What sort of stories do I like?

Do you like action, drama, comedy, or romance? A combination of these? Do like your stories to be more realistic or more fantastic? Do you prefer stories with a edge and moral grey areas, or a more powerful, archetypical black-and-white view? Do you like cheap thrills or subtle textual nuances? Do you like long or short stories? Do you prefer a fast, flowing pace or a slow, thoughtful one? Do you like introspective characters, or do you want your  heroes to be less angsty? Is there any particular sort of story that just makes you go 'wow!' ?

It's questions like these that you should try to answer when trying to find your own voice in writing.

What is it in these stories that I like, specifically?

So now that you know what stories you like, what exactly do you like about them? Is it those great lines that the Princess Bride has Inigo say, for example? Or maybe it's that opening shot of the Star Destroyer in Star Wars? Or is it something subtler, like the relationship between two of your favorite characters?

Whatever it is you like, you should be sure that you know just what it is before going on.

How can I duplicate the elements I like in my own stories? How can I combine these elements into a good story?

Now that you know what you like, exactly, all you have to do is figure out how to duplicate them and apply them. For example, Rebecca Carefoot, a fanfic writer, writes extremely good dialogue, much better than I do. I asked her, basically, how the heck do you do that? Basically, she just imagines how the characters would naturally react in a given situation.

As anothe