What are your quirky consistent writing habits?

[Leyelle]

1. I write a lot of ethnic characters, but within the realm of my novels, my female leads often still have darker complexions than the male leads. In my cartoons this isn't really the case though. It's a mixed bag.
2. My female leads keep gaining weight. I don't know why. They are probably mad at me, but both in "Damsel in the Red Dress" and "Rigamarole" I imagined them thinner when I started writing but they got chubbier in my imagination as I kept writing them. At least it makes more sense in that direction than the other though. My newest female lead is very thin, and as that is central to the story, she'll probably stay that way.
3. Siblings. I love writing siblings and sibling dynamics. Some may consider siblings in fiction unnecessary but I definitely do not. There is a dynamic with siblings that you can't really have with anyone else the same way and siblings are literally what "Rigamarole" is all about. The story just couldn't exist if the leads had any other connection to each other.

[ArtGremlin]

I always have male MCs. Writing males as mcs just seems to appeal to me more. I’m not against writing female characters. I do enjoy writing them too, just not as mcs.

I have two different stories that involve fictional race slavery and the others have some kind of fictional racial discrimination involved at some point or weird unethical government practices. I have no specific reason for writing like this. maybe I find social drama interesting because I have none in my own life.

Almost all of my main characters get married (except for one) he will never find love. R.I.P.

[skidiggy]

Skidiggy writing habits:

• Why are all your main villains men? Is that intentional? Oh, wait... I forgot about Debra...
• Avoiding killing characters unless absolutely necessary.
• Oh look, another alien with dark skin and light hair. Wait, two aliens with purple skin and white hair? That seems illegal. How can we possibly tell them apart?
• You have a stable family without family strife? We can't have that...
• Siblings: they're either the best thing in the world, or they make me want to set them on fire. There's no in-between.
• We've had two "happy" chapters in a row... Now they (FL/ML) must suffer...

[Leyelle]

XD, I think I write more female MCs, but I do have quite a few male ones as well.

@skidiggy actually i have an extremely small amount of evil siblings. if I have one, they are usually a brat who doesn't like the rest of their siblings, even if their siblings don't mind them as much.

[VibrantFox]

consistent habits/tropes in my writing

• mostly female, gnc or nb leads. there may be important male supporting characters but the mcs are almost always one of those three
• predominately bipoc cast or bipoc coded
• "this is a set do not separate" probably ought to be top of the list but for every one main character that comes to being there is almost always a partner, friend, sidekick, etc who will eventually come up beside them and rarely if ever leaves (even the lone wolf mc wound up in a found family
• "there will be angst" even some of the more 'lighthearted' stories have their bouts even if the stakes aren't always super high but it will happen
• cloudy with a chance of traumatic backstory: honestly not a lot of my characters have some doom n gloom background but more down to earth; typically some kind of family strife or personal struggle but there is a conflict of the past that has in some way shaped the characters present or future

other stuff falls more into art habits than writing but the only one i can think of might be seemingly similar personalities from my mcs but as you progress their stories each unique voice becomes more apparent but there probably are a few common traits

[Leyelle]

but there probably are a few common traits

probably most characters have at least a few common traits if you look at them closely enough no matter how different they may appear at first glance

[thepenmonster]

Overwriting. Making epic length stories that I no longer have the patience for nor do I have the time left on Earth for. And that leads to...

Endless rewriting. Because I want to salvage the ideas and prune them down to a manageable size I can work with, Instead of leaving them for dead and moving on.

[GarzaGoose]

It's always a combination of topics that fascinate me!

1. Writing stories of friendships that I no longer have :(( All the interactions in my story are largely based off real life interactions with my old friends.

2. I just LOVE big dystopias with a sense of mystique. It usually devolves into me writing my own curiosity within the world. I'm a big earth lore guy who dabbles in hollow earth just for the fun of it lmao. I like seeing things where they might be nothing.

3. I see, I like, I write. Working at big factories made me stare in awe at some of the machines and raw power from them. It's why I end up working with a ton of machines in my works!

4. Trauma, most of work is about characters trying to find themselves and garner some sort of freedom, whether that be from their own mental prisons or literal prisons.

5 I'm a poor writer overall, I cope by trying to be a visual storyteller, Hell I don't even like doing dialog half the time. I prefer to guide people through my comics through visuals alone. I've always wanted to dabble in animation instead. But life hasn't warranted me the time to do such a labor and time intensive hobby.

[KevinReijnders]

Some things that have a tendency to pop-up in my work are:

1) A completely foreign setting:
I have never, nor will I even, create a story that is set on Earth within the modern day. I just don't like to be restrained by every day life when crafting a story. The setting itself is a big part of what informs the story to me. it's why i always gravitate towards scifi and fantasy, I can just let loose and create to my heart's content.

2) An autocratic regime and a hero with ties to it:
I have a fascination with politicas and autrocratic regimes. How they rise, how they fall, how they function. All my stories have a certain political level to them, and to an extent are me philosophizing about systems of government.

Within that context, my protagonists have so far always been people who used to be part of one regime or another. Trespasser's Kyara is no exception with her SenSec history. So far all my protagonists have also always turned their back on the regime or system they started in to find their own way. Though some of them wanted to start an empire of their own making.

3) A form of divine power and religion:
All my stories have, thus far, featured a fantasy element about some kind of divine being or great cosmic power. This is generally linked to an organised religion or cult surroundng them. And they usually end up being the bad guys as well. Within Trespasser you can see this reflected in 'the Citadel', who have clearly been enthralled by some mysterious outer being they call Inzozi. On top of their, their aesthetic has been partually inspired by the Catholic and Orthodox Church.

4) Male/Female friendships:
I can savely say this is me putting my own life into story. My closest friend for more than half my life already has been a girl. This dynamic has managed to find its way into practially al my stories haha. So it shouldn't be a surprise that Kyara and Zack are best friends. The only caveat being here that a romantic angle will be developped with these two. Because I really wanted to, no matter how cliché it is haha.

5) Action-Adventure:
I just grew up on action-adventure stories and that's just something I really like making. Even my most political stories will end up having an action-adventure angle to it somehow. It is inescapable for me

[beebutterbee]

1. Writing Too Much and then NOTHING (TM)
When I do write I’m able to get a decent chunk of writing out of the way, I range from 1500-4000 words on the days I do write the actual script. But I go in phases of doing that for a few days but then I lose steam and need to rest for a few days so I go on for a period of not writing at all. I don’t think the write/draw every day is actually true, everyone works differently . I’ve managed to get 100 pages drawn for one comic so I’ll count that as a success even when I’m not writing or drawing as much as some people are able to daily.

2. Everyone is LGBT
Literally I think it’s so rare that I write a character that isn’t LGBT somehow. I don’t think this isn’t realistic though, because irl all my friends and most of the people I know are actually LGBT. I think when you’re part of that community you just find like minded people because it’s who you feel safe with and can relate to the most. So probably not everyone in the universes I write is LGBT, but I am focusing on that community within the story so that’s who I’m deciding to show.

3. Dream Inspiration ONLY >>>:0
I swear all my stories are inspired by dreams I’ve had. I can’t think of a single story that hasn’t gotten referenced from my dream journal. I take the subconscious very seriously!! >:0 I’ve been writing dreams down since I was 8.

[Leyelle]

Male/Female friendships:

Personally, I have tons of these too lol. Some lead to romance, a lot don't (though a portion of the ones that don't are siblings XD, not all of them are siblings tho)

I just don't like to be restrained by every day life when crafting a story.

Depending on how trippy you want the story to be, you could set one in modern day and still change any detail you wanted to make it no longer like the real world. Say you don't want people to use cars, it's modern day but everyone still uses horses, it's modern day but television doesn't exist etc.

I have on where TV doesn't exist yet but full functional space travel does, it all depends on the angle you want. Though I do like creating entirely new worlds sometimes too.

[Leyelle]

Dream Inspiration ONLY >>>:0I swear all my stories are inspired by dreams I’ve had. I can’t think of a single story that hasn’t gotten referenced from my dream journal. I take the subconscious very seriously!! >:0 I’ve been writing dreams down since I was 8.

I have a lot of stories inspired by dreams as well. While most of my stories don't end up being that surreal, I've written a short film that was totally just an alteration of a dream, dream prophecies come up in my stories fairly often, and even in more "grounded" slice of life pieces, I often use dreams as a way to showcase and pick apart pieces of my characters thought processes, even of things they haven't taken the time to process emotionally, or even realized about themselves.

[Leyelle]

A few more:

1. I love writing chaotic duos. These are often sets of best friends where one of them is always getting on the other's nerves, but sometimes they're both equally chaotic and don't annoy each other at all, they're just two crazy peas in a pod. In "Damsel in the Red Dress" I have Andrew Palmero and Yoon Jinho (Jinho is the one who's always annoyed.) In "A Dozen Morning Glories" I have Tiffany Chatterjee and Scarlet Caralee (Tiffany isn't that annoyed, but she is a bit annoyed XD.)

2. Tall girls or short girls, no in between: For "Rigamarole" "Damsel in the Red Dress" and "A Dozen Morning Glories" my FLs are all either short or tall, none are average height. Alicia is 4'9. Essence is 5'10. Leia is 5'7, which is already tall, but she's also only 17, and keeps getting taller throughout the story lol.

3. Slowburn romance: most of my characters don't become couples very quickly, even when the characters confess their feelings pretty early on. Even an early confession is pretty rare though, tbh. "A Dozen Morning Glories" is a bit of an exception to this in some ways, but not entirely. No couple I have has trounced the 15 year wait we had between the leads in "Damsel in the Red Dress" though.

4. Very few of my characters have 'white picket fence' family dynamics. Some families are very sweet and loving, but most of them have a lot of less than wholesome mess going on. Even when the parents legitimately love their kids, or each other, or the siblings love each other, there are very few families that appear to be any sort of ideal. Oftentimes there appear to be almost clique like groups in the family. Leia and Riley are on one side and their parents are on the other in "Rigamarole." It's just Andrew and Alicia left of the family in "Damsel in the Red Dress." It's Dominic, Honey, and Cocoa (the dark skinned members of their family) who are closest well, while they don't actively try to ignore or avoid their brother Ben, or their parents, they aren't very close with them.

[Leyelle]

1. Ray of sunshine characters: every story needs at least one character who just makes every scene with them in it brighter. In "Damsel in the Red Dress" the character is Melly. In "A Dozen Morning Glories" those characters are Shaun, Ayla, and Scarlet. In "Rigamarole" it's Alyssa. These characters are just chaotic but so sweet and fun to write as well.

2. No matter how messed up in the heads my leads are, they usually have at least one person they work very hard to care for, whether they are driven by emotion or not. Alicia would give her right arm (actually, probably her entire life) for Andrew. Leia sacrifices her whole social life without a word of complaint or concern for herself to try to save her little brother. Essence keeps sacrificing for everyone, no matter how exhausted she is, but especially her mother.

3. Artists: None of my leads so far work non-art-related jobs, with the exception of Dominic. TBF, Leia from "Rigamarole" is in school, but Essence is an editor for romance novels and Alicia is a professional artist. Kattar was a stunt driver and now works in video editing. The one with the most 'normal' seeming job is Dominic, but he only works at his family's convenience store to help them out, because they had no one to run it now that his grandfather can't.

[Leyelle]

1. Mixed race couples. Now out of my four series (since I'm making my first comic now and the FL is French while the ML is Malaysian) it still stands.
2. Dandy boys. I don't have these in literally every one of my series, but three out of four of my ML's care a lot about their appearance: fashion, makeup, jewelry, hair etc. Not all of them do all these things but all three care about at least two of them.

I love writing chaotic duos.

The chaotic duo strikes again with "Sketchy Business" but this time they're the leads.

[Leyelle]

How many of these does "Crystal Blue" include i wonder.

I write a lot of ethnic characters, but within the realm of my novels, my female leads often still have darker complexions than the male leads. In my cartoons this isn't really the case though. It's a mixed bag.

Yep.

My female leads keep gaining weight. I don't know why. They are probably mad at me, but both in "Damsel in the Red Dress" and "Rigamarole" I imagined them thinner when I started writing but they got chubbier in my imagination as I kept writing them. At least it makes more sense in that direction than the other though. My newest female lead is very thin, and as that is central to the story, she'll probably stay that way.

nope

Siblings. I love writing siblings and sibling dynamics. Some may consider siblings in fiction unnecessary but I definitely do not. There is a dynamic with siblings that you can't really have with anyone else the same way and siblings are literally what "Rigamarole" is all about. The story just couldn't exist if the leads had any other connection to each other.

no actually, though a family she used to interact with had a lot of siblings that were basically a second set of parents for the youngest kids, neither of my leads have siblings.

I love writing chaotic duos.

Interestingly, the most chaotic duo in this story are Verner and Therese, the husband and wife raising my female lead. They are both very kind, but Therese is much calmer while Verner can be a bit silly at times.

Tall girls or short girls, no in between:

Yep, Mora is 5'8

Slowburn romance

Pretty slow burn I think

Very few of my characters have 'white picket fence' family dynamics.

actually, the Georges are probably my first white-picket fence family that are leads, but they aren't my female leads real family, hers was very unusual, as she (literally) has no father, and was raised by her grandmother.

Ray of sunshine characters: every story needs at least one character who just makes every scene with them in it brighter.

I think this is Mandy. While she's not quite as sweet as the others, she's very talkative and generally good-natured, if not quite angelic lol.

No matter how messed up in the heads my leads are, they usually have at least one person they work very hard to care for, whether they are driven by emotion or not.

For Mora, this was her grandmother, but she's not seen her in years and doesn't know whether she's still alive, if she was, she would literally give her life to save her.

Mixed race couples. Now out of my four series (since I'm making my first comic now and the FL is French while the ML is Malaysian) it still stands.

yep, yet again. French-German and Welsh-Cameroonian

[Leyelle]

Female leads that don't fit the beauty standard.

I'm not sure how I forgot to mention this.

While most of my female leads have at least a few traits that fall within the beauty standard, all of them also have at least a few traits that keep them from being cover girl cliches, though I still think they are all gorgeous queens.

1. Alicia (Damsel in the Red Dress): Scars on her back and legs from her car accident and heck-a thick eyebrows (which she got from her father.) She's also a little squishy, so she doesn't have the trimmest waist in the world.

2. Essence (A Dozen Morning Glories) is very thin without a lot of curves, her eyes are also pretty small and slanted, which some people don't find very attractive for some reason (though I think slanted eyes look super cool, and according to my father, I have them xd.) Her complexion is also very dark, which falls very far outside of the beauty standard almost everywhere in the world for some reason.

3. Leia (Rigamarole) is plus-sized with a pretty prominent nose.

4. Texas (Sketchy Business) is kind of square built, and not very curvy. She's also got blue hair, which is mostly just cuz she's quirky lol, but some people definitely find that odd.

5. Mora (Crystal Blue) has vitiligo, which is purple in her case, she's also pretty muscular, which some people think makes girls look mannish (when, fun fact, it just makes them gladiator goddesses)

[Leyelle]

Did I not mention this one yet?

Parents play a pretty big role in almost every one of my stories.

In "Rigamarole" they are the antagonists

In "A Dozen Morning Glories" um...also antagonists

In "Damsel in the Red Dress" Alicia's parents, while not antagonists, are the reason she has CPTSD. And Kattar's mother maybe the most affectionate, loving, and glamorous villainess x evil mastermind of all time.

In "Crystal Blue" the male leads parents may be poachers trying to kill the female lead. It remains to be seen

[enderdragon]

Quirks, you say? Hoo boy, have I got some of those.

For some reason 98% of my OCs are milennial females. It's been this way for years, lol.

I also really like to write jokes and dialogue involving ostentatiously esoteric philosophical explorations. It's a habit of mine.

[Leyelle]

millennial females is incredibly specific