Aren't cliches what we truly want?

Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by Soprah, Jan 8, 2016.

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  1. Wolfmaster1234

    Wolfmaster1234 Member

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    At the end of the day, you need to find the right balance between the familiarity and originality. If something has too many cliches then people will be bored of it as it is nothing different from they read before, but if its too out there and different people will most likely find it confusing and too weird. We have been writing stories for a long time so there really not many paths that people have already been down, it's pretty much impossible to avoid at least some cliches as long as you bring at least something new and interest the reader it really doesn't matter.
     
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  2. Okon

    Okon Contributor Contributor

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    Eh, my statement was shallow to begin with, so there isn't really anything to expand on:p:p.

    Your original question made me think of the times I've read books and only noticed months/years later that summed up, they have commonly used plot twists and characters. Inkheart comes to mind, but my memory won't let me be specific about that one. I've always considered writing to be more seduction than anything; good writers make me forget I'm reading a story that someone sculpted in his mind.
     
  3. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    I agree, OP.

    Remember - reading on here, a tale of cowboy trudging through snow to deliver Xmas dinner to ranchers. It was slush...and was perfect...at Christmastime. Later I cried watching 'It's A Wonderful Life.' Hid my tears, of course.

    I think if you can write it pretty you can write any old story, and still deserve plaudit, appreciation. Let them debate your charms in the broadsheets, kerchinnng. Good luck to them writers: long as little old ladies are reading my Lolita 3, Big Girl, I am writing it, I mean.

    Me, and always drawn to variations of Hansel and Gretel, Little Match Girl in my prose. I am all three. Blame mother.
     
  4. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    From what I can gather, it's okay to use a cliché as long as it doesn't look like one.

    But avoiding clichés is the number one reason Stephen King recommends turning off your TV. Find the spider webby corners of your imagination (which you can't do if you're wallowing in pop fiction) and you won't have to avoid clichés because you won't find any there.
     
  5. Samurai Jack

    Samurai Jack Active Member

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    Star Wars Force Awakens is one continuous cliche the world needed in order to remember the original reasons people liked Star Wars in the first place. Ditto to Jurassic World. Both spent their entire budgets having the characters point to different objects like "remember the last time you thought that was cool?! Right?!"

    But really, what is or isn't cliche only matters when I have a foundation in the material to start with. Someone is going to read their very first zombie book today, having never played games, watched television, seen the movies, or anything else. That book will be reviewed as just one more cliche'd piece of writing in a sea of sameness... but not to that person.
     
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  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I would add that there's also the dynamic of when a reader choses to engage a genre/style of writing that may host a number of in-genre tropes that have waxed into cliché. In another thread you I and @jannert have chatted about Westerns, and I am currently reading a little Western trilogy. It's my first. For all I know the pages may be glued together with cliché, but I don't see it because I've not read so many that I'm thinking, What? This again? Jinkies... The books are immensely enjoyable and were some cynic to sit next to me and point out the cliches, I would probably tell them to sod off because I don't care. I'm enjoying the read. :)
     
  7. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Heck, many genres thrive on cliches ...it's what their readers want. What bothers me about the shootemup Western cliche is that so many people think that's what life in the west was actually like. For example, I've encountered people who believe that everybody in the old west carried a sidearm—and complain that a story where a character chooses not to carry one can't be realistic. As long as people understand that the duel at dawn cliche NOT what the west was actually like for most people, and enjoy reading stock Westerns for their entertainment value, I've got no problem. It's when cliche gets mistaken for reality that I do.
     
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  8. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    No, no. I understand that part. :) I used it only as an example of when a story could be rife with cliché, but from the POV of the reader it would not technically be cliché because it would be a first encounter with said tropes and a cliché is a trope that's been done to death and worn thin.... if that makes sense. :bigtongue:

    I'll give another example: Precocious young people. This one came up in my reading of reviews for Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy (aka, Lilith's Brood). One reviewer was just filled to the brim with disdain for the books because, yes, the three books do make use of younger members of the alien race of Oankali as the focus and the vehicles for change. The reviewer herself was admittedly young (her admission) and she was tired of young people being used in this way in stories. Frankly, I didn't even notice that bit until she mentioned it. I was personally focused on a different level of the story that had to do with basic human social dynamics. They are very good books, and like all very good books, you can engage the story at different levels. Surface, plot, character, theme, etc. Anywho, the reviewer rattled off a number of other books wherein this thing with precocious youths had also been used, and upon mild query I discovered that they were all YA fantasies, dystopias, blah, blah, blah. Books that I had not, to that point, chosen to read because the whole wave of YA Angsty Dystopia was very off-putting to me because of its popularity. I'm just like that. Perhaps it is a cliché, but since I don't read a lot of books where spunky young people show the doddering old folks (fill in the message), it wasn't even something I noticed. So, again, for me the reader, not technically a cliché.

    ETA: And this brings up the question of the inverse. If I don't see a cliché as a cliché because I don't typically read in the genre in which said cliché is often found, can a reader read him/herself into a cliché corner, so to speak, by reading from too narrow a selection of books?
     
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