What Is One Thing All Your Stories Have In Common?

[typree]

Ah, my first question of the new forum... Let's get right into it.

If you had to pick one thing all your stories have in common, what would it be? What is one thing that they all share?

I don't just mean a surface level similarity like "they're all written in English", or "they all have sentence structure", or "they all have characters and a plot", because things like that are what they'd have in common with almost any story. Then, on the flipside, you might say to yourself, "Oh, my stories have practically nothing in common with each other!"

So, I should be more specific. What I want to know is, what is one tendency or pattern you notice consistently shows up with every story—or even story idea—you have? One thing that is linked to you as an author and the way you see the world. Doesn't have to be super unique, but is at least something interesting that says alot about you and what you like to read and write.

If it helps, I'll give you an example: Recently, I have noticed that with most of the stories/story ideas that I have, each of them are centered around some global or humanitarian issue that I am passionate about. Typically a complicated or divisive conflict.

I believe it was someone on the old forum that once said, "Where there's conflict, there's a story", and I definitely agree. If not there, then I read about it somewhere else. For whatever reason, the state of the world, and general real-world issues as a whole seem to really inspire me when coming up with ideas for a story. When I investigate the root of my idea far enough, at the bottom I find this tendency of mine hidden underneath it. Especially if it's intended to be a longer story.

These conflicts or real-world issues I'm referring to aren't usually inspired by any one current World War, historical event, prime minister, or anything specific like that. Usually they are general interpersonal real-world issues that humanity faces today: like climate change, the Loneliness Epidemic, the growing number of "iPad Kids", society and the working class under capitalism, and women's right to self defense against predators... just to name a few. My stories are inspired by not just how they've affected others, but especially the way they've affected my personal life. I don't really see them as just political per se, but in the grand scheme of things, they are. These are matters that really inspire me, and my stories are created to address them in a fictional, fantasy-like, usually light-hearted way that I find really uplifting. It's to help people see them differently.

I like to be conscious of this, so as to avoid making my stories hyper-specific and dated, yet to keep them very relevant and "of their time" at the same time. Many of my favorite movies, games, and anime are also like this. (This might be helpful to keep in mind if you ever see me post something for critique in the future!)

Anyway, after realizing this, I then got curious about what other motif my fellow storytellers might have...

Do you choose to write your story under that "pattern", or does it just kind of... happen? Have other people pointed out a theme you weren't aware of before? Does knowing your pattern help you write your story? And, if you can't think of just one thing, then list a couple things.

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to reading what you all think!

 

[Louanne Learning]

I try to do something different with every story. But the one constant is my writing style. Apparently, it's recognizable!

 

[Trish]

I accepted a long time ago that I'm primarily a romance writer. It might be fantasy, it might be contemporary, it might be dark (or really dark) romance, and there may or may not be a HEA, but love will always be central. Sometimes it's the kind that saves, sometimes it's the kind that destroys, sometimes it's real, and sometimes it isn't, but it's always central.

 

[JT Woody]

I had a thread on the old forum called "Core Stories" which is essentially what your thread is about. Common elements or themes in your work that come u unconsciously that becomes your "core story" or story you are trying to tell in various ways.

Mine is journey/self discovery. No matter what i write, the themes of self discovery is always there. going deeper, its almost always about someone who is lost and is looking for purpose or validation.

in Cave Stars, my MC struggles with who she is a part from being a sacrifice for her clan and then being a savior for another clan. She's looking for her own purpose, not what people tell her her purpose should be.
in Storm Queen, my MC doesnt know who her family is and therefore doesnt know who she is. when she discovers she isnt even from Earth and finds out who her father is, she then struggles if she she should pick up his legacy or if she should become take this new information and forge her own path.
in The Plan, the MC has her whole life planned out for her and panics when things start going wrong. she realizes she's holding on to the ideal life that her parents want for her, but doesnt know who she is or what she truly wants outside of what they want for her. so she leave them and learns that its ok to live, try new things, fail, and try again.
in Sunday, my 10 year old MC has lived with the identity of "girl with a crazy mom who tried to drown her." When her mom comes home from the asylum, my MC is not only trying to develop her own identity, but the mom is trying to find her own identity, too, after the years being locked up for something she didnt do.

Faith and Family are also strong themes in my work. "Faith" not solely being religious/spiritual... but "faith" in humanity, for example. one of my MCs loses faith in humanity for the atrocities they've done. Another MC loses faith in her mother (but finds it again). things like that.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Once upon a time, someone asked forum folk to describe the main thrust of their fiction in three words. My words are strive, survive, thrive.

 

[Lemie]

I didn't realise it until I got diagnosed - but all my main characters are "explorations" of my ADHD traits. Like slightly exaggerated versions that fits the character and narrative, but still in a way that feels very relatable and real to me.

I mainly write interesting characters that are... likeable in the way that you want to see what happens - but not in a way that you'd want to befriend them in real life. I like to call them likeable assholes and I like to see them through struggles (insert plot here) that seems to lead them towards glory, but where they usually end up in the same shitty place where they started, just with the knowledge that their hard work just doesn't seem to pay off.

And before it starts sounding too depressing - my style of writing is somewhere between feel good and sort of "dark" comedy. With a romance plot - but not a lot of HEA.

There's a reason I write solely for myself, I'm not sure I've got a target audience

 

[Naomasa298]

My recent stories have been about self-identity. Not group identity or identity politics, but characters who don't know who they are in themselves.

Ghosts is about a man who has to reconcile his current identity as a loving grandfather and his past as a soldier in post-war Japan.
Showa Story is about a policeman lost in the bright lights of Tokyo who meets a girl who has had her self subsumed beneath that of an idol.
Crossroad of Forever is the story of a racist whose racism causes his son's death and is starting to doubt it when he is suddenly killed in a car accident and begins to let go of his beliefs *after* his death.

I also have a series of stories called Siren about toxic love in different forms. The first one was posted on the old forum a long time ago. The second was written for one of the old forum competitions. The third is a WIP. There's some overlap with the above.

 

[bACK iN mY dAY]

There is something I've noticed with a lot of my ongoing stories, which is a little odd to think about. The concept of them being 'crushed in the machine'. Of an ultimate powerlessness that is attached to them in the scope of the systems they are trapped in, and how they adjust to that.
This is almost certainly due to the events of my own life, so there's a quick therapy breakthrough. It was odd to think about though, because I was reading the character topic (How do you want people to feel about your characters, in essence) and it occurred that... I don't know.

I am trying to write characters that people care about, I think, or at least ones your can understand, that's probably the basics of it (although what would it look like if you didn't? interesting thought). But at the same time you come back to the above and I kinda realise that the ideas always came first. I rarely write stories where the character 'chooses' where to go next. They are inevitably bound in machines - in time travel, in their society, in their relationships, and break under them, are paralyzed in them, or escape. It's a little disconcerting, because I do want my characters to be 'better' - but at the same time they come second, so...

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I write short fiction, so there's that as a common feature. Even the two ideas for something longer formulate themselves into chapters that could read as dependent short stories, so that might be something about how I conceptualise.

I place strong emphasis on the prose. It's one of my strengths, I think.

I place strong emphasis on the prose. It's my greatest weakness, I think.

Sometimes I look at what I've written and struggle to work out how two different pieces have the same author. I break them into three general categories.

Creative non-fiction, where the tone is exasperated puzzlement, of which I'm no stranger.

Fiction 1, where the tone is profane, character-centred with little activity never mind action.

Fiction 2, where the tone is more wordy, word play, obscure characters and less activity never mind action.

I've entered a lot of the contests back in the old land. The ones that did relatively well, very often, were things that meant little to me and the ones that did abyssmally were closer to what I want to write. Probably more that they're the types of thing that crop up in my head as ideas for what to write.

Oh, the life of a tortured artist!

 

[Luxuria]

The common threads in my stories are immortality, politics, and breaking every character down and seeing what their darkest feelings are. Also, realistic consequences for their actions/behaviors. There is this sense of reality in my stories that tends to just be there. Because I am always wanting to ground my stories in reality.

 

[Naomasa298]

Sometimes I look at what I've written and struggle to work out how two different pieces have the same author. I break them into three general categories.

Nothing unusual about that. The two pieces I posted in the Workshop are completely different in genre, tone and style.

 

[Brandon S. Pilcher]

I have a lot of stories about strong action heroines, since I'm fond of attractive women kicking butt as a trope. I also have a lot of prehistoric monsters since dinosaurs were my first love.

 

[October Haale]

Most of the stories I wrote/started/plotted (all varying flavors of fiction) had a focus on motherhood. For example, in one story the MC leaves her narcissistic mother to visit her extended family for the first time and her aunt all but takes her in. I had fun exploring, through the MC's eyes, what a stable loving mother is supposed to be.

In the second story, the MC is pregnant with her first child and leaves home to find her husband, who's trapped in a POW camp. This one is a sci-fi, so I have more leeway to play with extremes and just have fun.

Those are the most obvious ones. Most of my other stories all have some pseudo-parent subplot or relationship in them, typically between siblings or family friends.
Seeing how I have a good relationship with both of my parents, my uneducated psychoanalytic conclusion is that this is my subconscious trying to explore my own fears of being a mother one day.

Oh, and distance running. Ever since I started in 2017, running has crept into so many stories.

 

[Naomasa298]

Not all of my stories are written in English. Well, they are, but I wrote some specifically to be easily translated into Japanese, so they'll have, for example Japanese speech patterns even in the English versions. I've written two like this, and have translated them into Japanese.

 

[wearywanderer64]

The series - cats. In general - different levels of humour.

 

[ps102]

I didn't realise it until I got diagnosed - but all my main characters are "explorations" of my ADHD traits.

I had a similar experience to this. I'm diagnosed with ASD. And pretty much every story I've ever written is about a "weird" characters either trying to "fix" themselves or to find purpose in a world that is extremely confusing to them.

My first project, which was a trilogy I started very shortly after exiting my compulsory education days, was all about a character on her last year of high school. She was wasting her days on online worlds, skipping classes and paying zero attention to her future.

The story was essentially about her rising to the realization that she needs to take control of the future and build a life for herself, all done through a surreal Sci-Fi plot. I still remember a big monologue she made during her "dark night of the soul" moment where she admitted that there was some sort of "rotten gear" that was always inside her.

The whole thing (especially that character) was one big exploration of my soul. But I didn't know that I had ASD at the time. It never even crossed my mind. I just know that I was different to everyone and that I was trying my best to fit into a society that for whatever reason, I found extremely hard to work with.

About two years later when I finally got diagnosed and my entire world view shifted into this entirely new perspective, so did this novel. I realized that I (completely unconsciously) wrote a character with key autistic traits.

I've not touched or read that novel since then. But I did, for about two years, shifted to primarily writing short stories. Pretty much all of them featured main characters with atypical traits.

I'm pretty sure that the "Core Stories" concept that @JT Woody mentioned is all too real. Whether you're neurodivergent or not, you have a personal topic that is off deep interest to you. Of course, I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone, but I'm sure that it applies to many.

 

[Flashfire07]

Looking back over the last ten years, my works have largely followed similar themes of overcoming trauma, fighting oppression and finding healing through self-acceptance and radical compassion for those in pain. In a world that wants so badly for people to hate themselves the ultimate act of resistance is to love each other.

I've also noticed that I tend to explore themes of religion, faith, dogma, and belief, even in works that are ostensibly purely secular you'll usually find a character dealing with the intersection of faith and belief or of dogma and faith or osme other crisis point where their beliefs are put to the test. There tends also to be a theme of cycles of some sort, whether that be cycles of trauma, of violence, of history or of simply living the same life again. Usually the focus is on breaking the cycle and dealing with what comes next, but sometimes the cycle exists for a reason, and fighting it is actually where the pain comes from. That's less common in my more recent works which tend to focus on questioning the cycle and upturning the boat.

 

[Link the Writer]

They all have disabled characters and the themes revolve around resilience, determination, and the ability to rise above the odds.

 

[DLC]

When it comes to fantasy, the characters tend to be peasants, tradesmen, farmer folk and the like. Not a king or princess or billionaire. No dragons either. Happy or at least hopeful endings. MC is usually female, while in my crime and sci-fi ones they're almost always male. I think it comes from mythos I've read from Norse / Saxon / Celtic / Rus where magic is largely women's biz. idk.

 

[Also]

People looking for purpose.

So far, all primary characters have a connection to cultural heritage music.

Most have exceptional sensibilities, some are neurodivergent.