One thing I found interesting when I briefly participated in that online critique group, was the inclusion of author's notes which called out specific recurring weaknesses. The reviewer was kindly requested to take particular note of these.
I'm vain enough to consider most of my recurring traits as stylistic. (I know someone who had issues with my continued use of colons, but they work for me.) But when I expand my view to consider plot, I start thinking, uh-oh.
My fantasy stories often use warring cities. I can't help it; I'm totally sucked in by the tension inherent in a romance between a conquerer and the conquered. Or just enemies on opposite sides of a conflict that spans far beyond them, geographically and time-wise. (Perhaps I can blame this on Ernest Gunn's Antagonists, the last paragraph of which still kills me ever so softly.)
Flashbacks. I think this is my way of avoiding prologues. They (yes, the commandments of fiction, collectively issued) say to start the story where the conflict begins. Then they say to show, not tell, the background. So I usually set my beginning right when things get interesting in the present timeline, then go into a flashback to explain how circumstances got to this point. In my sf, I usually even finagle some memory-related technology to validate this technique.
I'm positive I have other ruts I keep falling into. But if the writing leads me there, should I really turn away? Should I write it and then wrestle the story structure and plot into something else during my edits? Or just glory in my variations of these themes?
The colons, though, are staying.
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