Goodkind's works have exhibited some of the following trends:
- Anvilicious: One could easily argue that Goodkind and subtlety have never met. He feels the best way to get his point across is to have a heroic character deliver a long speech to a crowd of straw men, who will respond with phrases the character can easily rejoin. Or have a villainous character be made entirely out of qualities Goodkind finds abhorrent.
- Don't Shoot the Message: Goodkind has occasionally suggested that people who are critical of his works, or of himself, are far-left liberals or people who take issue with his being an Objectivist. However, the typical rejoinder to this is that there have been many conservatives and Objectivists who still don't think much of his writing.
- Fan Myopia: In a rare example of the author seeing his work in a way the rest of the world does not, Goodkind frequently talks about his books as if they are something unprecedented; that he has re-invented the fantasy genre by doing things that no one has ever done in this genre before. He does this, of course, by "not writing fantasy" but writing "deep philosophical works" that happen to use fantasy as a medium to get their message across. Fans who read nothing but Goodkind often parrot this idea. Of course, anyone who reads fantasy, as Goodkind says he does not, will quickly and easily see that not only are Goodkind's books pretty standard examples of the genre, almost to the point of being stereotypical, but he's far from the first one to insert author tracts, nor is he the only one still doing it.
- Fantasy Ghetto: Goodkind provides an unusual example given he expressed this opinion despite being an author of fantasy fiction. In a 2003 interview he stated "First of all, I don't write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes. They have elements of romance, history, adventure, mystery and philosophy. Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It's either about magic or a world-building. I don't do either." Based on his comments over the years, he seemed to have a low opinion of much of the fantasy genre, seeing most fantasy stories as plotless and lacking deeper meaning.
- Writer on Board: In spades. Early works perhaps weren't as Anvilicious as his later works, but once he became a hardcore disciple of Ayn Rand, he decided to have long breaks from the action so that his lead characters could deliver long speeches that were transparently Goodkind yelling at his audience. He also created two characters who were meant to represent Bill and Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, they were hideous, corrupt people. His description of a group of pacifists in one novel includes the phrase "armed only with their hatred of moral clarity." They are all massacred, and this is presented as completely justified.
