Your Author Appeal/Creator Thumbprint

I think that characters without Dark And Troubled Pasts are boring. Therefore, expect a Dysfunction Junction.

Examples: A character who was tortured by his father, forced to eat the poorly-cooked rotted meat of his beloved sister and mother, forced to vomit on himself because he was strapped to a chair for a week, lived with the corpses of his sister and mother for a week, etc. He got better, though. He was seventeen when it happened, and thirteen years of hatred have been good to him.

Also, Very little comedy relief if the work is dark. I'm a professional, and I like my moods to be professional also. But I'm not all "dark and serious", because I also plan on writing a comedy someday called The Gangs Of Nowhere, about highly incompetent and dysfunctional organized crime families in a rural setting.

edited 1st Jun '11 8:20:27 AM by Pyroninja42

That reminds me—I'm really big on protagonists being subject to inordinate amounts of torture, especially near the end of the story during the encounter with the antagonist.

• Hooves. (There will always be one person with hooves or primitive horse-style hoof-toes. I have a... thing...)
• Good parents. (There may be a couple rotten apples, but I'd prefer my characters' failings to be their own; also it's hard enough to find truly amazing parents in fiction.)
• Sanity slippage. (It's just fun.)
• Ho Yay
• Someone with pointy ears. (I have... another thing.)
• At least one person (doesn't matter their gender) who is happy and fulfilled leading a domestic life.
• No sex scenes. (I don't like to read them, I don't want to write them.)
• A downplaying of romantic love. (There are other kinds of love and more important obligations; if a character chooses their lover over the well-being of a great lot else it's bound to end up being the sign of a disturbed mind in one of my stories.)

edited 1st Jun '11 8:55:08 AM by Bur

Ditto on the no sex scenes. They are for the most part unnecessary, and even then I don't feel compelled to cater to horny idiots.

• Cats.
• Counting only characters who have enough presence in the work to have a discernible personality, expect a majority of females and usually a teenage female protagonist.
• Earn Your Happy Ending
• Nakama / The Power of Friendship
• Ditto on the "no sex scenes".
• Some form of mystery (not necessarily a murder mystery) with clues early in the narrative that will make sense later on.
• Secret identities, or two characters later being revealed as the same person.
• One character who's a fan of William Shakespeare and drops quotes into casual conversation.
• One character (heroic but never the lead female) who's considered extraordinarily beautiful and has very long dark hair and pale skin.
• If you knew which female names I consider "pretty" and which I don't, you'd have a much better chance of telling the good guys and villains apart early on.

Conversely, I always manage to throw in a shitload of immensely loud, passionate sex between the main couple.

While sex looks fine in comics, it's usually awkward to read in prose, so I actually avoid writing it.

edited 1st Jun '11 11:32:03 AM by annebeeche

Rather than list author appeal elements per se, I went for those things that are more my personal hallmarks than anything else:

• Detailed descriptions of facial expressions and tics.
• Internal monologue directly affecting prose.
• Aversions of "realistic diction."
• Strange but comprehensible metaphors.
• Dialogue mixing formalities with slang.
• Stray allusions to obscure authors.
• Extremely sinister and/or fatalistic subtext.
• Surrealistic, morbid, morose and/or depraved comic elements.
• Cryptic conclusions, especially ambiguously positive and exceedingly negative ones.
• A near-total absence of straight heroism.

Let's see, I can't think of a single villain I've written that has absolutely nothing redeeming about them. I have a tendency to write cutely naive characters, and I abuse Refusal of the Call. Also, I very rarely focus on romance. It's just soooo boring to write. Characters fall in love, but they do it gradually and fairly behind-the-scenes.

...Musically, just about every time I solo there's F sharp being used as a grace note to G, even if it'd be in the wrong key. Most of the stuff I've written has one stuck in there somewhere too, but not nearly as often.

edited 1st Jun '11 12:37:01 PM by Lasty

I tend to have at least one female character that qualifies for as a Little Miss Badass

Ditto with Action Girls in general

Lots of snarking and sarcastic replies

Meaningful Names or Punny Names

Some form of mind rape

Dysfunction Junction

I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting...

Female protagonists tend to have divorced or long separated parents, and dead or long absent fathers.

Dogs are plot relevent lab mixes.

Protagonist tend to have a younger cousin or half-sibling who looks up to them.

I just realized that I can only think of one story I've written since ninth grade that didn't have at least one romantic subplot. There's generally some form of Will They or Won't They?, but it's not usually a Love Triangle—rather, there's some obstacle in one or both characters' personalities or natures.

Also, I've noticed that I tend to make my less-human characters female and attractive (though the latter needn't be in any conventional way.)

Also also, shapeshifters. Lots and lots of shapeshifters. I'm trying to force myself not to use them.

Also also also, I'm a firm believer in not "overplaying my hand," as I call it. This means that when two characters argue over a philosophical point, and the reader could reasonably be expected to side with either one, I try not to alienate half my readers by declaring one side and only one side right. In practice, this means a lot of Grey-and-Gray Morality.

edited 1st Jun '11 2:33:15 PM by feotakahari

Lots of loving, doting, caring fathers and father figures.

Hell, even my sterile protagonist is a father figure. He's an adopted uncle. :3

edited 1st Jun '11 2:50:56 PM by annebeeche

• Misfit protagonists
• Indie Music
• Characters that speak 2 or more languages
• Narm (YES, I have to face it...)
• Movie parodies (They range from Cinema Paradiso, Ferris Buellers Day Off, American Pop, A Clockwork Orange, among others...)
• Pos Modernist observations
• Dream Sequence
• At least a Jewish character in the cast
• People related to the media or the entertaiment (Actors, Writers, Musicians)

edited 2nd Jun '11 11:03:38 PM by Anthony_H

: Awwwww.

Another thing I can't believe I forgot: My primary female character is always left-handed.

i always have grey and gray morality.

apathy tends to show up in most of my stories to some degree.

aside from that...? jerks with hearts of gold, only heavier on the jerk than the gold.

oh right and there is always a massive pessimist somewhere around. always.

Odds are you'll find at least one of the following in my stories:

• Black-and-Grey Morality
• Ancient Conspiracy
• Eldritch Abominations
• Gorn
• Scenery Gorn
• Complete Monster villains
• Large guns
• Improbably attractive people

My works tend to have:

• Third person limited POV.
• More than one viewpoint character, although usually only one per chapter.
• Female main character.
• Athletic female characters who are wiry or willowy. They also tend to range from average bust size to Pettanko. (Usually leaning towards Pettanko.)
• Gender blender names and nicknames.
• There is normally at least one Happily Married couple in each of my stories.*
  ^{This is pure Author Appeal. I find people who have decided to spend the rest of their lives together much more romantic than a dating couple who've been together for a short period of time.}
  There are still screwed up relationships, but there's usually happy couples to balance those out.
• Meaningful Names. A lot of the time, my character names are significant, although I try to avoid obvious meanings. The name meanings are rarely discussed in story.
• Mythology references.
• Characters who express their feelings through actions rather than words. This can be because of being reserved, shy, or just lousy at expressing feelings in words.
• Lots of playing with assumptions (of both the characters and the audience).

edited 3rd Jun '11 6:30:05 AM by LadyMomus

Golems, Anachronism Stew, a Fallen Hero and/or Corrupt Government all appear quite frequently in my work.

edit: Also, no romance except, occasionally, protagonists who are part of a married couple but no one who is in the process of falling in love.

edited 3rd Jun '11 6:30:11 AM by TheFedoraPirate

My works usually have:

• A protagonist who is a misfit and / or socially awkward.
• Characters who speak several languages.
• No sex scenes at all.
• A villain who has a Villainous Breakdown at the end.
• An Earn Your Happy Ending scenario.
• Wise Beyond Their Years children.

• The main protagonist being a scrawny, sarcastic everydude who could care less about saving the world but often doesn't have a choice in the matter.
• A secondary female character who is usually the protagonist's Foil in some way.
• Obscure/Seldom-used mythological creatures. When I do use a "mainstream" monster, expect there to be some sort of twist to how they're usually portrayed.
• Deconstruction/Reconstruction of The Chosen One (toned down as of recently to avoid looking like I rely to heavily on this)
• Anyone Can Die and Earn Your Happy Ending
• If there is any romance, expect it to be fairly unimportant to the main plot. Also, no sex scenes.
• Loads And Loads Of Characters
• At least one classy villain with a hidden agenda.

Fantasy Kitchen Sink, Anachronism Stew, fusion of comic and dramatic elements, use of the third person subjective voice, playing with the Fourth Wall and other metafictional elements.

A lot of the time I feel like I'm gently poking fun at my characters, be they badasses, nerds or mass murderers, so even serious characters can end up doing things like locking themselves out of their house, or accidentally squawking like a parrot, for example.

I seldom include romance in my stories, but that's mainly because I suck at writing it. I'm also somewhat averse to killing off characters, but when I do, they stay dead.

Unless you specifically write adult-oriented romance fiction or erotica, saying "no sex scenes" seems, to me, like a person who writes Medieval European Fantasy saying "no cattle rustlers." Whether it's even viable in the first place depends largely on your target audience and genre, so citing its absense as a hallmark in places where it isn't even expected in the first place strikes me as a kind of off.

...I understand not being comfortable with writing them, though.

• The big one is probably Two Lines, No Waiting. I managed to avoid it in the first two parts of The Adventures Of Feelgood And Longbottom, but it's cropped up in the third one.
• Glasses-wearing girls
• Eldritch Abominations, especially after I watched The Call Of Cthulhu
• World-Ending Threats
• Superheroes in all but name and appearance (George has electrical abilities and has saved others, but the phrase "superhero" never comes up, for example.)
• Looney Tunes-style slapstick and wordplay
• Lots of puns.

edited 5th Jun '11 4:54:12 PM by DrFurball

As much as my "works" lack any physical substance, these things seem to enjoy popping up constantly;

• Childhood Friend Romance, at least between the main couple.
• A character with fairly large breasts, often a villian. Sometimes has a Whip Sword.
• ActionGirls
• Every Protagonist must be below 25 years old.
• The Protagonists probably get more sensible outfits then the Antagonists.

And probably some others I'm forgetting.

edited 5th Jun '11 5:21:07 PM by RenHydron

Always have a couple of these:

• even in the most mundane stories, Magic Realism. Can't seem to not have it.
• one Deadpan Snarker Genre Savvy closet sociopath.
• Black Humour
• World of Snark
• All main characters will have Cloudcuckoolander tendencies.
• Mad science.
• Up To Eleven self-aware (and frequently parodic) action sequences.
• One cricket bat, to be used as a weapon.
• Asexuality or apparent disinterest in one of the main characters.
• The primary protagonists are almost always male.

And, as much as I try to keep things simple and funny, long story arcs with lots of callbacks, brick jokes and continuity porn.

edited 5th Jun '11 5:33:24 PM by LongJohnnyStrong