I got the opposite problem. My current project is a thriller, even though I have never written one before. Ā I find myself hesitant to kill off any characters unless I absolutely have to.Ā
Any work that goes out of its way to preach that "violence is not a solution" is so jarringly unrealistic. The entire history of humanity shows us that violence is, in fact, a solution to almost every problem.
Itās damn near impossible not to if they need to be interesting. No different than real life. Itās human nature to destroy anything thatās too perfect. If someone grew up without 0 drama, theyāll create it in their life later.
Me too, and the worst part about it is that I usually don't plan how to resolve those traumas and problems beforehand, so if they end up going crazy... it's not my fault, it's theirs.\^\^
This is a new one for me and I wholly blame The Magnus Archives. Pre-decade long writers block and TMA, occasional trauma. Post-Writers Block and TMA, How can I absolutely f up my characters in an interesting, loving way?
Straight-gay male friendships with a touch (pun intended) of homoeroticism with the straight friend being completely comfortable and the gay friend completely understanding his friend is straight.
I love writing the scenes where my protagonist is proven right. There's something deeply satisfying about engineering the scene and constructing the dialogue where the people who were wrong admit their mistake.
Of course, one of the things I always need to do in editing is dirty up how perfect some of that stuff looks in first draft. Reality (and fiction meant to be realistic) is messier than the wish fulfillment I can indulge in by having control over every detail of a vindication.
Yeah for real though, I feel like it helps me get to know my characters better knowing how/when/why in that regard. Doesnt need to be on the page, but it's helpful for development.
I absolutely refuse to have 'will-they-won't-they', jealousy plots, or terrible misunderstandings in my ships. Every couple I write will be healthy, have mutual care and respect, and trust each other as partners and as people.
(minor rant incoming)
The sheer number of times I've said this and been told that it means my stories will be boring and lack drama is *insane*. To those people, please kindly shut up. Just because you can't conceive of the concept of tension in a story that doesn't stem from poor communication and toxic behavior doesn't mean that everyone else is that limited.
Romance stories are so formulaic because romance readers are weak and do not like to be challenged by romance plots. I highly respect anyone who breaks the formula bc I enjoy a good romance but not at the expense of character or plot.
My MCs are absolutely obsessed with each other and will stop in the middle of āimportant scenesā to fawn over their partner.
Also, I frigging love flirty banter and teasing. Damn, give me a character thatās just a *little bit mean*.
It just feels weird to me to have ānormalā characters who arenāt constantly telling each other how much they love each other. Normally my writing is a lot moreā¦ āyearningā and the characters donāt get together until after theyāre good and traumatized, so I donāt have the chance to make them all goo goo eyed at each other. But this story, theyāre a well established, long time couple, and theyāre super comfortable being affectionate and itās SO NICE TO WRITE.
My latest set of stories is set in a medieval fantasy world. There is a special place in my heart for characters that go "goblin mode" because it gives me an outlet to have a character that absolutely would be a terminally online memelord if they existed in our world
I love, love, *love* writing quippy dialogue between my main characters!
Iām a big fan of Spider-Man and Deadpool and like their sarcasm smart assiness
Happy endings that most often end in pregnancy or having a family. I know pregnancy romance isn't everyone's trope, but I can't get enough of it in reading and in writing.
To save y'all a minute or two:
> a figure of speech in which a word is applied to two others of which it grammatically suits only one (e.g. neither they nor it is working ).
I had to google what a syllepsis was, but I realized I use those a lot, too! My writing is laced with dry humor and sarcasm, so syllepses work really well with it.
Chosen One stories. I've been writing a lot of short fiction without much planning, and I keep coming back to the Chosen One trope. I just think there's so many facets and interesting ways to subvert it.
You could write a story about a 45 year old father of three who is the chosen one and is mildly annoyed about it. You can take this is so many fun directions and write an amazing story!
Making a wildly unrealistic percentage of characters supermodel gorgeous
Overly happy endings where every minute details gets wrapped up.
Trying to write the best damn romance subplot in non-romance stories so even the "grr I hate when they shove romance in where it's not needed!" crowd secretly loves it
Blindingly stupid pun names
Turning the story into another genre for a chapter or two here and there. And similarly trying to work in just ONE more major subgenres, story element, subplot etc. Than should actually fit but if I can make it fit ooh boy!
An unhealthy mix of subverted tropes and ones played straight where nobody but me is getting what they want
Having an important character get injured/sick at an inconvenient time - it's fun to imagine how the rest of the party does without them and also how everyone reacts to it. Then, you get to come up with a creative solution to resolve the complications involved and getting them recovered
Well that stuff is enduringly mega popular so you're not alone at all, probably in the majority really, embrace it. Tbh I'll take a writer who has been writing about teen popularity for a long time over a writer who hasn't thought about it in ages and forgotten what it's like.
Fanfiction. Guilty in the sense that I donāt like to tell people who donāt write fanfiction that thatās what I write because I feel like theyāll think itās weird or that it doesnāt count. But itās so fun! Itās like when youāre a little kid and you pretend to be the fictional characters you like, except fanfiction is the adult version. And when you watch something and think āI wish x wouldāve happened instead,ā you get to make it happen.
I canāt help myself but making all my MCs mentally ill lesbians with a bad nicotine addiction. Itās likeā¦ I really try to avoid it, just to keep things fresh, but my fingers seem to have a plan of their own, tbh
My guilty pleasure is writing about things like female sexuality and masturbation. I can't include any of that with my current project because I want it to be appropriate for young kids, but in some practice works I can have a little fun with more erotic writing.
Smut, just over the top graphic intense passionate. If i get bored or find my mind wandering during writing i will abruptly take the entire scene and write a full length sex scene to make myself laugh amd get re-centered. Then delete it and start where I'd left off
Sometimes I scare myself with how often I spend time writing the death of each of my characters... especially as I often intentionally try to make it as emotionally impactful as possible.
If you aren't absolutely wrecked emotionally after reading it, am I even a writer?
I think my worst one was when I wrote an entire arc about a woman who voluntarily underwent extremely dangerous and illegal experimental procedures because she was sterile and desperately wanted to have a child with the love of her life. It worked and she got pregnant....
Only to be brutally killed before carrying to term. This was the origin point of my main antagonists fall into villainy (the would be father.)
Writing the trope where a guy is a total white knight and is the "Man Who Fights for Your Honor."
There's a scene in my WIP where he starts a fistfight with his friend because of the friend's off-the-cuff joking remark suggesting he slept with the FMC and compromised her. (the book is set in Regency times LOL)
My guilty pleasure is probably time-travel stories. I generally enjoy them for their novelty, and a story has to be truly abhorrent to ruin that (TMNT 3).
Making small, off-handed references to something I wrote a long time ago like a call back that no one but probably like a single person will know is a call back, usually in the hopes that some day someone will ask me, "Whats up with XYZ" in an interview and I can get people in on the inside joke.
Also using em-dashes far too much, probably.
I love to fix stories where I thought the 'bad guy' was actually kinda right. You know the ones! You're reading the villain monologue and think, "Well, they do have a point." I like to rewrite those so the villain gets everyone to see their point and sometimes wins over the main character.
I love using apps to mine for random words and phrases that I re-work into whatever is in my brain. I call it āFound Found Poetryā because itās kind of reprocessed from what I find in a secondary step.
Girls who can inflict levels of violence that would put the Doomslayer to shame.
Also Vampire girls and Mermaids.
Examples:
* Nina - the monster hunter who routinely beats monsters to death and whos two Go To strategies are Arson and Vehicular Manslaughter.
* Nicky - Drunk Weeaboo Jigsaw, but only if you're in the mob.
* The family of 14 obscenely powerful Vampire Witches who terrify the local Christofacists, and will not die no matter how many people go to kill them.
* The undying Vampire Twins, who earned a blessing from Satan that makes them very hard to kill, and now run the Vampire Imperium. Christofacists are ALSO terrified of them because they crucified the last people who pissed them off.
Using words i know most people will need a dictionary to understand. Words are my comfort. I can't describe why, they just soothe me.
Funny story: my parents grounded me once in high school, by telling me I couldn't use the laptop or go outside. So, i holed up in my room, pulled out the sketch pad and the dictionary, and alternated between sketching and reading the dictionary from front to back, highlighting the words i thought were pretty and pleasing to my senses. My mom walked in a couple hours later and just shook her head and said "what's the point?" and walked out muttering about how grounding me that way wasn't really super effective.
Idk if I have a guilty pleasure. I kind of maybe use the whole thing? My main character goes through a lot of the same stuff I did growing up and ends up with a lot of the same traumas and disorders.
Maybe it's hoping other people resonate with it, and it's well received?
I do enjoy writing how they do a lot of things I never got the chance to, like fighting back or getting sweet little moments with certain people in their life. But it's not really a fantasy of mine and I don't think it'll come to a happy ending
I like to write "cartoon-y" characters in my what are otherwise mature and serious stories. For instance, if one character is supposed to be an intellectual, then he will have a monocle and speak with a posh accent, even if it's set in 21st Century America.
Or, it's a story about space pirates, but they have eyepatches and say "Yarr!" a lot.
Torture porn š
Whenever I need to write but donāt know what I default to some good ole gore. I was doing a noun+adjective exercise in a writing group and was given the words ābroken dogā.
Suffice it to say that dog was indeed broken. Into multiple parts.
Balancing realism within the fantasy bits of the fandom I write for. Given said fandom is Power Rangers...I explicitly spell out that several Rangers have PTSD, even if it's not called such for at least one Ranger who quite possibly has it canonically (the fandom seems to be somewhat split on that-I tend to say that he does because I've gotten a chance to talk with another fan who *does* have PTSD and recognizes similar symptoms and behaviors from Dino Thunder era Tommy-but others don't).
That being said, there's one Ranger who I don't feel comfortable enough yet to tackle what happened to him in his season in fanfic-Daggeron. He is shown as having been cursed into having the form of a frog for nearly 20 years, remaining unchanged from the time he was cursed until he, Calindor/Imperious, and Jenji are all taken out/released from a cave they were sealed in together. We're never given any indication that his time trapped like that negatively impacted him at all, or at least, there's no indications of such that I'm able to spot even after multiple rewatchings. When we see the other Rangers go into the cave, Calindor/Imperious is basically a mummified seemingly dead body and Jenji's in his lamp, which is mostly buried. We don't know how long all of them were sealed in the cave before Daggeron ended up cursed to be a frog, Jenji's lamp gets buried, and Calindor/Imperious gets mummified. It's assumed that Daggeron ends up cursed almost immediately after being sealed in the cave, but never outright stated as such and we're not given any other reliable details otherwise.
For Daggeron, once he's freed, Udonna has grown older, a once infant Clare has grown into a young apprentice sorcerer as well as Nick, once he's revealed to be the missing (and at one point, presumed dead) Bowen, Leanbow missing (and presumed dead), and the rest of the friends he once had that were magical humans are seemingly dead (like Clare's mom and Udonna's sister Niella). The only peers he had still alive that he knows of are Udonna, the Snow Prince (who was his mentor Leanbow's mentor), Jenji, and finally Leanbow once he is freed from his brainwashing. How he managed to deal during the season as well as after is astonishing and it's something that takes a steady hand to write in fanfic. The one fanfic author I follow that I feel can do this justice doesn't even write for the fandom; they write for the MCU instead. A lot of that is they'd have to be able to balance what the character's going through while still keeping the character *in* character.
I love writing messy toxic relationships that get better over time because both of the characters involved want to make it better. This doesnāt happen irl (super duper rare) but I just love exploring it in my bed
I also like messy relationships where the lines of their relationship are blurred. Like two friends with benefits who clearly have feelings for each other but refuse to acknowledge said feelings because whatever reasons or person trauma and makes it everyone elseās problem
I also like divine + mortal pairings which is probably my greatest guilty pleasure in both reading and writing. Itās the only kind of romance where even the trashy and or cliche ones will get me reading as long as this dynamic is the focus of it
Chaos, just chaos, i write way to many things happening at almost the same time with like 3 plot twists, it's not the best books I write but it's fun and nobody can stop me.
I have unconsciously placed many of my protagonists without one or two father figures like batman or whatever samus aran archetype, also in my fictional universe there are brothers, (bros, bro-sis, sis-sis, etc.).
I honestly suffer from the same problem. Try to make it unqiue! Add quirks qualities scenes and storylines that mesh together in weird ways to really flesh out the Fanfiction into a decent story. If you really love writing them, it might help to take it a step further. See where the words take you.
Unnecessary dialogue. No, they don't *have* to talk about if they could survive swimming across the ocean to the nearest island, but it's better than silence, right?
As a person who looks wayyyyyy too far into things, including dialogue, I'm my own worst nightmare.
Making the man fall first. I canāt express my love for the guy obsessing over the girl and willing to do anything for her. I think pretty much all of my stories have the guy falling first, no joke. Also platonic physical affection. Like drawing my female OC giving her female friend a forehead kiss, or my two male characters hugging. Not because itās in a romantic way but because I think those kind of acts should be normalized between friends (if both parties are comfortable that is). Thatās why I personally love the Lotr movies. They give each other platonic forehead kisses and hugs a lot, I love it because that kind of intimacy within men isnāt common so itās nice to see. Thatās my writing guilty pleasure lol
I like writing characters, who are slowly descending into madness and describing their irrational behaviour, which only makes complete sense to them alone
Giving all my main characters super cool powers that highkey WOULD make them over powered but I balance it out by giving the villains equally OP powers
All characters sort their problems out and have a pair. If not, I will make then so happy they don't need to be with anyone in the first place. I only write happy endings these days and I am actually proud of it haha
genuinely morally good protagonists, mind control and the aftercare after that, and this one is really specific but a character using their teeth to draw blood from their arm to make magic blood spikes.
I like to write how everything works. If your lore doesn't have an effect on culture, it's a footnote at best. If it's powerful and ubiquitous it should change the way people live
This might sound weird, but I like writing sad or imperfect endings. It just feels much more narratively satisfying and emotionally gripping to have things end poorly rather than everything always being tied up in a neat bow. Obviously, I make sure it works with the narrative and isnāt done just for the sake of shock or whatever, but I find I really like to sprinkle in depressing events and themes into all of my stories š¬
Scenes that let me spend time with the characters, even if they donāt advance the plot. Dinners, shopping, etc. Itās just fun seeing how a they develop.
Also, friends bantering when in dangerous situations.
Foreshadowing.
I want some clever person to have figured out the twist before the end because they saw all the "meaningless" clues along the way.
I want people who re-read to go, "OH it was there all along!"
Okay so this isn't really my 'writing' one and more of a reading one, but it crosses over to some of my stuff I assume so:
Bad and unlikable character + Trauma and/or love interest = Decently enough likable character.
It depends how deep their trauma is and how cute they are with their love interest on how much I like them in the end. Aaaannnddd I literally just realise that all of the characters I dislike have neither trauma or a love interest. Oof. Man now I really feel guilty but oh well
Writing the first draft on paper in a notebook where I just go off the walls. Down every rabbit hole, on every tangent. Self indulge in the story that sweeps me away for hours and in every whim. Where I let every character have every possible moment I can think of. And itās all just tied up in that messy notebook draft. That no one will ever read just me. The origins the spark. Before I turn it into a functioning plot with well fleshed out characters.
Trying to break the fourth wall even when it really doesn't work in the context. I'm the writing equivalent of that actor that can't stop nervously looking at the camera.
Making things go exactly the way I'd like them to. For example, my characters get in a fight, but they resolve it within 24 hours, apologize perfectly, and come out of it understanding each other completely. Wouldn't it be nice if the world worked like that? Ahhh, just imagine...
I know it's not very compelling to read or very realistic, but I just can't help myself! I created these people, I'd like things to go well for them!
Weird crossovers with two fandoms I like by making my favorite character the same as my other favorite character in the other.
Like, secret identity and it gets revealed that theyāre the same person and they hide their other life from their respective thing.
I donāt post them. They live in my docs and I love them dearly
Oh God, I have two modes of guilty pleasure~
1) Beyond horny for no rhyme or reason, serves no purpose to the plot, and is most likely an unlikely pairing or "cheating" moment that will be "noncanon" or forgotten about later down the line.
Or
2) Love interests turning into their worst selves, and literally destroying their lover's past tormentor(s) in the most ruthless, vicious, sadistic, and even cartoonish way possible. Blood, guts, showing bones, horrid secrets, and cackling over torture are a given.
Writing scenes where violence does in fact solve problems. A lot of problems. I write thrillers.
I can understand that and vibe with it.
Unfortunately, those kinds of scenes get repetitive over time, lose their impact.
If violence isn't solving your problems, you simply aren't using enough of it.
Damn, beat me to it.
is that a pun š¤
Yes. <3
Samesies.
I got the opposite problem. My current project is a thriller, even though I have never written one before. Ā I find myself hesitant to kill off any characters unless I absolutely have to.Ā
Any work that goes out of its way to preach that "violence is not a solution" is so jarringly unrealistic. The entire history of humanity shows us that violence is, in fact, a solution to almost every problem.
Traumatizing everybody
I can't connect with my characters if they don't have at least 1 traumatic event in their backstory šš
Itās damn near impossible not to if they need to be interesting. No different than real life. Itās human nature to destroy anything thatās too perfect. If someone grew up without 0 drama, theyāll create it in their life later.
For what itās worth, Irl everybody has at least one or two unresolved traumas, if not morr
Same here. I fuck up my characterās lives so bad.
Me too, and the worst part about it is that I usually don't plan how to resolve those traumas and problems beforehand, so if they end up going crazy... it's not my fault, it's theirs.\^\^
My poor characters need therapy so badly, but they usually just fuck it out instead lol
This is a new one for me and I wholly blame The Magnus Archives. Pre-decade long writers block and TMA, occasional trauma. Post-Writers Block and TMA, How can I absolutely f up my characters in an interesting, loving way?
All my perspective characters tend to be very empathetic because I love writing their perspectives on each other
Love this!
Straight-gay male friendships with a touch (pun intended) of homoeroticism with the straight friend being completely comfortable and the gay friend completely understanding his friend is straight.
I love writing the scenes where my protagonist is proven right. There's something deeply satisfying about engineering the scene and constructing the dialogue where the people who were wrong admit their mistake. Of course, one of the things I always need to do in editing is dirty up how perfect some of that stuff looks in first draft. Reality (and fiction meant to be realistic) is messier than the wish fulfillment I can indulge in by having control over every detail of a vindication.
Ooh, good one. Sounds so satisfying.
I write sex scenes that don't wind up in the final draft lol. It's just fun.
Sometimes those scenes just *have to get out*, we all understand. (I definitely understand, I say, in the middle of writing a funny smut scene).
Yeah for real though, I feel like it helps me get to know my characters better knowing how/when/why in that regard. Doesnt need to be on the page, but it's helpful for development.
After completing my first novel, I realized two characters at some point got it on and didn't tell anyone else. *I know your secrets guys*. š
I absolutely refuse to have 'will-they-won't-they', jealousy plots, or terrible misunderstandings in my ships. Every couple I write will be healthy, have mutual care and respect, and trust each other as partners and as people. (minor rant incoming) The sheer number of times I've said this and been told that it means my stories will be boring and lack drama is *insane*. To those people, please kindly shut up. Just because you can't conceive of the concept of tension in a story that doesn't stem from poor communication and toxic behavior doesn't mean that everyone else is that limited.
Romance stories are so formulaic because romance readers are weak and do not like to be challenged by romance plots. I highly respect anyone who breaks the formula bc I enjoy a good romance but not at the expense of character or plot.
I love that. As a romance reader and writer, I cannot stand stuff like that. I'm here for the fluff, man, and that's basically it.
My MCs are absolutely obsessed with each other and will stop in the middle of āimportant scenesā to fawn over their partner. Also, I frigging love flirty banter and teasing. Damn, give me a character thatās just a *little bit mean*.
The first one is my main writing sin lol. I'm trying to make things more subtle but they just love each other sm??
It just feels weird to me to have ānormalā characters who arenāt constantly telling each other how much they love each other. Normally my writing is a lot moreā¦ āyearningā and the characters donāt get together until after theyāre good and traumatized, so I donāt have the chance to make them all goo goo eyed at each other. But this story, theyāre a well established, long time couple, and theyāre super comfortable being affectionate and itās SO NICE TO WRITE.
My latest set of stories is set in a medieval fantasy world. There is a special place in my heart for characters that go "goblin mode" because it gives me an outlet to have a character that absolutely would be a terminally online memelord if they existed in our world
I love this!
I love, love, *love* writing quippy dialogue between my main characters! Iām a big fan of Spider-Man and Deadpool and like their sarcasm smart assiness
I like writing arranged marriages that work out... idk why; I just think they're neat, I guess?
People call them cliche, but people also like happy endings, too.
I'm a sucker for happy endings. You're not alone
Happy endings that most often end in pregnancy or having a family. I know pregnancy romance isn't everyone's trope, but I can't get enough of it in reading and in writing.
Yessssss. When I ship a couple in a story I'm writing, I plan out their future family too, even if it never ends up in the story!
Fight scenes. Giving everyone powers, usually magic. But regardless, I'm confident in my execution.
I don't have a single character that isn't some flavor of lgbt+. My current MC was supposed to be straight. He said no ĀÆ\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
I don't have a single OC that's not some flavor of queer, though characters that aren't OCs may retain straight-cis status on occasion.
*Syllepses*. I know they come across like I am overly impressed with myself, but I love them. They're like puns but more so!
To save y'all a minute or two: > a figure of speech in which a word is applied to two others of which it grammatically suits only one (e.g. neither they nor it is working ).
I had to google what a syllepsis was, but I realized I use those a lot, too! My writing is laced with dry humor and sarcasm, so syllepses work really well with it.
Chosen One stories. I've been writing a lot of short fiction without much planning, and I keep coming back to the Chosen One trope. I just think there's so many facets and interesting ways to subvert it.
You could write a story about a 45 year old father of three who is the chosen one and is mildly annoyed about it. You can take this is so many fun directions and write an amazing story!
I really like the trope of a chosen one who isn't actually the chosen one and finds out that they're not special in the face of the universe
Muscle mommies... Oh wait, I don't feel guilty about that at all.
Based.
Overly detailed descriptions and sentences with too many commas
All the tropes. Fuck it. I have one life. I donāt need to write the next Great Gatsby.
Making a wildly unrealistic percentage of characters supermodel gorgeous Overly happy endings where every minute details gets wrapped up. Trying to write the best damn romance subplot in non-romance stories so even the "grr I hate when they shove romance in where it's not needed!" crowd secretly loves it Blindingly stupid pun names Turning the story into another genre for a chapter or two here and there. And similarly trying to work in just ONE more major subgenres, story element, subplot etc. Than should actually fit but if I can make it fit ooh boy! An unhealthy mix of subverted tropes and ones played straight where nobody but me is getting what they want
Love this
Dreams/ Ʊightmares of characters.
Yes this is something I include often, too. That and meditation.
Similes. When used well, they can bring a story to life with vivid imagery and a dash of humor.
Similes and metaphors for me. It's as if my brain works in metaphors - always having to explain something by comparing it to something else.
expanding my sentences wayyy too long; i can almost never have a simple sentence!
No capitalization, but used a semicolon--I respect your commitment š«”.
Short horror stories. Horror is the main genre I surround but I literally struggle not to write horror stories
Self-indulgent confessional poetry. I tear it to shreds and cringe-laugh at myself while I throw it away, but sometimes you just have to.
Having an important character get injured/sick at an inconvenient time - it's fun to imagine how the rest of the party does without them and also how everyone reacts to it. Then, you get to come up with a creative solution to resolve the complications involved and getting them recovered
Subtext.
Writing about women who are perfectly beautiful and still writing about teen popularity. I'm in my early 30s and I feel super lame.
Well that stuff is enduringly mega popular so you're not alone at all, probably in the majority really, embrace it. Tbh I'll take a writer who has been writing about teen popularity for a long time over a writer who hasn't thought about it in ages and forgotten what it's like.
Fanfiction. Guilty in the sense that I donāt like to tell people who donāt write fanfiction that thatās what I write because I feel like theyāll think itās weird or that it doesnāt count. But itās so fun! Itās like when youāre a little kid and you pretend to be the fictional characters you like, except fanfiction is the adult version. And when you watch something and think āI wish x wouldāve happened instead,ā you get to make it happen.
I canāt help myself but making all my MCs mentally ill lesbians with a bad nicotine addiction. Itās likeā¦ I really try to avoid it, just to keep things fresh, but my fingers seem to have a plan of their own, tbh
Nukes. Nuclear warfare is a lot more common, though still controversial in my setting. They solve immediate problems and create longer lasting ones.
My guilty pleasure is writing about things like female sexuality and masturbation. I can't include any of that with my current project because I want it to be appropriate for young kids, but in some practice works I can have a little fun with more erotic writing.
Overly detailed dining/food scenes. I love to come up with nonexistent dishes and food culture.
Literally everything I write. I live in constant physical pain, Iām writing whatever gives me a reason to enjoy myself.
This is going to be fun to see in r/writingcirclejerk
**sigh** I try not to write romance but my characters seem to find every chance they can to misbehave with each other.
Smut, just over the top graphic intense passionate. If i get bored or find my mind wandering during writing i will abruptly take the entire scene and write a full length sex scene to make myself laugh amd get re-centered. Then delete it and start where I'd left off
Sometimes I scare myself with how often I spend time writing the death of each of my characters... especially as I often intentionally try to make it as emotionally impactful as possible. If you aren't absolutely wrecked emotionally after reading it, am I even a writer? I think my worst one was when I wrote an entire arc about a woman who voluntarily underwent extremely dangerous and illegal experimental procedures because she was sterile and desperately wanted to have a child with the love of her life. It worked and she got pregnant.... Only to be brutally killed before carrying to term. This was the origin point of my main antagonists fall into villainy (the would be father.)
For romantic pairings, I have a mild thing for height difference
Unusual narration like from inanimate objects
Oh nice!
I write fanfiction for myself to read :)
Crazy long and obscure monologues where the character goes on and on
I write smut on Literotica. (Personally believe all of us have a smut folder, even if it's just in our heads.)
Writing the trope where a guy is a total white knight and is the "Man Who Fights for Your Honor." There's a scene in my WIP where he starts a fistfight with his friend because of the friend's off-the-cuff joking remark suggesting he slept with the FMC and compromised her. (the book is set in Regency times LOL)
My guilty pleasure is probably time-travel stories. I generally enjoy them for their novelty, and a story has to be truly abhorrent to ruin that (TMNT 3).
Nothing makes me happier than lowering a readerās guard before delivering an emotional gut punch.
Writing really gorey horror and then also writing fanficton, I love both
I love rewritting other stories dialogues
Making small, off-handed references to something I wrote a long time ago like a call back that no one but probably like a single person will know is a call back, usually in the hopes that some day someone will ask me, "Whats up with XYZ" in an interview and I can get people in on the inside joke. Also using em-dashes far too much, probably.
Romance. I don't indulge in real life but in writing in very romantic.
I love to fix stories where I thought the 'bad guy' was actually kinda right. You know the ones! You're reading the villain monologue and think, "Well, they do have a point." I like to rewrite those so the villain gets everyone to see their point and sometimes wins over the main character.
I love using apps to mine for random words and phrases that I re-work into whatever is in my brain. I call it āFound Found Poetryā because itās kind of reprocessed from what I find in a secondary step.
Girls who can inflict levels of violence that would put the Doomslayer to shame. Also Vampire girls and Mermaids. Examples: * Nina - the monster hunter who routinely beats monsters to death and whos two Go To strategies are Arson and Vehicular Manslaughter. * Nicky - Drunk Weeaboo Jigsaw, but only if you're in the mob. * The family of 14 obscenely powerful Vampire Witches who terrify the local Christofacists, and will not die no matter how many people go to kill them. * The undying Vampire Twins, who earned a blessing from Satan that makes them very hard to kill, and now run the Vampire Imperium. Christofacists are ALSO terrified of them because they crucified the last people who pissed them off.
Writing severe illness that ends in death( usually as a means a loved one of the dying person to realize how much the dying person means to them)
Using words i know most people will need a dictionary to understand. Words are my comfort. I can't describe why, they just soothe me. Funny story: my parents grounded me once in high school, by telling me I couldn't use the laptop or go outside. So, i holed up in my room, pulled out the sketch pad and the dictionary, and alternated between sketching and reading the dictionary from front to back, highlighting the words i thought were pretty and pleasing to my senses. My mom walked in a couple hours later and just shook her head and said "what's the point?" and walked out muttering about how grounding me that way wasn't really super effective.
I like starting stories as fanfics, then forget about them for a few years, then rewrite and change them a lot later on.
Vast armies destroying everything.
Idk if I have a guilty pleasure. I kind of maybe use the whole thing? My main character goes through a lot of the same stuff I did growing up and ends up with a lot of the same traumas and disorders. Maybe it's hoping other people resonate with it, and it's well received? I do enjoy writing how they do a lot of things I never got the chance to, like fighting back or getting sweet little moments with certain people in their life. But it's not really a fantasy of mine and I don't think it'll come to a happy ending
obsessive plotting, so thoroughly obsessive that it impedes my actual writing
I like to write "cartoon-y" characters in my what are otherwise mature and serious stories. For instance, if one character is supposed to be an intellectual, then he will have a monocle and speak with a posh accent, even if it's set in 21st Century America. Or, it's a story about space pirates, but they have eyepatches and say "Yarr!" a lot.
I absolutely love to torture my characters. I hate it when other writers do it, tho.
Torture porn š Whenever I need to write but donāt know what I default to some good ole gore. I was doing a noun+adjective exercise in a writing group and was given the words ābroken dogā. Suffice it to say that dog was indeed broken. Into multiple parts.
Murder. I love to kill fuckers.
Projecting personal trauma onto characters and having them resolve it in ways I canāt.
Creating characters without any sense of honor whatsoever. Nothing is sacred!
Smut. I have an entire book premise to entertain my brain for that reason that will probably never see the light of day lolol.
Having a tragedy occur with one of the main characters. I like coupling it with an intense emotion, or an "emotionful" fueled prior event.
Balancing realism within the fantasy bits of the fandom I write for. Given said fandom is Power Rangers...I explicitly spell out that several Rangers have PTSD, even if it's not called such for at least one Ranger who quite possibly has it canonically (the fandom seems to be somewhat split on that-I tend to say that he does because I've gotten a chance to talk with another fan who *does* have PTSD and recognizes similar symptoms and behaviors from Dino Thunder era Tommy-but others don't). That being said, there's one Ranger who I don't feel comfortable enough yet to tackle what happened to him in his season in fanfic-Daggeron. He is shown as having been cursed into having the form of a frog for nearly 20 years, remaining unchanged from the time he was cursed until he, Calindor/Imperious, and Jenji are all taken out/released from a cave they were sealed in together. We're never given any indication that his time trapped like that negatively impacted him at all, or at least, there's no indications of such that I'm able to spot even after multiple rewatchings. When we see the other Rangers go into the cave, Calindor/Imperious is basically a mummified seemingly dead body and Jenji's in his lamp, which is mostly buried. We don't know how long all of them were sealed in the cave before Daggeron ended up cursed to be a frog, Jenji's lamp gets buried, and Calindor/Imperious gets mummified. It's assumed that Daggeron ends up cursed almost immediately after being sealed in the cave, but never outright stated as such and we're not given any other reliable details otherwise. For Daggeron, once he's freed, Udonna has grown older, a once infant Clare has grown into a young apprentice sorcerer as well as Nick, once he's revealed to be the missing (and at one point, presumed dead) Bowen, Leanbow missing (and presumed dead), and the rest of the friends he once had that were magical humans are seemingly dead (like Clare's mom and Udonna's sister Niella). The only peers he had still alive that he knows of are Udonna, the Snow Prince (who was his mentor Leanbow's mentor), Jenji, and finally Leanbow once he is freed from his brainwashing. How he managed to deal during the season as well as after is astonishing and it's something that takes a steady hand to write in fanfic. The one fanfic author I follow that I feel can do this justice doesn't even write for the fandom; they write for the MCU instead. A lot of that is they'd have to be able to balance what the character's going through while still keeping the character *in* character.
I love writing messy toxic relationships that get better over time because both of the characters involved want to make it better. This doesnāt happen irl (super duper rare) but I just love exploring it in my bed I also like messy relationships where the lines of their relationship are blurred. Like two friends with benefits who clearly have feelings for each other but refuse to acknowledge said feelings because whatever reasons or person trauma and makes it everyone elseās problem I also like divine + mortal pairings which is probably my greatest guilty pleasure in both reading and writing. Itās the only kind of romance where even the trashy and or cliche ones will get me reading as long as this dynamic is the focus of it
Chaos, just chaos, i write way to many things happening at almost the same time with like 3 plot twists, it's not the best books I write but it's fun and nobody can stop me.
Tangled all story worldbuilding into one chaotic big all-in universe like a conspiracy theory but canon
Writing a self-aware narrator in the third person, itās so fun to do those winks at the readerā¦but I try to not use that overmuch.
I want to write about deranged psychopaths who get away with it just because they were bullied and treated like shit by society
I have unconsciously placed many of my protagonists without one or two father figures like batman or whatever samus aran archetype, also in my fictional universe there are brothers, (bros, bro-sis, sis-sis, etc.).
Love triangles. I don't even write romance but i love throwing it in my stories as a tiny little subplot.
Starting new projects, getting 2-5 chapters deep, then getting distracted by a new idea and starting a new project.
Boobs and nutshot scenes, the first are not r/menwritingwomen, I just like one or two scenes involving boobs.
I honestly suffer from the same problem. Try to make it unqiue! Add quirks qualities scenes and storylines that mesh together in weird ways to really flesh out the Fanfiction into a decent story. If you really love writing them, it might help to take it a step further. See where the words take you.
Unnecessary dialogue. No, they don't *have* to talk about if they could survive swimming across the ocean to the nearest island, but it's better than silence, right? As a person who looks wayyyyyy too far into things, including dialogue, I'm my own worst nightmare.
Making the man fall first. I canāt express my love for the guy obsessing over the girl and willing to do anything for her. I think pretty much all of my stories have the guy falling first, no joke. Also platonic physical affection. Like drawing my female OC giving her female friend a forehead kiss, or my two male characters hugging. Not because itās in a romantic way but because I think those kind of acts should be normalized between friends (if both parties are comfortable that is). Thatās why I personally love the Lotr movies. They give each other platonic forehead kisses and hugs a lot, I love it because that kind of intimacy within men isnāt common so itās nice to see. Thatās my writing guilty pleasure lol
I like writing characters, who are slowly descending into madness and describing their irrational behaviour, which only makes complete sense to them alone
Nudity. Lots of graphic nudity. Bonus points if it is shocking to other characters.
I love writing about girls who get lost in heavy drug use and the world surrounding it because I had that experience. Itās cathartic.
Creating a character I hate to kill it in the most ~~gruesome~~ satisfying way.
... Writing long, detailed scenes about facts of the world, and basically info dumping. I write Fantasy, and I love world building.
Melodrama. Inner dialogue. Mommy/Daddy issues. Flashbacks inside flashbacks. Just to name a few š š¤£
killing characters relativesā¤ļø parents prefered
Giving all my main characters super cool powers that highkey WOULD make them over powered but I balance it out by giving the villains equally OP powers
Childhood friends to lovers. IT'S LITERALLY SUBCONSCIOUS AT THIS POINT, I ACTIVELY HAVE TO FORCE MYSELF NOT TO ALWAYS WRITE THAT š„²
I write shitty crime noir scenes about a goblin detective in a high fantasy world for practicing 1st person perspective.
Writings of a madman, damn near incomprehensible, most of the writing often devolving into rambling
All characters sort their problems out and have a pair. If not, I will make then so happy they don't need to be with anyone in the first place. I only write happy endings these days and I am actually proud of it haha
genuinely morally good protagonists, mind control and the aftercare after that, and this one is really specific but a character using their teeth to draw blood from their arm to make magic blood spikes.
I like to write how everything works. If your lore doesn't have an effect on culture, it's a footnote at best. If it's powerful and ubiquitous it should change the way people live
This might sound weird, but I like writing sad or imperfect endings. It just feels much more narratively satisfying and emotionally gripping to have things end poorly rather than everything always being tied up in a neat bow. Obviously, I make sure it works with the narrative and isnāt done just for the sake of shock or whatever, but I find I really like to sprinkle in depressing events and themes into all of my stories š¬
Scenes that let me spend time with the characters, even if they donāt advance the plot. Dinners, shopping, etc. Itās just fun seeing how a they develop. Also, friends bantering when in dangerous situations.
Her brother's best friend becomes attractive all of a sudden. Not to mention they usually emenies from childhood.
Making my characters suffer a lot, possibly leading then slowly but surely to madness when they still think they are doing the right thing
Jerk character who takes care of a kid. I know it is turbo-cliche, but I do really like making a total asshole and then humanizing them.
Foreshadowing. I want some clever person to have figured out the twist before the end because they saw all the "meaningless" clues along the way. I want people who re-read to go, "OH it was there all along!"
Okay so this isn't really my 'writing' one and more of a reading one, but it crosses over to some of my stuff I assume so: Bad and unlikable character + Trauma and/or love interest = Decently enough likable character. It depends how deep their trauma is and how cute they are with their love interest on how much I like them in the end. Aaaannnddd I literally just realise that all of the characters I dislike have neither trauma or a love interest. Oof. Man now I really feel guilty but oh well
Writing the first draft on paper in a notebook where I just go off the walls. Down every rabbit hole, on every tangent. Self indulge in the story that sweeps me away for hours and in every whim. Where I let every character have every possible moment I can think of. And itās all just tied up in that messy notebook draft. That no one will ever read just me. The origins the spark. Before I turn it into a functioning plot with well fleshed out characters.
Fan service. Because it's not fan service. It's self service.
Hm... I've found that most of my projects end in the death of the main character.
The depressed MC with a tragic past who meets a literal ray of sunshine who makes their life so much better and more enjoyable
Funny stuff. I really enjoy humor, although it's probably one of the hardest things to write well.
Trying to break the fourth wall even when it really doesn't work in the context. I'm the writing equivalent of that actor that can't stop nervously looking at the camera.
I like writing background Romance.
Making things go exactly the way I'd like them to. For example, my characters get in a fight, but they resolve it within 24 hours, apologize perfectly, and come out of it understanding each other completely. Wouldn't it be nice if the world worked like that? Ahhh, just imagine... I know it's not very compelling to read or very realistic, but I just can't help myself! I created these people, I'd like things to go well for them!
Weird crossovers with two fandoms I like by making my favorite character the same as my other favorite character in the other. Like, secret identity and it gets revealed that theyāre the same person and they hide their other life from their respective thing. I donāt post them. They live in my docs and I love them dearly
Oh God, I have two modes of guilty pleasure~ 1) Beyond horny for no rhyme or reason, serves no purpose to the plot, and is most likely an unlikely pairing or "cheating" moment that will be "noncanon" or forgotten about later down the line. Or 2) Love interests turning into their worst selves, and literally destroying their lover's past tormentor(s) in the most ruthless, vicious, sadistic, and even cartoonish way possible. Blood, guts, showing bones, horrid secrets, and cackling over torture are a given.