Usually all my male protagonists are similar and all my main females are Action Girls. It was a little hard developing enough differences for two of my female characters.
I really like (permanent) mutilation for some reason. At some point or another someone's going to have an arm chopped off, face slashed, whatever. It doesn't result in a nice neat scar either, it has to be rather ugly/noticeable.
And people with weird moralities.
edited 15th Dec '10 5:37:00 PM by melloncollie
The clothes. I love designing cool getups for my characters.
I'm found of outfits too, usually in the from of Henshin Transformations. If I have a concept with one of these it usually keep going for about 5-8 different forms for each character, just so I can make different outfits.
edited 15th Dec '10 5:41:49 PM by americanbadass
[[User Banned]]_ My Pm box ix still open though, I think?Guns
Leather coats
Long hair
Blood Knights/Heroic Sociopaths
I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serialAlso Sociopaths in general. Almost every idea I come up with will probably ahve at least one sociopath somewhere.
it's up to the readers to figure out who it is.
My protagonists are always misunderstood, my authority is always corrupt, and fanatics are always of the evil sort.
In thinking about it, I also noticed that my female leads tend towards the "delicate flower" type (which is odd, because that's not my IRL preference for women). Also, my central characters are almost always female. Wonder why that's so.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~Question , is it bad if your major characters often have a Dark and Troubled Past?
If they all start running together, I'd say yeah.
I've noticed that a few of the fantastical stories that I've wanted to write have had strong (both in personality and in power), young, attractive, somewhat-stoic female protagonists. Other than that, I can't think of anything.
I tend to write Dark and Troubled Past to, but hey Write What You Know and Write Who You Know.
[[User Banned]]_ My Pm box ix still open though, I think?Almost all of my main protagonists (like, at least one per story) have this good-natured, go-with-the-flow demeaner and an underlying innocent enthusiasm. It's easier to figure out plots and settings when you don't have to worry about your protagonist ripping the plot out of your hands and bombing the shit out of your carefully romantisized post-post-apocalyptic midwest.
My stories often highlight the arbitrary nature of the universe, and often the futility. They're lighthearted in tone but dreadfully pessimistic in plot. Probably too much series of unfortunate events at a young age.
Lots of water...no particular reason behind that one.
Oh, and the morality's pretty blurry, to the point that whenever I try to introduce a villain, they end up grouped with the protagonists. I can't put a face on 'evil'. There are just people who do bad things, and my flimsy, good-natured protagonists can never believably antagonize someone who does a believable level of 'evil'. They usually end up on some flimsy anti-authoritarian, fight-the-man journey of self-exploration...did i mention that I almost never finish anything I write? I can never string a conflict out long enough...
edited 15th Dec '10 7:04:47 PM by DaeBrayk
Video game references by the truckload.
Male characters who are regularly called short.
And overall, I'm pretty far on the idealistic side with my stories.
My Wattpad — A haven for delightful degeneracyExtreme violence, hardcore violence, and ultra violence. Multiple goregasms!
Being Reference Overdosed. My model here is Top Ten, wherein virtually every page has some kind of reference to something else - and establishing location shots often feature dozens of them. Cameos by both Bluto and Vegeta, for Christ's sake! Virtually everything gets referenced, no matter how obscure; Big Bang Comics, for example.
BB is another one of my major influences, along with Supreme and Astro City. The fact that all three deal heavily in Captain Ersatz is why that's another one of my favorite devices to use.
Grr. Argh.Katanas, Humongous Mecha of the Real Robot variety, Starfighters, high capacity magazine firearms (More Dakka optional), scoped optics on said firearms, diverse casts of characters of many types and personalities, the Rule of Cool, tanks, Cool Aircraft, Awesome Personnel Carriers, and of course Gatling Good.
"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."I tend to use Dark and Troubled Past quite a bit. One of my characters was born immortal and you can guess how that turned out. Hell, my main character was a Child Soldier in the midst of global civil war. Find one innocuous book and even that can get worse.
Other than that, I really like Eldritch Abominations. And of course Body Horror/LovecraftianSuperpowers.
edited 15th Dec '10 8:30:53 PM by KSPAM
I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serialCharacters who are thoughtful loners, nonconformists, and who have philosophical crises but nevertheless do things other than just wangst.
Strange dream sequences, stream of consciousness, sometimes with a Nightmare Fuel-ish vibe.
Messing around with ideas of gender, for example by flipping traditional roles or having characters who don't fit the usual binary.
References to history, mythology, philosophy and the occult.
edited 11th Aug '11 6:54:34 PM by ImipolexG
no one will notice that I changed thisI like to make Chekhov related things. I haven't written a hard copy yet, so it's very easy for me to go back and insert things in the first chapter that won't become relevent until a side story that will likely never be published.
Yes.
Read my stories!While I haven't written down enough of my work for it to truly count, I have several.
- The Grim Reaper
- Cosmic horrors.
- hair bangs.
- alternate dimetions
- Rummage Sale Rejects,
- bandages
- Coats in general, especially Hoodies and trench-coats.
- Large Hams
- Sad Girls In Snow
- And finally, Heavy Metal.
Most of my protagonists are in the 'defiant teenage male' mould. Hopefully I can get it out of my system soon.
Almost all of my main characters are virgins. This is for a number of reasons: they're usually fairly young, tropes like A Man Is Not A Virgin annoy me, and I don't have any experience in that area myself.
I tend to write about average, not-very-important people who get caught up in events beyond their control and win through with courage and wits. I don't have any characters who are the best at what they do.
I also went through a brief phase where I wanted to write about diminutive humanoids with big ears, but only two concepts from this phase have survived.
Be not afraid...Taking You with Me, by the use of explosive.
Women. I don't know why, but whenever I think of a new character, I always default to a woman, be it in writing, a drawing, or some random daydream. I'm still trying to break myself of this one, though right now that only seems to end in me creating a lot of Bifauxnen instead.
I also think a lot about how things look when I'm writing, so it tends to be peppered with references to lighting, angles, perspective, and color. This one is a lot more positive than the first one though, so I actively try to encourage it when dialogue scenes start getting sparse on description. I'm not sure if people would actually take note of that if they read my writing, though.
I'll also tend to go in the exact opposite direction of Dark and Troubled Past, and go with people who had a decent parents and childhood, but end up in some really deep shit as the story progresses. Sometimes I'll even go so far as to have something that sounds like a Dark and Troubled Past, but have the character be well adjusted enough that it doesn't come off that way. I'm particularly fond of using Parental Abandonment that way, if my track record is any indication.
One that I've gotten into more recently is The Clan, and how people inside of it deal with their nuclear families and with people on the outside. I find it interesting, so I imagine I'm gonna be sticking to this one for a while. Its especially fun when you get into things like the planned breeding of family members.
Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit Deviantart.Women. It seems to be about 75% likely that a protagonist or joint protagonist is female, and better than even chance for anyone. The men tend to be not very macho, sometimes to the point of bishie. Working on appreciating more types.
Gay, lesbian or bi characters. It can be hard to find a heterosexual in my stories, but I'm again working on it. Transgendered characters of various kinds do show up as well.
Physical transformation; being made undead, cybernetic, disembodied, or being otherwise physically changed.
Attitudes to change.
Unlikely relationships that work.
Naval warfare, especially the ironclad to dreadnought era.
The love/hate relationship between parents and children.
A brighter future for a darker age.Odd. I am disinclined to have female main characters at all. Not very many female minor ones either.
I can only think of one exception, atm.
edited 16th Dec '10 1:03:57 PM by melloncollie
We all do it?
So whats your Author Appeal ? Intentional or unintentional, what are themes that just keep showing up in your writing.
Try not to aim it at the fetishistic.
For me it's a Trench coats every single male protagonist of mine wears one at least once (Unintentional).
Another one is Sliver white or black hair, one of my main character's always has one of these hair colors. (unintentional)
The theme of being Alone in a Crowd / Betrayed.(intentional)
Magnificent Bastard.(even in my romance stories, very unintentional )
Ho Yay - Loads of it usually lampshaded.
The Rebellious Spirit as a main character, also Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes .
also Art Major Overdose and Symbolism
yours?
edited 15th Dec '10 5:27:06 PM by americanbadass
[[User Banned]]_ My Pm box ix still open though, I think?