WF's Book of Cliches

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Trave_xx, May 29, 2008.

  1. InkDancer

    InkDancer New Member

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    Minority groups always have inner peace and arcane knowledge, yet they exist only to serve the hero in his quest, which often involves destroying their homeland.
     
  2. Rebekkamaria

    Rebekkamaria New Member

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    I think this thread should be a sticky. This is so good. :)

    Well, let's see if I can come up with anything.

    1. The main character is über special and can do many things nobody else can... because he/she was born that way. Nobody has to train him/her and he/she just has mad skilz hidden there somewhere. Of course at first, he/she is a complete nobody.

    2. We journey through the whole world just to see all the cool places the author has created. The plot is very thin at these parts, but we just have to go there - because of the coolness factor.

    3. Prophecy child

    4. We have very smart characters who can't figure out something awfully simple. Or we have our smart characters figuring out something that is almost impossible to figure out from those clues.

    That's it for now. :)
     
  3. Mr Sci Fi

    Mr Sci Fi New Member

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    Most of these aren't so much cliche as they are conventions. Things such as, "Main villain isn't a male" isn't cliche. I've read plenty of stories where the main villain is female, but then you're going to have a guy saying that having your main villain a female is cliche. Come on now. Everything's been done before, but that doesn't make it cliche.

    The comment about Good Vs. Evil and Good always win.. Well, read No Country for Old Men or the slew of OTHER stories that break convention from this theme. Breaking convention is conventional too these days.

    According to some of the thinking here, nothing is original and everything is cliche, the same old blah, blah, blah... Ok, well then we all might as well just give up on fiction. I challenge anyone to post the cliches from their own writing. They're there.
     
  4. Marloy

    Marloy New Member

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    Aaah! That is not right! Talk about narrow-minded!

    In my stories, I actually try very hard to include every type of person, no matter how. I don't know why, but sticking with all the same faces - no matter what they may be black, white - whatever - isn't enjoyable, and it makes for more of a cosmopolitan story. :)

    I don't if these were mentioned but:


    In fantasy, there are so many times some mythical/prophetic/imminent evil Sauron type overlord


    Of course in sci-fi, there is always that ship sometimes, "The StarGate/Galactica/Ship/Enterprise/Mechanical Futuristic Cliché


    Those romances where the girl is in love with the "bad boy" and has to "unlock his heart" because he's got some dark, deep-seated bad past


    Token characters that are put in the beginning that you know are going to die


    In fantasy, the MC must go on a long coming-of-age journey to find that he has a dark prophetic past that reveals him as the Shaman/Chosen one


    Like one mentioned, the MC is a peasant/servant/farm boy who is trained by an ancient wiseman (possibly with a beard) and in the climax the guy dies and the hero must hone the powers on his own epic "quest"


    A baby is born with a special "mark" which means they are a prophesized hero who will be raised by fairies/elves etc. and kill the bad guy


    An immortal man falls in love with a mortal woman (or vice-versa in LOTR, though I love that, and that is good work where many clichés come from) and must give it up to be with her (unless they are a vampire, in which case, they bite her/him)


    Time travel (unless done right)


    I've got more, but I'll only do those now. :D
     
  5. TheFedoraPirate

    TheFedoraPirate New Member

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    True, most of these are what I would call "tropes" (a la tvtropes.org) but that doesn't make some of them any less overused.
     
  6. Sato Ayako

    Sato Ayako New Member

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    Don't know if these links have been posted, but:

    Science Fiction Cliches: http://www.cthreepo.com/cliche/

    Fantasy Cliches: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/8584/stuff/cliche.html

    Romance Cliches: http://dreneebagby.blogspot.com/2007/09/romance-cliches.html

    Trope Wiki: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage




    Cliches aren't really that bad so long as they're done well. The problem is they're too often done poorly. All cliches are, are formulas for a character, setting, plot, etc. For character, the cliche is used with little consideration for character psychology and even perhaps coherency. For setting, coherency and consistency may suffer (such as a glacier in the middle of a desert with some half-butted reason, such as nanotechnology or magic).

    With plot, it's just plug and play. That saps energy and power from everything involved with the plot.
     
  7. Marcelo

    Marcelo Member

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    Poor Mr. Tolkien... What would he think if he saw what the fantasy genre has come to?

    -They meet a dragon with a huge gold hoard and that likes to hear riddles.

    -Northern Ice-bound land has seven feet tall barbarians or evil monsters.

    -Orcs, seriously, there are many more demonic creatures in myths.

    -Sword shines when danger is nearing.

    -Evil witch/sorcerer is always watching the hero/heroine from their crystal ball, seeing how the hero/heroine beats the monsters she throws at him/her.
     
  8. Archammer

    Archammer New Member

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    I normally like cliches to a certain extent. Most of them are often defining features of the style of writing they are found in. If you remove all cliche from a certain style of story then it starts to become something else entirely.

    "If you sand all the bumps off a log, you get a cylinder every time. Then the only thing that makes them interesting is the twists and curves."
    -an old guy i used to know

    He said that about being yourself but I think it tends to stay true in this context.
     
  9. Marloy

    Marloy New Member

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    It's actually true, where is there a totally original plot anywhere except for the first story ever told, whatever that is. And, with its long line of predecessors, it has probably been harnessed so many times it's unthinkable. It's your skill in writing the story which will make it original.

    I am completely able of enjoying books with clichés, but not if it has too many of the more popular of the sort. If all I'm getting is some bunch of words that are a disguised forgery of something else (like so many are of Tolkien's work) I'm going to look away.
     
  10. Mr Sci Fi

    Mr Sci Fi New Member

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    This one made me crack up from the fantasy cliche link:

    "Evil villain must always kill at least one henchman no matter how loyal he is."
     
  11. Mr Sci Fi

    Mr Sci Fi New Member

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    You're just not reading enough. I can name a plethora of original novels and stories that I've read in recent months. Read VALIS for starters. I recommend that to anybody with doubts about a story's originality. I always expect the "WTF?" afterward, too.
     
  12. Marloy

    Marloy New Member

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    Please don't say that. You didn't get what I meant. I mentioned that it is what takes place and what you do in "the story" that makes it original. I'm not denying the originality of so many books out there, I'm mentioning the basic structures of a plot in one. There are only so many ways for the general overview to go, that's what I was trying to say. I'm sure the book you mentioned is very original, but when it boils down to it, every story has a basic structure similar to another.
     
  13. Mr Sci Fi

    Mr Sci Fi New Member

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    Of course. Who reads stories for their plots, anyway? I know personally that I need a good story I can get involved in, with characters that I care about and want to see either succeed or fall. If another story followed the same structure, I really don't care as long as it's different.
     
  14. Marloy

    Marloy New Member

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    I will, sometimes, in cases when I'm unsure of them.

    That's pretty much all I said to begin with. Stories themselves can be original, but the plot will never be anything new. :D
     
  15. Chickidy

    Chickidy New Member

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    How about this fricken one?!? Why is it that the Male Lead has to have one ally that is the quiet, collected badass Aragorn-esque ranger type? WHY? Oh and something evil has to be connected with some dark and ancient god of some sort, or a relic from some far away time. Why can't a politician or, or some sort of corrupt lord be the source of all darkness, I mean the antagonist can be fairly average, cant he/she?
     
  16. Salinye

    Salinye New Member

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    Cliche's can be bad. No arguing that.

    But, there are always two sides to every coin, right?

    I sort of think of standard cliche's like the skeleton of the story.

    Poor farm kid finds out he's heir to the throne and has to fight great adversity to reclaim it and save the kingdom yadda yadda, right?

    But, that's just the skeleton. It's all the rest of the meat in the story that takes a cliche skeleton and turns it into something amazing and original. There are many layers to a story and one cliche might just be a place to build from.

    I'm not saying, throw every cliche in there. A writing friend of mine and I always joked about writing a story about an ugly elf girl who was completely in love with the town dwarf that wanted nothing to do with her and who, consequently, hated ale and weaponry and was clean shaven.

    ~Sal
     
  17. zorell

    zorell New Member

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    Here's a romance cliche:

    Girl meets boy, boy falls head over feet in love with boy, boy breaks girl's heart

    Alternative:

    Girl meets boy, girl falls head over feet in love with boy, boy admits he's a girl
     
  18. Rebekkamaria

    Rebekkamaria New Member

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    How is this romance cliche? Or did you mean that the boy falls head over feet in love with the girl?

    Just interested. :) Because I would like to see this romance story that you wrote there. :)
     
  19. zorell

    zorell New Member

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    Now I'm confuzzled, please clarify.:confused::confused:
     
  20. Rebekkamaria

    Rebekkamaria New Member

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    In your cliche you have one girl and two boys. Either you mixed the words or your cliche is my kind of cliche. :)

    And you probably meant that the girl falls head over heels in love with the boy. :)
     
  21. zorell

    zorell New Member

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    You're right, I've read boooks with that (think it might have been one of the Rainbow Boys books) but that's not the particular theme I was refering to....would be interesting though. (You just set off a light bulb!)
     
  22. Tursonna

    Tursonna New Member

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    I believe that by necessity a cliché is rather anonymous, and that the only reason which clichés seem such a problem is an overabundance of poorly crafted writing.

    It seems to be accepted that clichés are popularized/overused devices or situations that have long ago lost their impact, but I believe that - more importantly - they have also lost their identity.

    Quickly reacting to stimuli seems to me a survival trait, and it seems plausible that one of the means by which the human mind quickens reaction time is by simplifying the analysis of a situation. One way in which situational analysis can be simplified is by the designation of a specific, unique situation into a certain category of broad situations. The broad situations have actions assigned to each, and so reaction to the situation can be rapid (and not delayed by the need for thought). A simplified example of this would be that, upon seeing smoke and flame in your house, you're not likely to stand there wondering what they are. Instead, you determine that smoke and fire are indicators of a fire, and that you should drop to your knees and crawl for an exit.

    I believe that clichés are actually these simplifications, these broad categories, these mental decision-making tools. And indeed, to a certain extent clichés provoke reactions from us, usually very muted versions of the same reactions we would have if we encountered specific instances falling under these clichés in our daily lives.

    However, in the course of living we're constantly bombarded with stimuli and situations, many of which don't effect us. If we reacted to every stimuli, we'd be overwhelmed, paralyzed in reaction and in as bad a situation as if we didn't react to anything. Therefore, we also have some system of dismissal, the system which tells us 'no, that doesn't matter to me, ignore it'.

    I believe that the closer something is to the broad category - to the cliché - the more actively the system of dismissal pushes it along its way. When encountering a situation in a book that is close to or in general terms (and therefore not separated by much from its category), we are likely to automatically dismiss a cliché, an action which then leaves the resulting writing looking awfully hollow.

    A good writer can take several different actions to avoid this reaction in their readers. One action, the path of the sensational, is to forge a bond between the reader and the work so that the cliché prompts a much less muted reaction (such as when you cry at the death of a character). Another, the path of the novel, is to create a situation which - if not entirely defying it - at the least resists categorization.
     
  23. Slippery

    Slippery New Member

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    Boo! This thread is wonderful. I don't think anyone has mentioned these yet, but...

    If there is a fat person in the story, he automatically has bad skin, bad manners, and grossly exaggerated body hair. The only exception I can think of is Nero Wolfe, and to keep him from being too likable he was given too many character flaws. The same actor played an overweight Alien villain in Stargate: SG1, who ate so quickly that he flung pieces of food against the walls, where they stuck.

    This is what I think is the biggest cliche of all: The bad guy is bigger, older, tougher, or stronger than the good guy. Perhaps this cliche is the only reason that Philip Seymour Hoffman has a career. -grins-

    When there is unrequited love in the story, it is always the man who loves the woman.

    I don't know if this one exists outside of Robert Jordan, but there is the cliche of female characters being cunning, or possessed of mental talents, where as male characters have more physically oriented abilities.
     
  24. adamant

    adamant Contributor Contributor

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    I think it makes sense to have an older person as a opposing character because they have a better chance of establishing a threat... besides, it would be less fun to be reminded of the fact there will be someone younger coming to take your spot.
     
  25. WAN73D

    WAN73D New Member

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    The black guy always dies, usually first.
     

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