Common threads in your writing

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Wait until they start teaching your books at the university level. People will find all sorts of profoundness in your work that you won't remember putting there.

I had an english teacher like that. If I had no insights or ideas in a piece of writing, I could trust her to find some

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Wait until they start teaching your books at the university level. People will find all sorts of profoundness in your work that you won't remember putting there.

I’m guilty of that back in my lit days, it’s good fun, but I’ve no doubt lots of dead authors would have said: “No shit? That’s what I meant?”

LOL, and yeah! When they start unleashing Freudian, Jungian and other “thinkings” to my work I’m sure to be deep in the doodoo.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Woof, I feel like I do a lot of recycling... My main characters tend towards the quiet, stoic type, and on top of that I seem to write troubled, powerful women and good, incorruptible men, which might be a reaction towards the gender norms in older fantasy books? Perhaps a little bit of wish fulfillment with the guys, heh--they're all total sweethearts. Plot-wise, I love secrets, sacrifice, someone losing control or being harmed by their magic, characters being wronged or exiled, all sorts of heartstring-twangy stuff. And of course putting characters through the wringer, but showing them healing and being comforted because I'm a wuss. Those tender bedside scenes, y'all. Diiid I mention romance yet?

Ooh, secrets and sacrifice. Oddly, my current book features no romance, which is quite unusual for me. The only potential characters right now are the main character's guardian spirits, and it wouldn't fit in with a plot twist later on.

 

[Devor]

A few things for me:

Plots that significantly change the nature of the world.
Characters without last names.
Villains who make you feel like you're in the presence of evil.
Dragons. Is it really fantasy without a dragon? I think not.
When I want readers to be afraid, I have been known to surprise them with guns.
I have been working on making things more personal, giving more pedestrians and mooks names and personalities.

 

[Ban]

Hmmm, I'm not sure. Perhaps I haven't been writing long enough in a single genre to really get much of a writing style. There are some things I have noticed though:

I use magic and the supernatural scarcely.
I like rhyme, but that's more of a recent thing.
I really like alliteration.
I tend to focus on telling a story through the scene, partly because I hate writing dialogue and action scenes.

 

[Chessie2]

Wait until they start teaching your books at the university level. People will find all sorts of profoundness in your work that you won't remember putting there.

Ugh. I recall having to take a poetry appreciation class in college. Seeing as I was not a lit major, I was like WTF?! I hated that class with a fervent passion.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

A few things for me:

Plots that significantly change the nature of the world.
Characters without last names.
Villains who make you feel like you're in the presence of evil.
Dragons. Is it really fantasy without a dragon? I think not.
When I want readers to be afraid, I have been known to surprise them with guns.
I have been working on making things more personal, giving more pedestrians and mooks names and personalities.

Dragons! Yas!

I love dragons, but really, only one of my projects involves them. I have to come up with tons of species and detailed lore if I'm going to use them--go all out. And I don't want to make multiple sets of dragon species and lore...better to just put together the coolest and best in one book!

 

[FifthView]

No dragons for me. I think that's one of those things I'll need to do someday, just to say I've done a spin on it.

 

[Chessie2]

No dragons for me. I think that's one of those things I'll need to do someday, just to say I've done a spin on it.

Same here. Although I'll probably never write about dragons.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

There's a few dragons here and there in my books. Though in general, there's more cats than dragons.

 

[Orc Knight]

A few running themes in my own:

Women soldiers and leaders. Strong women in general. Including damsels getting out of their own distress or distressing the person trying to put them in distress.
Drinking and PTSD, usually due to soldiering.
Dinosaurs. Dragons.
Roses and Lily's and a few other flowers or flower themes.
Examining the monsters and the grunts that make up the armies.
Knights. Even in my sci-fi stuff.
Last, mostly sympathetic villains. Not all though.