Recurring themes, tropes, and habits in your writing

[VinnieD]

So fellow comic creators. I find myself realizing that my own comic has some recurring themes, some of them intentional, some of them I only catch later. Some of them outright guilty pleasures.

What are some of yours?

Here are a few of my own.

Disjointed Timeline: I like doing flashbacks, flash forwards, and chapters that take place before a previous chapter or between chapters, or pages that occur simultaneously.

Endangering the most popular character: Yeah, whoever is the current favorite, gets thrown into life threatening danger.

Teasing: Yeah, I frequently change the subject just before explaining a certain mystery.

Dream sequences: Yup, I do tons of these. Since I tend to be a surreal dreamer, this is where I work in surrealism. Really my own dreams make no sense at all.

[Bustertheclown]

Most of my main characters are an Arthur Dent, although I refer to them as Nemos, after the original Arthur Dent of comics.

I also like to pair Tall & Quiet with Short & Loud a lot.

[SergeXIII]

Heres one I discovered myself doing recently:

All of my heroes follow archetypes with philosophical properties of Jesus in mysticsm
All of my heroines follow archetypes with philosophical properties of God in mysticism

and I'm not religious, at all.

For example my male leads will deal with concepts such as sacrifice, humility, death and rebirth (in some cases) and so on.
Female leads will deal with the dichotomy of good and evil, empathy, and judgment.

[Fishies]

Ghost, ghosts, and more ghosts. Frequently with bonus drowning.

Also surgery/missing body parts.

[Mercury Hat]

When i was about 17 I realized that everything i'd written up to that point was about teenagers leaving/running away from home.

[SergeXIII]

Most of my characters who are mothers are bad news.

[Jim North]

I've noticed, especially in the stuff I've been writing lately, that mental disorders of varying degrees are a regular trend, whether they're specifically stated and talked about or not.

[Ti-Phil]

I always have my characters running non-stop and never giving them time to rest.

[Jesusabdullah]

A lot of my comics from the last few years focused on self-reflection and very inside jokes. Nowadays, I just draw mean pictures of my professors.

[Pairwise]

Mental illness and failures in communication. And that extends to even outside my webcomic writing. I've always been fascinated by the different interpretations people have over any given phrase.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Really immature people. As a corollary, people who in real life I would probably despise.

I realized pretty much every story I've written since... I guess fifth grade has been a mundane, slice of life, kind of dealing with life's trials and tribulations sort of thing. When I was little I had all these stories about anthropomorphic bugs but technically even those were still just Day In The Life of Chuck the Praying Mantis kind of things.

There's more but I can't think of them. This is a good topic though.

[Varethane]

Haha, pretty much my whole story is a pairup of tall & quiet with short & loud .

Also a number of my stories feature quest-type plots, where the characters cover ridiculous distances in the process of navigating the plot.

I also like to go back to themes of magic or science being hideously misused, even if nobody knows it for the majority of the story... there's always some horrible tragedy lurking behind the most innocuous of plot details. Hopefully I can write decently enough to do this without actually making out that the force in play is inherently negative, since I don't want to end up putting out one of those stories whose most striking interpretation is 'GASP TECHNOLOGY IS EVIL AND MUST BE STOPPED'.

That's all I can think of for the moment!

[Wendybird]

I realized recently that most of my major characters have mothers that are either absent or dead. This fascinates me. My mother was quite present and vital during my childhood. Maybe because of my mental/emotional problems as a child I'm more comfortable dealing with mother characters in the abstract. Or maybe it's just the influence of Harry Potter.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

I realized recently that most of my major characters have mothers that are either absent or dead. This fascinates me. My mother was quite present and vital during my childhood.

You know, I have a lot of bad parental situations in my work too... moreso in my comic than in my writing though... but my parents are swell people Oh well, I guess it's best not to analyze it.

[Varethane]

Haha, many of my characters have no parents at all.

[SergeXIII]

Smoking characters in my stuff are always self destructive.

[Alias Pseudonym]

This isn't really a trope, but I always design characters with no real purpose in mind and then retroactively flesh them out. This means that random things that I drew on them for no reason end up being important plot points and such.

I like to write about natural loners, being one myself, but I try to keep a varied cast so only one or two of that sort of person per story. Most of my characters are at least relatively mentally messed up (and the protagonist of Vigil's probably autistic.)

Oh, and all my stories turn out dark. Poetry too, I mostly end up writing extremely depressing stuff. For example, check this out:

I smile because it hurts to frown.
I laugh because it hurts to cry.
And now if I refuse to speak
It’s just because it hurts to lie.

I smile and it’s a work of art.
I laugh and it’s soliloquy.
My words and all my meanings too
Are improvised as comedy.

I smile but no one’s watching me.
I laugh but cannot hear my voice.
And looking out from emptiness
I lack the strength to make a choice.

I smile and I’m aware it hurts
I laugh and it’s my laugh that lies.
Alone and in my smiling trap,
I smile and yet my smile cries

See? Not happy stuff. I think I'm a pretty happy person, though...

Oh, I forgot, also SCIENCE! Vigil is a fantasy-type setting with furries, but apart from that it could qualify as a sort of hard, wet sci-fi (which sounds really dirty) from all the thought I've put into the biology of it.

[Phalanx]

Endangering the most popular character: Yeah, whoever is the current favorite, gets thrown into life threatening danger.

Ooooh guilty!

A lot of my work has a lot of unhappy past-related happenstance. There a ridiculously high chance of running into someone unintentionally who will reveal their connection to the character's past that they kept secret. Hm.

[Laemkral]

Mainly in my writing, the main character achieving a form of immortality.

[Jesusabdullah]

Smoking characters in my stuff are always self destructive.

Cigarette smoking symbolizes a similar sentiment in my own works, oftentimes, typically as a response to a stressful and unfulfilling existence.