said hero's arms off."
** And TerryBrooks, many of whose ''{{Shannara}}'' novels resemble each other to a surprising degree.
*** To the extent that a friend of [[{{Azaram}} This Troper]] once claimed that each new book was 'written' with Word's find/replace feature... replace 'sword of Shannara' with 'Elfstones of Shannara'... His Magic Kingdom series isn't nearly as bad about it.
* Neal Stephenson has a unique ending style. Instead of a gradually accelerating pace and then a denouement, they stay at about the same pace until about 3/4ths through the book, where everything falls to pieces and the pace feels like someone left a brick on the accelerator. Then it ends, and you're looking at "Other Works by This Author" so quickly that it almost feels you missed the ending chapter. It's not that they don't have an ending, really, it's that they hit it going so fast and it's so short that you'd never see it coming unless you're watching the page count.
** He's also very fond of the "X would like nothing more than Y. Which is too bad, considering he's Z right now" form, and its opposite : "The last thing X wants right now is Y. Which is why, as Y happens, he does Z".
* HPLovecraft. It is fortunate that humanity, in its blissful ignorance of the maddening, cyclopean world beyond, doesn't possess the words to describe the repulsive, non-euclidean things of which he speaks. HPL has the most SignatureStyle in the history of styles.
**Even his stories that ''don't'' feature eldritch abominations from outside time and space tend to treat women and foreigners as equally scary.
** Don't forget his habit of putting TheReveal at the end of the story. Often the Climax would be the character discovering The Reveal, and at the end they would recall/ponder it for the reader. Small scale AnachronicOrder, if you will.
** And while we're on the subject, EdgarAllanPoe. These two authors together more-or-less define AntiquatedLinguistics.
*** But Poe also had his ''own'' SignatureStyle. If he wasn't writing a Dupin story, he usually featured a skeptical and normally problematic narrator that tried to face the supernatural reasonably, but ended engulfed by madness. His stories generally ended in a very abrupt, anti-climactic way. And there'd be a beautiful woman dying of tuberculosis.
* Brian Jacques seems to love {{Wacky Wayside Tribe}}s, [[PropheciesRhymeAllTheTime rhyming prophecies]], intense description of food, and making damn sure none of his heroes ever die. This last element has only slid in over time; while the earlier {{Redwall}} books were willing to let heroes die (''Martin the Warrior'' and ''Outcast of Redwall'' most notably), the later ones have the "hero shield" at full power.
** This doesn't apply in ''Castaways of the Flying Dutchman'', which hasn't suffered the ''Redwall'' series's cumulative decay: [[spoiler:the fisherman in the first book, the French captain in the second book, and [[MagicalGirlfriend Serafina]] in the third book all died rather horribly]].
** He also has a thing for giving characters names beginning with the letter M.
* George R.R. Martin: sex (including what almost everybody would call perversion), intensely described violence (including against those generally exempt in sci-fi or fantasy, i.e. infants), [[XanatosRoulette wheels within wheels]], and a general feeling that the author will not spare your pathetic sensibilities if he thinks it furthers theme, plot, or characterization. Expect to ask "Wait, who am I rooting for?" at least once.
* R.A. Salvatore has described his combat scenes as "Crouching Panther, Hidden Dark Elf". They would not look out of place in {{anime}} or a Hong Kong martial arts flick. Including the over-the-top-ness.
** Oh, and don't forget that whenever Wulfgar's hammer hit someone, it "blasted" them. As a child, this troper thought the hammer was explosive for a long time.
* StephenKing is known for frequent use of a distinctive
[[indent:40:''(stream of consciousness)'']]
[[indent:40:writing style which incorporates the character's thoughts into a paragraph, typically]]
[[indent:40:(''[[{{Parabombing}} through parenthetical insertion]])'']]
[[indent:40:breaking the standard paragraph structure as he goes along.]]
** When he wrote using the pseudonym Richard Bachman, people suspected it was him based on his style.
** And don't forget the endless describing of daily life inconsequentia. A less charitable troper would call it padding.
*** He cheerfully points out in the intro of ''TheStand'' that critics have accused him of suffering "diarrhea of the typewriter".
** He also tends to write stories with protagonists that have at least two of the following three characteristics: great wealth, being a writer, and having suffered a horrific injury with an agonizing recovery. Guess what three characteristics the man himself has...
*** In his earlier novels, the characters often are teachers (like King was), lower-class, and hadn't been maimed.
* MichaelMoorcock loves the initials [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic J.C.]]. [[TheMoorcockEffect He did this quite deliberately, to show that they reprsented aspects of the same archetype.]]
* Similarly, Philip Jose Farmer used the initial PJF to refer to his [[AuthorAvatar stand-ins]], according to him.
* The late Jack Chalker almost never wrote a book that didn't involve at least one character (and often ''all'' of them) [[ShapeShifting physically transformed]] in some way, either to a different species, a different gender, a different kind of sapience, or some combination thereof.
** To the point of reportedly getting quite upset when people kept asking him why all he wrote were transformation stories. His answer was "Nobody bought the non-transformation books." Reputedly, he got used to it when he realized every author with a shtick got asked the same thing.
* DanBrown, a renowned ConspiracyThriller author, conspicuously and regularly re-uses plot elements and [[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html opening paragraphs]]. As for the actual ''writing style'', Brown is fond of having multiple PlotThreads and shifting between them every 5 to 10 pages (his chapters are really short), usually with a WhatCliffhanger accompanying every shift. [[YourMileageMayVary Depending on whom you ask]], it either creates awesome {{thriller}} suspense or gets boring after the third page.
*Chuck Palahniuk has a very distinct minimalist style of writing that he describes as explaining only the kernel of any given situation, with the action cutting and jumping around sporadically and tied in place by a common, repeating theme. Beyond that, he also tends to have very similar female characters from book to book.
** He often fills his books with a number of interesting tidbits of knowledge as well as factoids that sound real but aren't.
** Sentence fragments with no verb in them.
*GeneWolfe writes all of his stories in first person. With all the detail he adds, it gets really easy to trust the narrator. Don't.
* NeilGaiman has a distinct poetic bent to his writing and themes, which is just one of the things that make him popular with the goth crowd. Every line a Gaiman character utters can be quoted on its own as a lesson on life and magic and whatever.
** NeilGaiman also likes to throw in a MagnificentBastard who may or may not have [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold a heart of gold]]. Theological references, too.
** Also loves to have [[ShowWithinAShow stories within stories within stories]], and blurring the lines between them. An obvious example of it would be the ''World's End'' ''[[TheSandman Sandman]]'' story, in which travelers stranded by a freak storm (caused by the MetaPlot) are passing the time by telling each other stories, in the style of ''TheCanterburyTales'' or Bocacchio's ''Decameron''. One of the stories is about a ship journey, during which, to alleviate boredom, one of the tale's character (Hob) tells ''another'' tale. Hob being an important character in the MetaPlot, we've come full circle and back again.
** Another, subtler trope in Gaiman's work is the theme of false hospitality, typically shown between female characters: the Other Mother in ''{{Coraline}}'' is the most obvious example, while others include the Dark Queen in ''MirrorMask'' (which is thematically very similiar to ''Coraline'') the inn scene in ''{{Stardust}}'', and the characters of Media and [[VaginaDentata Bilquis]] in ''AmericanGods''.
* James Joyce is [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk]]!
* William Faulkner [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible hates you doesn't like you hates you you never had a sister]]\\
[[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible sister. Stream of consciousness, odd spacing]]\\
[[TrueArtIsAngsty hate you]]\\
[[DeepSouth south.]]\\
[[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible i dont hate it]]\\
[[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory fish]]\\
[[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible but he hates you]]
** He also has a reputation for writing confusingly long sentences.
* Djuna Barnes loves her statements that [[MeaninglessMeaningfulWords aren't nonsensical so much as they don't make sense.]] And she always makes blanket statements. And supremely illogical cultural references. And loads of sex, happening in the most absurd places.
* Tennessee Williams writes a lot of mentally ill or physically disabled women (his DeadLittleSister was schizophrenic), and a lot of his stuff is set in the DeepSouth. Also, expect men who are manly men, explicit discussion of any issues he wants to bring up, and... well, there's more. You'd know it if you saw it.
** The aforementioned overt masculinity also carries over to his homosexual characters; see ''Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws'' and ''A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot''. (Williams himself was gay.)
* Diane Carey's ''StarTrek'' novels take SpaceIsAnOcean to almost absurd heights. She has worked on sailing ships in RealLife.
* DianeDuane's ''Trek'' novels are full of StarfishAliens with [[TheUnpronounceable unpronounceable names]], amazingly detailed and ''justified'' TechnoBabble, gleefully subverted [[PlanetOfHats Planets of Hats]], and Doctor [=McCoy=] being awesome.
** Apart from the [=McCoy=] thing, that's also a fair description of her ''YoungWizards'' series.
* Dean Koontz' supernatural works, at least, tend to feature some combination of dogs, Catholicism, California, and little kids. And, regardless if they're supernatural or not, sex. Quite a bit of sex.
* William {{Shakespeare}}, in addition to his poetic manner of writing, is also fond of references to falconry, gardening, and hunting with dogs. He also thinks it's hilarious when women dress up as men, but that was a fairly standard thing back then. He's also the undisputed king of [[HurricaneOfEuphemisms penis jokes]]. And he really seems to like twins, almost as much as he likes Italy.
* Thomas Pynchon loves silly pop-culture references, names that sound [[MeaningfulName meaningful]] but aren't, and [[MindScrew not giving you any idea what's going on]]. SophisticatedAsHell terminology is not uncommon either.
* DavidEddings: StrictlyFormula, but done ''right'' for the most part. He's also big on LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and glowing jewels that drive the plot.
** Don't forget the [[DeadpanSnarker snark.]] The oceans and oceans of snark...
** And the tendency for absolutely everyone to be paired off by the end.
** And the dodgy [[BriefAccentImitation fake accents]]. And [[ColourCodedForYourConvenience blue is good, red is bad]]. And the occasional [[StrawmanPolitical joke at the expense of conservatives]].
* TomClancy's novels tend to feature certain politically incorrect characterizations: liberals tend to be scheming and drug-using liberals, while conservatives tend to be hard-working, honest, and red-blooded members of the American military. Every book ends with an ''AmericaSavesTheDay'' moment, as well.
** Not to mention the borderline-fetishistic way he describes military hardware in excruciatingly precise detail.
** And every weapon that is not American is in some way inferior to its American counterpart.
* Anything by LaurellKHamilton is almost certain to have a tiny, beautiful female main character who's a good little Catholic girl that has to deal with shameful shameful sexual urges and has lots and lots of sex that's treated as if it's the kinkiest thing since the Marquis de Sade, but is actually rather tame in comparison to almost anything you could see on {{Playboy}} TV. Oh, and random powerups. And mournful observation of religion/faith falling into decline.
* AgathaChristie used a number of devices over and over in her works.
** Multiple murders committed by different people.
** Characters revealed to have been impersonating other characters.
** If a person repeatedly survives attempts being made on their life, you can bet that [[spoiler:that person is the killer]].
** Whoever is most likely to be the killer will naturally be innocent. This is logical, since a straightforward murder mystery wouldn't be much of a ''mystery''. Still, the number of clues speaking to someone's guilt are often inversely proportional to that person's guilt.
** Whoever is included on the novel's token romance(s) is innocent.
** Characters accusing themselves of being the murderer in order to protect the person they know or believe to be the real killer. Subverted in [[spoiler: Murder in the Vicarage, where both Lawrence Redding and Anne Protheroe frame themselves for the murder of Colonel Protheroe and admit, in turn, to being responsible (in an unusual ploy to actually shift blame from both of them)]]
* [[TheLordOfTheRings J. R. R. Tolkien]] had a habit of peppering his stories with references to far-away bygone people and places drawn from [[TheSilmarillion his own mythos]] that had nothing to do with the plot but made the setting feel more lived-in and natural.
* Kurt Vonnegut: lots of free-association and repetition, nonstop [[ShootTheShaggyDog Shooting the Shaggy Dog]], [[SickSadWorld Sick Sad Worlds]] with the bleakness turned up to 11, and the heaviest [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped anvils]] he can lift, peppered with really horrible felt-pen sketches.
* Anton Chekhov had a habit of ending his short stories in a way that doesn't really resolve the plot at all. The protagonist is usually a normal Russian man who Chekhov characterizes mostly through his flaws.
* Ben Elton novels tend to have large ensemble casts and at least one, usually brutal, death or attempt on someone's life. They also tend to be overtly critical of one aspect of society, and achieve this criticism through sarcasm and exaggeration (Dead Famous and Chart Throb -- reality television; Gridlock -- society's dependence on cars and oil; Stark -- big business in the 1980s; This Other Eden -- DAMN NEAR EVERYTHING).
* John "A PC" Hodgman writes [[CompleteWorldKnowledge his books]] in a perfectly deadpan, neutral tone, and just happens to drop the occasional incredibly humourous comment into his rhetoric. A LongList is quite likely, too. He also enjoys occasionally breaking into ALL CAPS.
* [[Literature/JamesBond Ian Fleming]] often includes expositions on locations he had visited, and especially foods and drink which he was himself fond of. Expect the phrase "the gun spoke its word" to appear rather frequently too. The attitudes of the characters are also highly recognisable once one gets used to them. And ''any'' woman's breasts will be described as "proud and firm". Except maybe Bond's caretaker's.
* Ursula Vernon's writing can be recognized by her use of people who supply contraceptives to [[UnusualEuphemism "Seamstresses"]], weird animals (commonly shrews or wombats, some times [[{{Furry}} weird people]]) and general [[{{Labyrinth}} weirdly flash-bang]], yet Pratchett-esque, often footnoted, style.
** She also tends to give her fictional cultures a detailed and unique culture, customs, traditions, idioms, and so forth, often sewn together from real-world parts. Probably not surprising, given that she used to be an anthropologist and turned to art "because the pay was better, which should tell you something about anthropology."
** Her art is what brought us the [[http://ursulav.deviantart.com/art/The-Biting-Pear-of-Salamanca-29677500 Lol Whut pear]].
** Lolwhut aside, her usual art also involves the combination of normal concepts (for example, a painting of grazing wildlife) with bizarre objects or characters (the wildlife is fruit), with at least a paragraph's worth of backstory on the art piece itself (a nature-book-esque description of the fruit's habitat and behavior in the wild).
*TerryGoodkind ''used'' to write sweeping fantasy with a touch of humour and some nasty violence until 9/11. Then he wrote jingoistic Objectivist fantasy with some really nasty violence,and an evil empire who was trying to take over the world in such a manner that only one man had the 'moral clarity' to oppose them.
* AndreNorton tended to have female characters orphaned as babies and [[RaisedByWolves raised by nonhumans]] who improvised clothing for them early on, despite generally not wearing clothing themselves. She also liked cats.
* AaronAllston, one of the writers of the ''XWingSeries,'' has a very distinct sense of humor which manifests in absurd or mocking bits of dialogue. ''Every'' character with more than a couple lines has some kind of quirk, which at least means that when [[AnyoneCanDie anyone dies]] the reader's response is never "Who?", and his writing is intensely character-driven. He's also got a tendency to put in background female characters who are very muscular.
* Karen Traviss, in the ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' and her own books, ''loves'' [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Races]]. Any character who doesn't spend most of the book freaked out is generally a ruthless, hard-bitten veteran of one kind or another with no real ties to other people, and has some {{Jerkass}} tendencies. [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Gold hearts]] are supposedly in there, but they show through very grudgingly and only after a [[KickTheDog dog-kick or two.]]
* James Patterson. Just...James Patterson. He italicizes every fucking thing of any importance. See ''When The Wind Blows'' and ''The Lake House'' and make a drinking game out of how many times the Flock's flying is drawn attention to. Also, half page chapters.
* [[TheRiftWarCycle Raymond E. Feist]] loves to use the words "alien" and "quietly" as often as possible, especially chapters/segments which begin with "(character name) sat quietly."
**He also opens the majority of his chapters with a three or four word sentence, beginning in Magician with "The storm had broken.".
* LarryNiven writes about Giant Space Structures (the ringworld, the smoke ring), sex between different alien species, and really long alien names with lots of a'postr'oph'es in them.
* Cormac [=McCarthy=] doesnt use many apostrophes when writing speech and he doesnt use speech marks to indicate dialogue and the DeepSouth or the west are common settings and he frequently uses 'and' a lot in a sentence.
** Furthermore, he's partial to esoteric word choices as well as run-on sentences, not to mention sentences of unusually long length, one example being a page-and-a-half long sentence in ''Blood Meridian''.
* [[{{Twilight}} Stephenie Meyer]] is fond of portraying [[strike: SPESHUL]] human/nonhuman romances, with all of the main characters being implausibly gorgeous (and described with lots and lots of [[PurpleProse purple prose]]). She also has a thing for the word "chagrin," as well as "dazzled" and "perfect", and the color beige. She describes characters' daily lives in a highly detailed manner [[strike: while not doing the same for action scenes]], which drags her books out to borderline DoorStopper lengths.
** Note that most of these are traits that could be considered a stereotypical Signature Style of teenage girls writing fanfiction.
*** Especially teenage fanfiction by fans of the series.
* TamoraPierce has a mildly amusing habit of describing a character's clothing in detail. This lead to one famous scene where Alanna of Tortall, hardened warrior, [[RealWomenWearDresses is talking to a friend about someone else's poor fashion choices while changing]]. "Can you ''imagine''?"
* Michael Crichton books inevitably share the same plot: "Scientist discovers or creates something. Protagonist warns the scientist that he hasn't considered the consequences. Discovery and/or creation GoesHorriblyWrong. Protagonist saves the day. Protagonist says "I told you so" and scientist maybe or maybe not learns his lesson that ScienceIsBad, or at least misapplied. The end."
** Despite this, Crichton was a ''huge'' proponent of scientific discovery and the importance of science in general. Just don't mention climate change.
* Hey ''DoctorWho'' fans! Did that last [[DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]] novel make your brain feel like it was [[MindScrew shoved in a blender set to "puree"]]? Did it feature people doing [[TemporalParadox exceptionally odd things to Time]]? Was TheObiWan a DeadpanSnarker? A MagnificentBastard? Both? Well, my friend, you were probably reading a novel by Lawrence Miles.
* JimButcher of ''TheDresdenFiles'' and ''CodexAlera'' fame really, really likes political intrigue, characters with ulterior motives, complex and out of the ordinary strategies in battle, characters playing XanatosRoulette, and unique and unexpected application of magic.
* James Clavell liked to write large novels set in or around Asia, featuring LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and intricate, interwoven plots from both the protagonist's and antagonist's sides of the stories. [[AsianSaga His books]] are usually divided into shorter "books" or chapters that encompass a period of time (from three years in ''King Rat'' to just about ten days in ''Noble House''). Also, at least one main character will die at the end of each of his books (except for ''King Rat'', where the death was merely figurative, rather than literal).
* David Wong of ''John Dies At The End'' and ''{{Cracked}}'' fame tends to have work that is '''very''' cynical, heavy on the pop culture and full of SophisticatedAsHell, often explaining complex concepts with monkeys, kittens, and the aforementioned pop culture references. His ''Cracked'' articles tend to revolve around achieving happiness.
*Charles Bukowski's work could be summed up as thoughtful insights using mundane metaphors for some of the most mudanely depresing situations done in the plainest of text. Also, lots of alcohol, sex, gambling, self-deprecation and jokes worthy of a 14 year old kid. I love him.
* LordDunsany's signature style is a dreamy prose filled with AntiquatedLinguistics. Think a LighterAndSofter Lovecraft, particularly early Dream Cycle Lovecraft (unsurprising since he was a major influence on the crazy Yankee), though he was quite capable of putting an edge into his stories. His later fiction loses some of this style, leading to a TheyChangedItNowItSucks reaction from some fans.
* TimothyZahn starts each of his ''[[StarWarsExpandedUniverse Star Wars]]'' novels with a description of an Imperial Star Destroyer gliding through space, in reference to the Original Trilogy's opening shots. If he's writing in the prequel era, he substitutes the most appropriate warship of the time. He's got a lot of signature bits in his work.
** He likes pulling an AsYouKnow by mentioning X, then having a different character say "Oh, that's [rough explanation], right?"
** Stormtroopers are extremely competent. Imperials in general are not evil, and neither are they about to switch sides. They have pride in what they do and get presented as just as human as anyone in the New Republic. There are ruthless people on both sides and the Imperials are still the villains, but it's far less black-and-white than most writers will make it.
**** This is true of Zahn's non-Star Wars novels as well. The Conqueror Trilogy is a good example of this; neither side of the conflict is bad, and both sides include the sort of multiple factions that you'd actually find in a society at war.
** He's one of the best at complicated plotlines with [[TwoLinesNoWaiting several protagonists who go in separate directions]], have their own plot-important actions and multiple subplots, and come together and separate again as part of the larger plot. Seriously, all of his multi-protagonist books have these.
** Zahn really likes coolly intelligent, calculating characters, both villainous and non, and has confessed to favoring enhanced soldiers and also criminal types who have redeeming features, like [[TheThrawnTrilogy Karrde]], [[HandOfThrawn Car'das]], and one of the protagonists of the {{Dragonback}} series.
* K.A. Applegate, in the series that she's written (Animorphs, Everworld, and Remnants), always uses a choppy first-person, in which sentences are short. They're about this long. And are often fragmented. With pop culture references. And slang. And lots of [[{{Expy}} expies]].
* FrederickForsyth is extremely well known for his [[ShownTheirWork obsession with correct details, intense amounts of research,]] and almost journalistic approach to writing.
*Mark Z. Danielewski tends to write in either a dry, formal, academic tone or a very lyrical and [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible sometimes almost nonsensical]] one ([[color:blue:House]] of Leaves mixes both). He also really, really, really likes meaningful mis-spellings ("torn to pisces", "allways sixteen"), hidden coded messages, and the use of different font c[[color:orange:o]]l[[color:green:o]]rs to highlight particular letters or [[color:blue:words]].
* When you read a sci-fi story, and it tells you proliferation of helicopters and telecommunication technologies allowed the humans to abandon the cities (barring, perhaps, cultural and academic centers) and return to forests and meadows they've always longed for, you can bet it's ArthurCClarke.
* Sandy Mitchell, of CiaphasCain fame, has a few old standbys. Cain's palms will be described as tingling at least ten times per novel. A remarkable amount of people are in some way preternatural. Often, something causes a susurrus. Cain frequently ends up in caves or some similar system, allowing him to remark repeatedly on how he knows his way around caves as a result of his childhood. British pop culture references are made.
* Michael A. Stackpole, in and out of the XWingSeries, drops many offhand references about the 'verse he's writing in by TechnoBabble and mentions of unusual cultural quirks held by different species. These tend not to be elaborated on; they're there to [[WhatsASecretFour make the 'verse bigger]]. His earlier novels tended to have BeigeProse. There is always one protagonist who is always, ''always'' completely and utterly confident in himself and his ego, even though he also always gets something wrong, experiences failure, and gets humiliated without revenge afterwards. Stackpole's better about this than he used to be, but there are also always a number of RedShirt characters with almost no characterization or dialogue, and all of ''that'' is connected to that confident protagonist. There are literally characters in the XWingSeries whose only lines before being killed are about Corran Horn. Also, his characters tend to talk all the same way, with dialogue more suited to exposition.
* Homer and the phrase "wine-dark sea".
* Gertrude Stein certainly had a quite distinctive style. Gertrude Stein had a certainly quite distinctive style. Gertrude Stein had a quite certainly distinctive style. Gertrude Stein quite certainly had a distinctive style.
* Iain M. Banks' science fiction novels, both in TheCulture, and the stand-alone ones often feature a lot of snarky humor, especially at cocktail parties or something similar. There will sometimes be a WackyWaysideTribe scene with some other culture or species which tends to overlap with another feature, a scene of outright {{Gorn}} (i.e. the [[BloodyMurder way]] the protagonist of ''Consider Phlebas stops cannibals from eating him). The novel may or may not end with the [[KillEmAll deaths of the cast]] and [[AMillionIsAStatistic many other unfortunate people]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* RussellTDavies has a penchant for using the names "Tyler", "Rose", "Delaney", "Donna", "Harkness" and "Jones" (Most evident in "The Stolen Earth", which features ''four pre-existing'' Joneses). He likes to reference Ipswich. Ominous references to "the darkness" and "something is coming" abound. He often criticises religion and has a love of Humanist monologues ("Indomitable!"). He's prone to excessive use of TechnoBabble in his ''DoctorWho'' stories, though for ''Who'', this is no new thing.
** Of course, some ''DoctorWho'' fans complain that RTD doesn't use ''enough'' TechnoBabble, claiming his sketchy explanations for whatever effect he wants to produce might as well be "AWizardDidIt". Major offenders include the "anti-plastic" in "Rose" and every DeusExMachina season finale.
** Fans often seem divided by his assumed "Gay Agenda", with everything from jokes from gay culture to same-sex kisses having found their way into his four ''DoctorWho'' series.
** For an atheist, RTD won an award for irony when "Gridlock" (featuring renditions of "The Old Rugged Cross" and "Abide With Me") got nominated by a religious group for a prize for [[http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/cult/a88328/doctor-who-nominated-for-epiphany-prize.html promoting Biblical values]].
*** Although his work is noticeably stuffed full of religious imagery. Notable examples include "Last of the Time Lords" (The Doctor being rejuvenated by the entire populace of Earth praying for him, flying over the evil Master, then hugging him and saying "I forgive you.") and Torchwood's "End of Days" (essentially the same thing, with resurrected Jack forgiving the doubting Owen after... well, killing the Devil.) Davies' drama "The Second Coming" was nothing but religion, though of the kind that takes Nietzsche ''very'' literally...
*** And who could forget the moment in RTD's second ever episode of ''Doctor Who'', "The End of the World", when we see the Earth burning away beneath a giant glowing space station [[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v83/Kasterborous/Others/EotW.png ''in the shape of a crucifix''...]]
** He also likes to use [[OverusedRunningGag repetitive jokes]], pop-culture references (often to reality TV and often appealing to the LowestCommonDenominator), and extraneous guest stars. Although '80's ''DoctorWho'' also tended to have a lot of name guest stars.
* JossWhedon cannot get by without at least one [[CuteBruiser superpowered tiny female character]], a tendency to put likeable characters through the {{Wangst}} gauntlet, and an almost contractual BittersweetEnding (at best).
** [[http://blog.hulu.com/2009/3/6/joss-whedon He's not below]] [[LampshadeHanging hanging a lampshade]] on this:
*** "I tend to focus on one character (perhaps a young woman of unnatural abilities, to pull an example randomly out of nowhere) and then the other characters are built from the needs of that character's journey."
--->There's been a lot of comparison to the story of Echo being a sort of warped interpretation of the River Tam story, do you agree/disagree? -- Vivienne
---->It wasn't meant that way, but I do have my little obsessions...
** He's also fond of naming characters after things; just as a random sampling, Angel, Spike, Willow, Dawn, Faith, Glory, Harmony, Gunn, Jasmine, River, Wash, and Book.
*** Plus, the Actives in ''Dollhouse'' are named after the US military alphabet (e.g. Alpha, Echo, Victor, and Sierra).
** His penchant for snappy dialogue, snarkasm, and BuffySpeak is very distinctive. He did some ScriptDoctor work on the script of the first ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}'' movie, but only two exchanges of dialogue made it to the final cut, and one of them has his fingerprints all over it:
---->'''Wolverine:''' Hey! It's me.
---->'''Cyclops:''' Prove it!
---->'''Wolverine:''' You're a dick.
---->'''Cyclops:''' ''[Shrugs, nods.]'' Okay.
*** The other, Storm's line about a toad getting hit by lightning, doesn't seem like his style; however, before his contributions were reduced, it was the deadpan climax to a highly Whedonesque RunningGag.
*** In ''AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', it's "extremely" obvious which lines Whedon wrote. A sample Whedonesque line:
---->Milo: Will you look at the size of this? It's gotta be a half mile high, at least. It must have taken hundred -- no, thousands of years to carve this thing!
---->Column: BOOM!
---->Vinny: Look, I made a bridge. It only took me, like, what? Ten seconds? Eleven, tops.
** His penchant for WomenInRefrigerators (or perhaps just AnyoneCanDie in general) is [[LampshadeHanging called out]] during the Dr. Horrible Comic-Con panel: "You kill a lot of chicks."
* Terry Nation (''DoctorWho'', ''[[BlakesSeven Blake's 7]]'', ''The Survivors'') liked doomed ([[WeAreStrugglingTogether and argumentative]]) groups of [[LaResistance rebels]] fighting ScaryDogmaticAliens like the Nazi-esque Daleks (which he invented) or in the case of ''B7'', Scary Dogmatic Humans. He also liked ragtag (and argumentative) groups of survivors in AfterTheEnd settings, and in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", he even got to combine the two fascinations. He also had a great fondness for characters with the last name Tarrant and, often, characters with no first names ever given. A strong streak of cynicism runs through his work, making his favourite characters {{Deadpan Snarker}}s.
** Look out also for his tendency to make up for his total aversion to TechnoBabble by adding the word 'space' to existing nouns. Someone will be a doctor of 'space medicine'; an alien race's headquarters is referred to as being 'in Space' by space-travellers, and so on.
*AaronSorkin, father of the SorkinWalk and SorkinRelationshipMoment: machine gun fast dialogue. Comedic repetition. Tall, smart, sexy, sassy women who give as good as they get. Characters who veer oh-so-close to cynicism, only to come back to hope and idealism. Extremely liberal world view. He actually included common criticisms of his writing style in his short play ''Hidden in this Picture''. In it, a film director tells his Sorkin-proxy screenwriter, "I think your work has a tendency to be long-winded and cynical, I think you have trouble handling exposition, you take ''forever'' to introduce the inciting action, and all your female characters talk and act as if they've just stepped off the Love Boat."
** He also really, really likes to use the name Danny.
** And the same character types. Watch ''The American President'' and ''The West Wing'' and then tell me A.J. MacInerney and Leo McGarry aren't the same character. Same with Lewis Rothschild and Josh Lyman, and that gets more fun when you add in ''Studio 60'' and ''A Few Good Men'', because Matt Albie and Dan Caffee are also the same character as Lewis and Josh.
*** Since West Wing began as leftover scenes from American President, the characters really are the same, at least at first.
** He ''loves'' [[TalkAboutThatThing Talking About That Thing]], to the point of NeverGiveTheCaptainAStraightAnswer. It will often be five to seven minutes into the conversation before the audience learns what The Thing is.
** He also likes to refer to offscreen characters multiple times by their full names before introducing them or explaining their purpose in the story.
*** And main characters often imply full sentences in arguments just by using the other character's first name.
** Is the season finale named "What Kind of a Day Has It Been"? You're watching the first season of an Aaron Sorkin show.
** Not to mention his love of dramatic speeches. Is there a self-righteous villain in the piece? Then there will be a scene in which he delivers something not far short of a sermon, usually in response to hard questioning (in a legal setting), in which he concludes with a highly-quotable, exceptionally angry declaration which leaves everyone speechless.
*** See Malice and A Few Good Men.
* In every show BryanFuller has ever created, the female lead has a [[TomboyishName boy's name]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music ]]

* Amongst composers, Frank Zappa is known for his highly peculiar style. On guitar, he favored a Clarence Brown or Johnny Watson-inspired complex, left hand fingering, with lots of interaction with the drummer. As a composer, he loved to glue together separate elements and styles in an unpredictable collage of music. As a song writer, he is typified by industrial-strength sarcasm and a dislike of feminism. And he had a big nose and Johnny Otis's imperial mustache (recurring elements on album art).
* Nick Cave, throughout the songs he's written, the novel (''And The Ass Saw The Angel'') and the film screenplay (''TheProposition'') has shown an enormous interest in four things: flowers, stomach-churning violence, discussion of literature -- often in very unlikely places, and semi-heretical yet extremely pious examinations of religion.
*If you see someone onstage playing a left-handed Hofner violin bass in something resembling a classic Beatlesuit, he is either Paul [=McCartney=] or someone trying to impersonate him as [[TheBeatles a Beatle.]] If he is playing anything written after ''Revolver,'' or if there are no other Beatles impersonators, it's the real thing.
* Every single DragonForce song features the phrase "for the day", "far away", at least one reference to fire/warriors, and is at least three-quarters epic guitar solos. They're also all in the same time, key, and tempo.
** Hey, [[ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne they are]] ''[[ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne not]]'' [[ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne all in the same key]]!
* Similarly, virtually every Manowar song is about stoic macho warriors waving swords while splashing through their enemies' blood like Gene Kelly dancing to "SingingInTheRain".
* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has a habit where a number of pieces he writes have sections that end with a prominent trill at the big cadence.
* {{Nine Inch Nails}} albums are usually concept albums. His music kept the exact same introspective subject matter (love, death, meaning etc) from the late 1980s to the early 2000s and reuses/d words like 'skin', 'broken', 'hole', 'bleeding', 'head', 'feels', 'falling/loss' [[http://www.ninwiki.com/Recurring_lyrics etc]]. He both whispers and shouts a lot, often in the same song.
* JohnnyCash had a very sparse, stripped down style. This paired with his smooth bass-baritone voice made even his (numerous) covers immediately recognizable.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell#Early_life Joni Mitchell]] was afflicted with polio at age nine, and lost some use of her left hand. Her compositions use very distinctive non-standard guitar tunings ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell#Unique_guitar_style "Joni's weird chords"]]) that accommodate her limited dexterity--and also sound very cool.
* Umm... Jim Steinman, anyone? Almost every song has three distinct movements, is at least 7 minutes long, features a choir of angels at some point, and sounds like Meat Loaf is singing it, even if it's actually Bonnie Tyler or Air Supply.
*If the lyrics you're listening have a lot of not-so-common words, seem to make no sense, go from spanish to english or vice versa and are sung in falsetto it was most likely writen by Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The afro is quite stylish too.
* There's a joke that each [[HeavyMithril Power Metal]] band picks their own theme (eg. aforementioned Manowar) and puts it into most of their songs.
* TomWaits has his voice, and the tendency to use [[{{Retraux}} deliberately antiquated]] recording techniques. And it's not uncommon to come across references to Kathleen Brennan, his wife. The name "Beaula" crops up a lot, as do trains, rain, and the word "down". He also uses his instruments in very bizarre, hard-to-describe ways.
* TheyMightBeGiants have an accordion. Both the Johns have pretty distinctive voices, there's a lot of [[BuffySpeak rhythmic stuff going on]], and the [[WordSaladLyrics lyrics are sort of hard to comprehend the first few listenings.]]
* [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Voltaire Voltaire]] ''loves'' the violin and lyrics that would be kinda disturbing if they weren't so funny, except for the occasional philosophical, contemplative song. Even those usually contain a bit of wit.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music Videos ]]

* Michel Gondry has one hell of a personal style. Most of his videos are [[SurrealMusicVideo weird]] in one or more ways. Some have trippy morphing environments and multiplying objects; others are set in a crude, theater-like scenery and feature puppets. He may also break the boundary between an [[ShowWithinAShow in-video fiction]] (TV show/book/dream) and reality, or make a musicological rendition of the song. And if it's filmed with a shaky camera, it might also be one continuous shot.
* If it's a Music/{{Tool}} video, it's going to feature some form of stop-motion animation, [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel eerie and disturbing imagery]], the characters will come straight out of the UncannyValley, and the band won't be in the video. The only major aversion to this is "Hush".

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Professional Wrestling ]]

* ProfessionalWrestling writer VinceRusso has cultivated a signature style characterized largely by [[{{Americanitis}} Americentrism]], [[DoubleStandard misogyny]], {{Shocking Swerve}}s, and the [[{{Nohamotyo}} attention span of a gnat]]. Fans often refer to storylines and gimmicks that show Russo's fingerprints as "Russo-riffic"; it should be noted that this is very much ''not'' a compliment.
** Also, [[AuthorAppeal pole matches]]. Insane objects on top of poles at every corner of the ring. Expect any sort of tangible object being the center of a dispute to be put on a pole. And if there is no object in dispute, he'll put a weapon of some sort on a pole. Just because.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Theater ]]

* TimRice likes his idioms. Also never has more than two female protagonists.
** His lyrics also have a remarkable ability to sound like normal conversations that just coincidentally happen to fit a certain rhythm and rhyme scheme.
** He also has the tendency to make bizarre, out-of-context racial slurs, like Judas' bizarre verse about "[[YellowPeril a jaded Mandarin]]" in ''JesusChristSuperstar'' or Potiphar's line about adultery being "[[{{Oireland}} beyond the pale]]" in ''Joseph''.
*** Except 'beyond the pale' is not and never has been a racial slur - that's a folk entymology.


[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* C-Could it be? The -- the ''SuperSmashBros Brawl'' daily site updates!! '''Oh!''' Masahiro Sakurai, the game's master of ceremonies, writes in a heartwarming, dramatic, mildly awkward style, clearly dragged from another language -- rumour has it that it might be the fault of the localisers. '''Could that be...ambiguity?''' And then there's lots! Of! Strange punctuation? And! Onomatopoeia! Whaaaaaaaaaah!! (laughs)
* It seems customary for most [=BioWare=] games to have a HeroicSociopath on the protagonist's team.
** Teenage girls who have a tendency to be thieves/technical experts. (Imoen, Mission, Tali, Wild Flower...)
*** These apply even when Bioware adapt other franchises, as is the case with ''[[SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.'' HeroicSociopath? Shadow, for starters, and also two other playable characters, [[spoiler: Eggman, who is at points ''mandatory,'' and secret character Omega]]. Thieving, technical expert teenager? Rouge the Bat. It's important to note that these characters are like this in Sega's offerings, too, but that their roles are either unusually flattering (Shadow, [[spoiler:Eggman]]), or unusually prominent (Rouge, [[spoiler:Omega]]) in ''Chronicles''.
* Character designs by Tetsuya Nomura's character designs tend to overlap both in personality types and clothing style. Expect lots of...
**A: perky young boys/men with spiky hair.
**B: Silver or blue haired men with ANGST!
**C: Chipper and generally positive female archetypes.
**Lots of [[TooManyBelts belts]] and [[EverythingsBetterWithZippers zippers]] too!
***[[http://au.gamespot.com/users/GameBlender/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25719780 Seriously.]]
*HideoKojima would like to remove that ugly FourthWall or at least [[PaintingTheFourthWall paint it]] a more interesting color.
** What ''is'' the Fourth Wall, Snake? It's clear to see that the Fourth Wall is merely a construct, a wall placed by human minds to divide us from that world of tropes. We don't like to think of life as simple, you see. That... is our punishment. To go 'forth' beyond the 'wall', one must accept yourself as a troper. Tropers like us need nothing to believe in besides [- please stop making me make these games please please please please please -]
*Games that Tim Schafer's been at tend to transpose a standard premise onto a non-standard setting (''GrimFandango'' is a film noir/romance...in the South American mythological afterlife, ''{{Psychonauts}}'' is about a runaway kid attending a summer camp...for psychics). They're also full of foreshadowing, almost excessive amounts of throwaway detail and characterization, and weird. ''Very'' weird. No, more weird than that.
*[[TouhouProject ZUN]] seems to have a penchant for LittleMissBadass characters who wear [[FrillsOfJustice really frilly dresses]]. Oh, and [[NiceHat Nice Hats]]. Lots and lots of [[NiceHat Nice Hats]].
* Suda51 makes, for the most part, strongly character-driven games with intricate stories, about which he often doesn't bother to explain everything of. He likes to incorporate real life events into his stories, but almost always has an element of Body Snatching to them. He will ''always'' have at least one character that has blocked out a traumatic memory from his past, and an important point of character development is the character acknowledging and overcoming this event, which Suda refers to as "killing the past". His games will also have a post-modern feel to the interface, and will always show close-ups of characters, either when they're introduced, or whenever they're speaking. His games will invariably feature tons of [[ShoutOut shout-outs]] to movies, and include ProWrestling moves in at least one character's arsenal.
** Also luchadores.
** He's also big into raining blood, revolvers, and toilets (especially related to defecation).
* [[TypeMoon Kinoko Nasu]] has a natural gift for writing believable characters whom you either want to hug or LoveToHate. The former especially concerns his female characters, each of whom is a one-of-a-kind mixture of [[HiddenDepths genuine personality]], FetishFuel (or MoeMoe, depending on who you ask), and plain good {{Badass}}. Thematically, his plots often revolve [[GaiasVengeance humans' relationship with Mother Earth]] and feature {{Bittersweet Ending}}s ([[DownerEnding at best]]). ''And'' he has an [[AuthorAppeal Eye Fetish]].
* ''People Can Fly'', the developers of ''{{Painkiller}}'', have a knack for games with [[WarSequence massive numbers of enemies on-screen at once]], fun, catharthic gunplay in unsettling, creepy environments, and huge, epic fights against massive boss monsters. Even after the company was absorbed by ''EpicGames'', many players felt that the extra content the team cooked up for the PC version of ''GearsOfWar'' was the single best part of the entire game.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* Author David Willis has cultivated a paranoid fanbase for his works, due to his use of extremely subtle foreshadowing that might not pay off until *years* later. He also has a way of flip-flopping between humor (often potty humor) and serious drama. Expect references to superheroes and comic books to show up now and then.
* Brian Clevinger of ''[=~8-Bit Theater~=]'', ''AtomicRobo'' and ''HowIKilledYourMaster'' tends to have overly cynical protagonists and worlds, [[{{Troperiffic}} a loving and heavy use of as many tropes as the genre allows,]] references to comic books and cartoons, {{Deadpan Snarker}}s out the wazoo, and jokes on the audience, usually in the form of either an AntiClimax or horribly depressing BlackComedy.
* PhilFoglio has a distinct art style, but beyond that you'll often find {{Thirty Xanatos Pileup}}s, {{Large Ham}}s, [[MostCommonSuperPower busty women]], and {{Nice Hat}}s. Lots of {{Nice Hat}}s.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* Butch Hartman is well-known (and sometimes despised) for what some call "[[http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=171614 Butch-Hartmanism]]". He has a tendency to creating heroes who are BookDumb, have [[ParentalAbandonment negligent/straight idiotic parents]], have only about [[ThoseTwoGuys two]] [[TokenTrio politically correct]] [[ThoseTwoGuys best friends]] that are as [[CoolLoser loserly]] as them, [[ThickLineAnimation simple background and character designs]], and inevitably [[{{Flanderization}} flanderize]] the a level of ComedicSociopathy that usually grows thick enough that everyone to be flat out into {{Jerkass}}es (if the show runs for long enough, that is).
* The success of ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' was in large part due to Bruce Timm's distinctive character designs, and soon became the ''de facto'' house style for the entire [[{{DCAU}} DC Animated Universe]]. The style tends towards streamlined characters, straight lines, broad-shouldered males with chiseled chins, and shorter women with emphasized HartmanHips. DCAU series that ''don't'' sport the Bruce Timm look tend to stand out immediately as a result.

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