Our Writer Trademarks

Sometimes when you have a look at an author's works in a marathon, you get a feeling of noticing certain patterns, such as a quirky writing style, or a character type, or thematic occurrences and the like. (Roland Emmerich always did have a knack for Everymen and natural disaster.)

We engage in some sort of subjective encoding when we write, whether we're aware of it or not. We consistently express our own emotions, thoughts and beliefs into what we create.

I wonder what themes and motifs commonly occur in your writing? What might have brought you to incorporate these trademarks in your works?

edited 21st Oct '10 5:19:13 PM by QQQQQ

• Grey-and-Grey Morality
• At least 1 Psycho for Hire or Blood Knight
• Transhumanism
• War Is Hell / War Is Glorious

edited 21st Oct '10 2:04:38 PM by Morgulion

Stars and other celestial bodies are a recurring motif in my works, it seems. I also used to be obsessed with exploring the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism, but I've evolved to the point that I just let each given work fall on whatever point of the scale it needs to instead of relentlessly examining the conflict between the two.

edited 21st Oct '10 2:14:35 PM by AsTheAnointed

I have a few things I always seem to reuse in new and exciting ways.

I tend to use a lot of robotic imagery in my work... :

The things I know have tropes:

• Deadpan Snarker - there's always at least one.
• Dysfunction Junction - because you can't have enough mad people!
• Dystopia
• Evilly Affable
• Love Triangle - features one Bastard Boyfriend (but portrayed as a total Jerkass by me, and portrayed as sexy by the narrator...), one that looks like one at first glance, and one girl (who'll always go away with the former and end up dead or abused).

edited 22nd Oct '10 6:51:27 AM by FashionistState

• Grey-and-Grey Morality/Grey-and-Black Morality (Let's just say I find black and white very unfulfilling)
• Blood Knight/Heroic Sociopath/Psycho for Hire (MANY of them)
• World of Badass/World of Ham (UNDOUBTEDLY! *PUNCH*)
• Eldritch Abomination
• Nietzsche Wannabe

edited 21st Oct '10 2:55:13 PM by KSPAM

I'm guilty of this.

• Eye Scream and people losing limbs: my biggest fear has always been losing an eye or limb in an extremely painful way
• Grey Morality and it's offshoots: Most of the time, it makes things more interesting.
• Jerkasses: They're fun to write.
• Slackers: Again, I have fun writing them, plus they're a good source of character devlopment
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Personal experience.

• What are normally Mooks or Red Shirts being given the spotlight. What Measure Is a Mook?, in short.
• A slightly obsessive amount of research done and implemented badly.
• Protagonist who is a genuinely nice guy, and generally is actually the least superpowered of the bunch.
• Earn Your Happy Ending
• Cosmic Horror
• Korean or Eastern European Mythology
• Xanatos Roulette
• Screw You, Elves!

I have to have at least one schmoozing, Holden Caulfield type who talks like a stereotypical Italian American Used Car Salesman. I know it isn't a trope in particular, but that Holdenaliamericarsaleschmooze character just seems to weasel his way into my thoughts as I write a character, even if that goes against their planned personality. I just have to work with it because I love writing it so much.

Slackers and the loss of arms, usually the left ones from the forearm down.

Not sure why.

And eyes. Creepy eyes. To the point where one character I made was an eye-based superhuman, and he had eyes all over his body.

Unrealistically large magical swords.

KSPAM and morgulion are secretly writing the same book!

For me:

• Arm injuries and losing use of your arms.
• Everyone wearing combat boots (I just like drawing them!)
• Married couples, families, and small children: common in real life, rare in fiction.

Guilty as well. Among the several Tropes and other things I include.

• HSQ in everything. Sometimes it gets quite high.
• The Rule of Cool.
• Massive Drama Bomb moments throughout a work both fully tugging Like You Would Really Do It and actually calling the bluff.
• A distinct lack of Always Chaotic Evil characters and their associated tropes like Card-Carrying Villain.
• Widely diverse casts. (And not token gestures either!)
• A heavy dose (though this is more styling) of both Consistency and Continuity.

I have words I use a lot. Like intoxicating.

Almost no character description on the first time through. I know very distinctly what my characters look like, and I have the words to describe them, but they never seem to make it into the actual story naturally.

A lot of water and water imagery, all the time. Characters always end up in coastal cities or a river in the vicinity will be prominintly featured or it will rain constantly.

I'm visually fond of broken glass.

The non-charactor narrator is given to informal tangents and smart-ass remarks.

When writing to approximate my actual speech patterns, I start a lot of sentences with 'I mean'.

If you mean themes, though, Don't Trust Anybody Implicitly Until They've Earned It and Institutions Give Us Good Things Sometimes But See Above.

• Protagonist who is secretly the villian.
• Lots of puzzles.

edited 21st Oct '10 10:04:35 PM by storyyeller

• The hero is usually a pretty nice guy
• Comical Explosions
• DistressedDamsels and DistressedDudes
• References to Classic Rock (in fact, I'm planning an entire story arc based on a Black Sabbath song)
• The word "crap" comes up a lot, usually with the words "holy" or "Oh" preceding it.
• SeinfeldianConversations
• Girls in glasses.

edited 21st Oct '10 11:29:02 PM by DrFurball

- Overt description of historical arms and armor.

- Invention of ahistorical units based on Rule of Cool: Misthophoroi Katanaphoroi are the least awesome in my setting. The more notable include Equites Arcani, Cohors Alba, Pedites Consulares, NorthanUlfr Berserkr, and finally Varangoi Kataphraktoi Somatophylakes and Varangoi Huskarlai Argyraspidai

- Always, complete, utter aversion of I HateYou Vampire Dad because my vampires are just that different.

edited 21st Oct '10 11:50:21 PM by ArgeusthePaladin

• Grey-and-Grey Morality
• Dysfunction Junction
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: antagonist that may not even be that extreme.
• Downer Ending or Bittersweet Ending: Unintentional. I have no problems with a happy endings, but my stories never develop to have one.
• It Got Worse: It always does, many times during each story.
• The Hero is always a good guy. He may be very grey, but still ultimately a good person.
• There are generaly many more male than female characters, though the female characters are not any less important. This is probably because the default state of my newly thought characters is male, since I am one.

edited 22nd Oct '10 12:00:27 AM by Dealan

• Fantastic transhumanism
• Body horror
• Freely used gorn
• Cast with extremely varied physical appearances
• One of the main cast being a sub
• Eye scream, to troll someone I know who has a phobia of it—a running gag between us.
• Varied fetish fuel, often for things I'm not even interested in myself
• Gilligan Cut
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog elements; at least one subplot just crashes and never comes back up, sometimes the main plot.
• Mostly cynical about characters' capabilities in overcoming their personal weaknesses. May play into the above.
• Cat metaphors
• The number 41
• Lots of dealing with varied kinds of love/sex/relationships/shipping
• A tsundere
• Me knowing a lot more about the setting and people than the readers ever need to, and teasing them with it.
• Rule of Aesthetically Pleasing

edited 22nd Oct '10 3:30:22 AM by SPACETRAVEL

Nine times out of ten, there's someone with a Nice Hat. Said hat is usually on the head of the resident Boisterous Bruiser, Cloudcuckoolander and/or Mad Hatter.

Long descriptive texts, either without or very excessive punctuation. Thoughts spliced with the narrative. Merging of reality and dreams. Paragraphs written entirely in lower-case. Longing for something which is unattainable. Lots of suicide.

Most of my works tend to just drift in my head as ideas, but here are some of my trademarks.  ^*

• Scenery Porn and Description Porn  ^*
  ^{One of my favorite writers is JRR Tolkien, and I really love being outdoors.}
• Twist Ending  ^*
  ^{Usually used to place one final piece of information to make the entire story make sense. These are most likely in my short stories.}
• Black-and-White Morality >>> Grey-and-Grey Morality / Grey-and-Black Morality  ^*
  ^{I still don't really mind Black-and-White Morality as long as it is put in perspective. For example Elves vs. Dwarves in the dwarves POV.}
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same  ^*
  ^{This is a rather recent edition, although they are not always the same.}

edited 22nd Oct '10 6:51:58 AM by EldritchBlueRose

Going through this makes me realize that my extremely normal family life has left some sort of impression on me...

• Big, Screwed-Up Family or Dysfunctional Family - obviously this depends on size. Very rarely are these families the nice/loving/fun kinds of dysfucntional.
• Creepy Twins - All the time. In fact, most of my works have creepy twins from the aforementioned families in them.
• Bittersweet Ending or Earn Your Happy Ending - I actually really dislike downer endings, but I do enjoy abusing my characters to the extreme.
• Crapsack World - a lot. Often includes Big Brother Is Watching, however, in the case of a screwed up family this will usually be lampshaded by older brothers/older twins.
• Mind Rape - obviously, my boring suburban life has lead to interesting results.

I also tend to have a fairly equal amount of women and men, but the women are almost never involved with anyone romantically. Never. I also overuse commas, but I'm trying to break myself of that.

I do grey-on-grey morality a lot. Factions and nations aren't on balance either evil or good (though one side may be more in the right on a specific issue). Most people are not good or evil either, and most of them rationalize their actions and believe they're doing the right thing, or at least trying to.

I tend towards Everyone Is Bi, but try not to overdo it; I do have a couple of exclusively heterosexual or homosexual characters. Others may be bi but only with one person, of course. This is a case of blatant Author Appeal and Write What You Know.

Gender is a fascination of mine, and thus my stories are likely to have varying gender roles for at least some cultures, with possibly different gender identification rules. Androgyny is not unheard of in my characters; crossdressing likewise, and there have been a few transsexual characters.

I'll think of more.

edited 22nd Oct '10 1:13:29 PM by Morven