Every author has their own gimicks or personal touches that reappear over and over again in their writing; professional writers do it too, it's not just us amateurs and hobbyists and aspiring artists. It's all part of the "voice" that distinguishes one artist from another. Mercedes Lackey has the overabundance of angst in her male characters, and female characters that could break just about anyone over their knees. A friend of mine has this obsession with writing stories based around games, sick, twisted games that involve the complete and utter manipulation of all the involved characters by a mysterious narrator (him, the author). (I'm of the opinion that he ought to get help for that god-complex of his, but hey, writing never was a very sane occupation.) Shakespeare kept on poisoning his main characters. L.E. Modesitt Jr seems to love doing the 'oops, I misplaced my homeland' thing in his Recluse novels and in the Spellsong Cycle. You know, main character ends up in surroundings and situations that are radically different from their background, like Anna from Iowa ending up in Erde, the magic continent, or Nylan and Co finding themselves in Candor after their ship gets blown to pieces in space. Of course, all of his main characters have extraordinary abilities, and are considered either saviors or demons by the people; this is the exact opposite of Dennis L McKiernan, who writes the story of the Everyman caught in fantastical situations with nothing to help them but their own wits and heart. McKiernan's Everymen tend to be halflings, though, and they always receive aid from special people (like Aravan, who is, and always will be, the coolest elf ever) and prophecies and such.

What I'm trying to say is that writers tend to either get stuck in a rut, or just stick to what they enjoy and what they like to write. (This has a few disturbing implications for my friend, as his characters invariably seem to end up dead at the hands of the narrating manipulator...) I've found that my own gimick (and this might have disturbing implications as well) is to have characters with voices in their heads. Now, the two, possible three people who read this wouldn't necessarily be familiar with most of the junk I've got lying around, but I can still list quite a few people from distinct and separate stories that have one of those nagging little voices in the back of their heads that is a little bit more vocal and real than their conscience.

Oh yeah, and the voice is almost always eeevil. Not just mean, but eeevil. On occasion it isn't, but usually, my characters are fucked. So, in Boffo we have Dei, where the voice was not only eeeevil and sadistic, it was basically a personification of Evil; in Silent Sentinel we have Edrana, whose voice is the actual Seventh Sentinel, one of those Evils that was locked away to keep it from blowing up the world (she's one of my favorites, really- a complete and utter bitch, but you can't really blame her when she's got Evil stuck in her head); in Phoenix Rising there was Matt with Sylestris, who wasn't so much evil as he was an amnesiac pissy little bitch, but then, so was Matt- they deserved each other (I'm never going to fix that story, though I might like to burn it at some point *sigh*); from one of my random Sailor Moon things I had a villain who wasn't so much a villain as a tragic (very tragic) betrayer of his people- and he had the voices of all the screaming, tortured souls that died because of his betrayal in the back of his head (ironically enough, his name was Warai, which means laughter); and there was also Tybarra/Briathala, who now resides in the Garbage Story, with her two swords o' Doom and Destruction that reside in a sub-dimensional otherspace and argue in her head.

There are others, but these are what I can remember off the top of my head, and these are the ones that I've developed the most. I've also got a thing for assassins and thieves and vampires, but really, who doesn't? I blame the assassin thing entirely on Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward, the best book ever. She quotes Shakespeare for the title. (The best book ever, no really- nevermind that it probably isn't that great- it's still the best. Ever.) Naturally I've lost my copy of it. *sulk* And, also naturally, I can't find it in bookstores anymore. *double sulk* And the author has only written two books, and I haven't been able to find her second one, either. *triple sulk*

Mmm, that was pointless. Y'know what one of my other quirks is, especially in terms of Sailor Moon otaku things? Villains who are somehow related to the heroes. And people under some sort of geas to be evil, or to do evil, which sort of goes along with the first thing. Warai, for instance, was one of the Wind Princess' retainers, before the real bad guy made him think that he'd kidnapped the person Warai was in love with and his family, etc, etc, etc...so Warai was bound to the evil guy in exchange for the safety of his loved ones, blahblahblah. But I'd also keep on writing the sister of the head of the senshi as some sort of reincarnated evil goddess of some sort, or the appropriate vessel for the evil that wanted a body, or blahblahblah- and the evil cronies would kidnap her and put her in a coma and she'd be taken over by the Evil and the love of her sister or whoever would cause her to vanquish the evil, yaddayadda- I think I did that three or four times. Not that I ever finished anything; I'd just conceptualize the whole story from start to finish and see no point in writing it if I already knew what was going to happen. (The Sailor Moon thing was a phase, that's all- but it was fun. Maybe I'll go back to it when I finish Boffo.)