Tim O'Brien's writing is characterized by structural complexity and literary and linguistic self-awareness. Yet formal reflections and experimentations may also be regarded as one of the recurrent thematic concerns of his work, particularly when we consider that his attention to questions of style and structure is connected with the investigation into the power of storytelling as a viable epistemological tool, an effective means of communication and, even, as a source and a conduit for compassion and catharsis. The most obvious structural feature common to O'Brien's books is the rejection of a linear narrative development, often accompanied by an explicit foregrounding – through chapter and section titles, or through metafictional notations – of the alternative organizing principles of the text in question. Whether only a few pages long or spanning an entire book, his stories frequently unfold through multiple, interweaving narrative strands, each covering a different temporal dimension or exploring the relationship between facts, memory and imagination, or even providing various perspectives on the same theme and separate accounts of the same events. At other times, O'Brien relies on the juxtaposition of self-contained, and occasionally overlapping, vignettes, whose deep connection readers are invited to work out by themselves. Whatever the narrative strategy, at the heart of O'Brien's emphasis on the artistry of storytelling lie questions about the nature of truth and the possibility of its apprehension and representation. This issue is clearly behind the generic hybridity of texts such as If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried, which deliberately blur the boundary between autobiography and fiction, and In the Lake of the Woods, an example of historiographic metafiction, the postmodern take on that already cross-breed genre, the historical novel. The investigation into the availability and communication of truth also underpins the intertextual connections in ‘Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong’.

Since the beginning of his career, O'Brien has carefully arranged his material in such a way as to highlight or mirror the plight of his protagonists, and the central themes of his novels.