What's Your Fetish

[Akuma]

All right, get you minds out of the gutter. Right now.

I was curious as to what everyone's "secret" love of writing that they tended to flock to. A writing fetish, if you will.

Could be anything--do you see re-occuring characters or symbols? Or might it be something more blunt like the moral or genre?

Me, I got this thing about dystopias. I love putting characters into chaos like that, whether its probable chaos or not. Doesn't matter if it's surreal, the reactions are real.

Interested in what you guys have, and I'm sure you do. I'm not the only creepy guy out there.

[Anya Smith]

I had to think about that a bit. I suppose, judging from my two finished novels and three in progress, it's cataclysm, threat to the world, to the galaxy. All my main characters must save the world, galaxy, or Earth.


Is it unrealistic for man to do that? Not if he has help.

[Phouka]

The color red -- in some meaningful fashion -- ends up in nearly everything I write. An expression of rebellion, a forbidden object, the representation of evil/good. I've gone back through most of what I've written and yup, there it is.

...and any erotica that I write ends up on the dark side. I'm not really into it myself, but enjoying a bit of pain during sex tends to show up out of my subconscious.

Interesting question, Akuma.

[zarch]

Jacked-up family relationships.

[Jamesaritchie]

If I have a writing fetish, and I probably do, I'm unaware of what it might be.

Dystopias, huh? If I do have a fetish, it's probably at the opposite end of the spectrum. I'm not at all fond of dystopias. I avoid a great deal of science fiction because much of it is so dystopian.

[Steven Pollack]

I like the word specificity.


Steven

[zarch]

Also Garamond.

[Anya Smith]

I like the word specificity.


Steven


Hey, me too. I use it in regards to the Human genes.

[Danger Jane]

A lot of my writing has to do with some sort of fall and also mother-child relationships...usually kind of sketched-out ones.

Not that this reflects anything on my mother. Of course. I guess that typical maternal relationship intrigues me because it can be twisted in so many ways.

[Sage]

Characters: Close siblings, especially twins
Themes: Love conquering evil
Other: People looking at each other. I'm so bad about this, but my characters are always looking here or there or like something.

[Lyra Jean]

dysfunctional families. at least when I look at my two completed short stories. I don't know if it's subconcious because I come from a dysfunctional family and just getting it out of my system or what. But that is what it seems to be right now.

[Liam Jackson]

The ageless war between good and evil, with definitions of both being relative to circumstances. For instance, the notion of a basically benign character comitting great evil in order to further the greater cause of "good" aways jumpstarts the writing motor.

My brother swears I was Pope Urban II in another life. (God forbid.)

[maestrowork]

Symbolism and subtexts. They are like my easter eggs.

Ambiguity. I like it when you don't know exactly what something means. Nothing is what it seems on the surface.

[alaskamatt17]

characters: people who internalize a lot and don't really know how to relate well with others

themes: nature treats humanity just as bad as humanity treats nature (or worse)

other: Azure skies, my skies are always azure, unless they're overcast or it's night.

Dinosaurs; I think I've committed just under 300,000 words of disk space to stories about dinosaurs.

Depriving characters of one of the major senses. I have two novels in which there are blind characters, as well as a short story. They don't start off blind, but they end up that way. In one of my novels there's a chapter where two of the main characters undergo a trial in which they are sight and smell (smell is important to their species).

[Simon Woodhouse]

Lost souls or aimless characters are my big turn on. Not necessarily hopeless basket cases, but people who just can't get it together in some aspect of their life.

[KatyaFleur]

Had to think about this one, but nearly everything I write involves a main character who starts out paralyzed in a situation they hate but are afraid to change, and then become motivated to empower themselves. Another common thread is that water ends up being a powerful symbol in a great deal of my writing whether I plan it that way or not.

Heh. Another common element I noticed a few years ago--one that still baffles me--is that looking back over the fiction I wrote over a period of about 4 years, more than 50% of my writing from that time included the phrase "in the dim light of the kitchen" somewhere in it. Totally unplanned. I still don't know why my characters had dim kitchens or why I felt the need to mention it. Hmm.

Great question, Akuma!

[September skies]

I love flashbacks. I've read the pros and cons... I don't care. I love 'em.

[TrickyFiction]

Mythology is mine. It always manages to worm its way into all my stories.

[aruna]

India. Turns up in all my books, either as setting or as idea.

[Albedo of Zero]

Vampires...or somethings like them.

I don't even like vampire stories, movies, pictures. But my favorite stories that I have written, involve a vampire type character whether it's blood or soul-sucking. *shiver*

I'm going to try to write a western and see if I can keep them out. Ooo...or maybe I'll write a children's story about a garlic garden; that should keep them away, huh?

[Sentia]

The struggle with inner demons that we all experience, and whether we become empowered by overcoming those inner demons or succumb to our own weakness of character.

My WIP has a charismatic preacher (married) who is lascivious. He has given in to the inner demon of uncontrolled lust, brought on by the recognition of his power over his congregation. I contrast him with a judge who is a quiet man of God who struggles to administer justice, balancing the laws of God and man, even when he must deal with the most heinous of criminal cases.

The lives of these men eventually intersect. Each has his own form of faith severely tested. Oddly enough, these are not the main characters, but they crystallize the struggle with inner demons that the other characters are experiencing.

[rodentone]

My stories are meant to tell the true story of ratkind -- the kind you don't find in you human history books. I want to show people that us guys are cute, cuddly, clean, creatures.

Most rats live out in the wild, in our underground cities. We don't like to associate much with you big oafs. We're smarter, prettier, better educated, and much more modest than you guys.

The rats that live in your sewers are the dregs of our society, the alcoholics, drug users, criminal elements, and the like. They give ratdom a bad name. And there are just as many humans living in those sewers. Don't forget that.

And, if possible, make humans look stupid.

He, he, *fart*, he, he.

Oscar Rat

[KTC]

Mentally borderline individuals. I write them well. They leak into almost every fictional piece I write.

[JoelLordOfSquirrels]

For me, it seems to be that the main character has some knowledge or trait that seperates him from all the rest, be it some ancient magical bloodline or total immortality, etc.

[Serenity]

For me it's names. Names of people, places, ships, whatever. I'm a stickler for the right meaning of the name to fit whatever it belongs to. I will spend more time searching for the right name than sleeping sometimes. And, by extention, never using the same name twice, even if the name was used ages ago.

[CaroGirl]

Cool question, and cool answers.

I find mother/child relationships turn up in a lot of my work. And homosexuality/gender-bending is also a theme in some of my stuff, particularly my novels.

[aadams73]

I avoid a great deal of science fiction because much of it is so dystopian.

Ditto. It's one of the things I love about Star Trek: Human beings have actually made the world a better place. I'm an optimist.

Pets are my writing fetish. I can't seem to write anything without them.

[Ginger]

My stories virtually always involve some sort of animal, and more often than not, some sort of cruelty toward them. But the person inflicting the cruelty usually gets what's coming to him/her.

[jules]

Characters who are fighting for something larger than themselves: maybe not saving the world, but some principle or other (the right to democratic rule and religious freedom are two that I've used recently). The ability to handle this level of stakes easily is what attracts me to my usual genres, SF & fantasy.

Killing or threatening to kill a character's loved ones as a way of motivating them.

Villains who think they know what's best for everyone (and are probably scarily right, if only they were allowed to get their way).

[allenparker]

I am coming to believe that my fetish is typos. I seem to add them to everything I write.

My fetish is placing my main character in an extreme situation, but not letting him know he is in any trouble. The world crashes around him or her and he continues to eat lunch and read the paper.

awp

[glutton]

Pretty much everything Jules said- plus extremely durable female warriors who can't get a break from extreme suffering of both the physical and emotional kind (the MC in my just-complete work finds out she is a child of incest, is forced to kill her father after he murders the man of her dreams, has her throne stolen from her (she's a princess who becomes queen after killing her father), then thinks her mother is dead for a while, then loses her best friend, and all the while she is constantly taking serious, sometimes nearly fatal, wounds).

[AOD23]

I'd have to say mine would be putting the main characters, in situations where they have NO other choice than to do something totally against their character, like having one who is a pacifist have to fight and possibly kill an enemy or die themselves, and then to see how it affects their character, what sorta changes it puts them through, I dunno why...but in almost every story where its long enough to go into detail of the characters, that always happens for me.

[badducky]

I'm addicted to myths and koans.


I construct whole books as thought experiments based on myths and koans.

My current book is a long extrapolation of the "Muh" koan, which no zen master would approve of, but my priest might like.

[citymouse]

I do have a fetish or if you like, recurring themes running throughout my Jan Phillips series and it’s these: abandonment, exclusion, exploitation, a deep and abiding feeling of aloneness i.e. “He felt like a child who had spent all his allowance to buy a birthday gift for his friend only to be turned away at the door because he wasn’t invited to the party.”



Each book and its characters deal with these impulses separately or in combination. The characters whatever their role react in very distinct ways. All the stories converge into a single plot line; that of making right choices for wrong reasons and wrong choices for right reasons and all the consequences that flow from these decisions. As you may have guessed I don’t write fluff.



By the way Jan Phillips is a man. In this instance, the name Jan is Dutch. I had no idea how much confusion choosing that name would cause. See? Choices—at least that one isn’t lethal.

www.michaelhalfhill.com (http://www.michaelhalfhill.com/)

“None of my ancestors had the energy or good sense to get rich.” –Michael Halfhill

[writeorwrong]

I have to go with the dysfunctional family "fetish", if you will. A screwed up background is the basis from which all aberrant behavior stems. I like to read fiction and non-fic with this dynamic, and I like to write it. Every protagonist in my stories has been a little south of what is considered normal.

[Sage]

And homosexuality/gender-bending is also a theme in some of my stuff, particularly my novels.Oh, yeah, I guess I have a lot of that too.

[writeorwrong]

Oh, yeah, I guess I have a lot of that too.

I find the concepts of gender identity and sexual orientation fascinating as well, but haven't yet tried to write a character with issues in those areas. I was up until 4 a.m. this morning reading Self Made Man by Norah Vincent...

[MDavis]

Haha, had to laugh at myself here. I read the comments about including homosexuality and gender-bending issues and I thought to myself "Hm, not really interested in that."

And then I remembered. One of the supporting characters in my novel is gay, and I kind of adore him.

How do I forget that?? http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/smilies/tongue.gif

On a different note, I have a problem (I suppose you could call it a fetish, but this is a real "derail the writing and spend hours doing useless stuff" problem).

I love world building, which can be good for a novel and not a problem, but the biggest part of my fetish is character lineages. Mapping family trees. I have over two thousand years worth of imperial succession detailed, plus the past 300 years of the six major houses and a few spin off trees for the lesser houses. Within many of those six major houses I have details like birth place and death place, aliases, 2nd wives, and marriage dates.

See what I mean? A problem http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/smilies/EmoteHeadbang.gif

[Shadow_Ferret]

I can't think of any fetishes other than I like to write fantasy, but that's such a broad and varied genre with so many sub-genres in it that I wouldn't even consider that a fetish.

[WVWriterGirl]

I would have to categorize my "fetish" in writing as the "Things Fall Apart" syndrome. Not really dystopia, because it often doesn't affect the entire world - it's dystopia only to one person or a small group of people. This seems to run through all my stories - be they short or novel-length. Main character/main character group is going through life, status quo, when *bang* things fall apart. That's usually the jumping-off point for my stories, and the rest of the piece is filled with what happens next.

[Vuligora]

My characters are starting to speak in spanish....

No I'm serious, this is the second one since I started spanish three. I'll be writing and suddenly...

Elixzabeth was a Hispanic from Puerto rico. "Yo no se," she said.

[brokenfingers]

Hmmmm, I've noticed that I tend to create loner-type, guilt-ridden protagonists.

Rebel types with questionable pasts who make their own rules etc and while the normal everyday world might not look kindly upon them, they have their own code of honor and ethics to which they strictly adhere. Plus they're always noble in spirit - often engaging (sometimes against their conscious will or better judgment) in feats of bravery, honor, duty and sacrifice.

I'm also enamored of the whole Hero's Journey thing. A person thrown into an unexpected and extraordinary situation which causes them to rise to the occasion and overcome against all obstacles.

[victoria.goddard]

I think I send something of the sort on another thread, but my fetish is for my characters to have secret lives. All the main ones, anyway. Apart from one, but she's lost her memory.

Then I put them into situations that force them to confront the split(s) in their personality and how that changes how they act and how they are seen by the other characters, and indeed how they think about themselves. Even the one who has lost her memory will, in a future work, regain it.