Each author has their own style and will use tropes to distinguish themselves from others.
Beyond that, all authors have their favorite words and turns of phrases.
And indeed, individual characters have their own quirks. Things they will say frequently, and things they won't say at all. Returning to my favorite protagonist in my own work-in-progress, the child-prodigy organist, she has three quirks: (1) whenever the subject of playing works that call for "swell" on organs that haven't a single swellbox, she'll speak of "thinking outside 'the box'"; (2) she categorically refuses to utter the phrase "pipe organ," as she feels it normalizes electronic imitations, and (3) she absolutely, positively, under no circumstances will laugh at any joke based on the idea of "organ" as a euphemism for "genitalia."
At any rate, I welcome characteristics that define the styles of various favorite authors. I know, for example, that when I pick up something by ADF, a "slow start" is virtually a "given," but if I stick with it, I'll be rewarded.
I wish I could point to some single characteristic that makes CLB's style recognizable. Or GC's. Then again, in music, a James Horner score is instantly recognizable from his use of brass (his best-known concert work,
Collage, is aptly named, because it somehow sounds like all of his best-known film scores put together, without extensive quoting of any of them), but on the other hand, almost all the music of John Williams is recognizable, across all the different idioms in which he's written . . . because he's John Williams.
