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'm not sure if it goes against the spirit of the thread to pick more than one, but I don't think I can narrow it down that fine. I beg your forgiveness in advance.
As for the "all" bit, I'm gonna stick to novel and novella length stuff, where there's enough of a word allowance that these common things put down roots. I've written a lot of shorts and flashes where there just isn't much room for anything non-essential, and I like to explore lots of different things. Of course, many of those shorter works are built around the same stuff.
I had to really think about where to start, but I think I've got it. In larger works I tend to not stick to one world or planet. I'll always include one or more likely several different dimensions, alien worlds, mirror universes, alternate timelines... One of my novel series takes place on a multitude of planets within a galaxy, plus several alternate dimensions and timelines and whatnot. I will often use devices like astral projection, dream quests, and similar.
Related to that, time travel and dream sequences. I can't seem to stay away from the stuff and I hit them hard. I like to play with context and "what if" a whole lot. I like to warp and twist things and give them a surreal spin. To sum up, I like multiplicity and permutation and never quite having a steady sense of what reality is and isn't.
Somewhat related, alter egos of every kind. This is a suite of tropes I just love. This takes a lot of different shapes in my work. Could be as basic as an alias/secret identity, but I often like to go much deeper. For example, in one series there's a girl originally intended to be just a side character, but she got tangled up with the plot somehow, and now there are two other versions of her in addition to the original (which is just gone, but the two alternates co-exist). In this instance it's a case of time travel and time magic gone very wrong. They meet, and even have a climactic battle, it's a whole thing. One of the versions is also a body swapper, which is another thing I sometimes use.
I've done many other spins on this, including: gods taking avataric form; AI-driven robots killing a human, taking their skin and memories, in essence becoming them and wrangling with the existential dread that entails; villainous mirror-world versions of beloved characters; various twists on the idea of hive minds; Twin Flames AKA simultaneous incarnations, one soul in two bodies (or more, I have a case of quintuples in one novel). I have one especially egregious case I'm currently workshopping, because it's such a dumb idea and hard to make work, wherein a major villain is both an avataric form of a deity
and a simultaneous incarnation with several heroes. I think maaaaaybe that one is a step too far and I have to know when I'm beat, but it's officially part of my WIP at present.
I guess I really like to blur identity lines and play with the idea of Self, similar to how I blur the lines of reality. My work leans pretty heavily on characters, and I like to explore them deeply, and this seems to include alternate versions of them. I like to see who they'd be "but for the grace of Whomever it May Concern". Stuff like this may not make it to print all the time, but it's part of my character investigation process.
In short, I like to toy with the boundaries of self and reality, and often enough those intersect and influence each other. I like to keep it weird and wonky and a little bit uncertain.
Oh, and talking cats. I do that
all the time. Don't care how lame and overused that trope may be, I'll never give it up. Shit, some of the best dialogue I've ever written comes from cats.
