Entries tagged with cliches

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wrestling with possibilities

It's one thing to get ideas. It's another to get fresh, original ideas. And yet a third to get fresh original ideas that do more than remind you that nothing gets to be cliched without having a lot going for it.

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Best of the Decade Data: Common Words in Titles

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Tropes and Your Audience

My first panel at this year's Arisia.

Writers use tropes whether they intend to or not, because writers have to produce something that will be recognizable as a story.
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cliches,
poesy

The Three-Decker

"The three-volume novel is extinct."

Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
It took a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notions, I've found her first and best --
The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.

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parental absence

I think I have read one too many complaint about main characters so seldom having parents in fantasy.
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back from the grave

"The undiscovered country, from whose bourn. No traveler returns" -- raising the question what in blue blazes did Hamlet think of the ghost?

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plausible plotting

And the worst offender on TV.

Warning: not safe for work if they mind your laughing.

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neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring

Liminality. It comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. And those poised on the threshold may find it like limbo.

And it's really useful in fantasy.

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part of

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inspiration or -- not

Some of the story you can piece together from the original idea. Or ideas, when they're sticky.

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Stupid Plot Tricks: The Evil Overlord Devises a Plot

"Start with some principles:

A plot doesn't have to be new. It just has to be new to the reader.
In fact, it doesn't even have to be new to the reader. It just has to get past him. (It helps if the story's moving fast and there's lots of other interesting stuff going on.)"

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An Experiment in Criticism

An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis

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reversal, revisited

Another reversal trick starts much earlier in the story. When you know something will be needed in the future of the story, introduce it as the opposite of what it will turn out to be.

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Fantastic Settings

The forest, the Arcadian countryside, the city, the mountains -- ah, settings. Let's leave aside the social and politics aspects for a bit (and why not? The writers often leave them out entirely when choosing a setting) and consider just the physical aspects of the world, the archetypal settings and the contrasts between them, and the not quite metaphorical meaning of them.

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Part of

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You all meet in a tavern

The immortal words with which so many D&D stories open -- and so a cliche that people try to avoid. An amusing list of alternatives here, but note that it ends: "Or the PCs could simply meet in a tavern..." Because, of course, it's an excellent way to get people to bump into each other. It's the place where travelers stay (if it's an inn as well) or eat. It's the place where locals socialize. It is therefore exactly the place where someone who wanted help would post the notice of the fact, etc.

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cliches,
snippets

the toolbox of communication

The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.

Terry Pratchett

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The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

"City of Wizards is normally quite a GOOD thing, since only Good WIZARDS seem able to live together. . . .There have been cities of EVIL Wizards in the past. You will occasionally come across the sites of these, reduced to a glassy slag during the ultimate disagreement."

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones.

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detailing a McGuffin

pulling out the the paint and the paintbrushes, eying the thing -- amorphous, colorless, void of history and abilities -- that sits in the middle of the story, casting sideways glances at the muse to see how interested she is

I'm outlining a story. It's gotta a McGuffin in it.

So I am merrily working out how to disguise the fact that it exists only in order that the characters may care about it and so do stuff. Like, commit plot. Thus far I only know that it's got to have some magical properties, because one character would want it for no other reason. (She's kinda like that.) And that it has a long history. (What happened in that history? Dunno. At least yet. But I know it's long. 'cause that's why some other characters care about it.)
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Making Tropes Interesting

I was a panelist for this one.

The moderator asked us all what tropes we were tired of seeing. To which my reaction was -- you know, there are very few tropes that I object to that I don't have other grounds to object to. The elitist magic, where you have it or don't, and not having it is not like being tone-deaf, a rarity. It's common -- all over the place -- but I can object on the grounds that it's a cheap way of making your character a special little snowflake.

But nothing ever gets to be a cliche without over-use, which means it has to get itself used, a lot. And it has to have some virtues for that. Respect your cliches. They've got something going for them.

But the trick is breaking off the baggage and giving it new baggage, I think.

(More on panels tomorrow.)