Tag-Archive for » cliches «
I don’t think I can drive the point home long or hard enough to read agent and editor blogs if you’re considering publishing mainstream. It’s insight into the publishing work that in years past only those privy to the world to begin with would have known. Thanks to the internet, publishing insiders are sharing what makes it all tick and if you find the right read (not some jaded schmuck that continually posts on the corruption and capitalism in the publishing industry), the information gleaned will be invaluable.
Kristin Nelson posted back in March about a conversation she had with an editor friend of hers about tired fantasy themes that she’s come across. They’d both know since they’re privy to the wonders of the slush pile, not to mention actual, bonafide submissions that we might never see so who better to talk about inundation than those on the receiving end of the flood?
Now my definition of tired is that these people are seeing the same product wrapped in hardly different packaging over and over and over again, thus giving the general theme itself a pretty sour flavor to taste. Sucks for those chosen ones and amulets of doom/saving grace but when people think changing the scenery of one of these tales is enough to make it different, I don’t blame the workers for being tired with them. I’m not a big fan of redundancies either.
Of course, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, nothing is tired if you can jazz it up enough to make it stand out from the crowd. There are a lot of quest stories and amulet searching stories and chosen one stories out there. They’re all on a quest to find an amulet that only they can use to save the world. There’ll be some bumps in the road, maybe some pirates or highway robbers. There’ll be moments of self doubt for the hero or heroine, perhaps a love interest and throw in a couple dragons and a pixie in there for good measure. The way I see it, this editor has gotten to a point with these themes where she’s read one story, she’s read them all.
I still consider myself very new to the whole fantasy genre and even newbier to the young adult world since it just sprang itself upon me one day. With that being said, I am blissfully unaware of overused cliches in both genres and ignorant of them all at the same time. I don’t risk too much “influencing” at this point since I haven’t read much of either. No chance of subconscious story inserting there. But I also don’t really know the trends of the market, what’s been seen too many times and what I should spin to make it original. When I say, ‘of course I think my work is original, I haven’t read anything like it,’ well duh. I haven’t because I don’t even need to broach the toes to count the novels I have.
So, when I read the young adult top 25 list of overused cliches, I was pretty much free and clear until I got to number two: best friends with red hair. Figures, right? I can’t do one of the lesser used cliches, I need to go for the big guns right off the bat. Of course it was purely coincidental but I certainly did a *headdesk* when I saw that. Although I think I might have violated number twenty-three: a token black friend amongst a group of white friends, usually female. While my South Fair guy is, well, a guy, I never thought of him as the “token” black guy, especially with other cultures already made known in the story. The thing is, with how malleable my story is already (the red-head has already been shunted into secondary character land pre-post), I wouldn’t be surprised if it morphed again (and again, and again . . .).
Of course, it can’t be said that any of those listed elements are particularly bad and will render your story automatically rejected, they’re just predominant and should you use one of those elements, make sure to put a nice little topsy turvey spin on it to make it stand out from the crowd. Considering Kristin’s post is relatively recent (not backlogged for two years like the rest I’ve been referencing), I want to say it’s still relevant to today’s market and it’s just something to be aware of.
It’s like with vampires; it’s not that no one wants to see any more blood-suckers in novels, it’s just that the character’s been rubbed raw from redundant overuse and it’s going to take a mighty spark of originality to get any interest in it.
The bottom line is to write whatever it is you want to write. Writing for the market is always a bad thing, especially with how quickly it can change. But being aware of the pitfalls and pot holes on the path to landing an agent (or publisher) are always good things to know.
Hey, I haven’t been around since Wednesday! I’ve broken my blogging juju! Really, for once I actually had some semblance of a personal life at the end of the week. Always a good thing since I sacrifice most of it to write. Granted that won’t happen again in bulk for another two weeks when I go to Monster Mania and then not again until I go on vacation in October. A heavy load for me but not really for anyone else. Eh, what are you going to do? And just to warn you, this week might be a little light since I’m covering for underwriting again. That usually results in a pretty heavy workload and me working over time so I’ll see how that goes. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
As you can guess, I’ve moved on to another agent blog (actually I’ve finished reading all of this one and am now on to another one) by Kristin Nelson and this time she talked about originality in writing. Even though the post is old, I want to say it’s still relevant to her slush pile today. In this post she talked about how writers think that character development is the original aspect to their writing while adhering to the base cliches of storytelling, like a quest in fantasy. Needless to say, I’d like to think everyone knows that character development is not, in any way, the original selling point of anyone’s story. It’s a mandatory aspect of writing that everyone needs to adhere to. Really, I’m not sure how character development can be original. Unless they develop into a bug, but that’s already been done.
The originality lies in the story itself but, and I certainly agree with her, there aren’t any new stories under the sun. Really, there aren’t. There are tropes, basic plot elements and cliches but even breaking down the most original story will result in a pretty basic plot that can be found in other, more “cliche,” works. So how can it ever be original?
It’s all in the storytelling. Since it’s impossible to create a truly original story (right down to its bones), a writer needs to take what they know and put a spin on it that few or no people have done already. A boy on a quest is boring, especially if that boy is a farm boy who doesn’t know that he’s the only person that can save the world. You know, dead horse and all. So what can be done to make it a little more morning fresh? How about reversing the quest? An heir to a kingdom who thinks he’s the only person to save it finds out someone got it wrong in the memo. His quest, told from his POV, is to find the person (lets be gender neutral here) who can save the kingdom and thus his backside.
Well, I’ve finally finished Miss Snark’s archives and I’m now making my way through Kristin Nelson’s (although this one’s going to be a bit harder since her blog is still active, working against the tide sort of thing). So I’m making my way through and I came across this older post that basically stomps on the use of portals in YA. I saw this same thing on Rachel Vater’s blog as well–portals = bane. This got me a little worried because I think I might have a portal in a work I’m outlining but I don’t know! Just what, exactly, is a portal?
Ok, lets insert the brain cells back into my head here. I know what a portal is. Takes a person from one world to the next but I’m talking about more specifically. Is it some weird vortex that an MC mistakenly walks into and zap! new world? Does it move? Is it constant? Are incantations involved? Is a doorway without any weird, funky bright lights or traveling through the Circuits of Time involved constitute a portal? Help me!
Here’s my sitch (OMG, like Buffy (the movie, not the TV show)!)–I got my MC, 14-ish year old boy, modern as can be, and his 16/17-ish year old sister, also modern (might be weird if one was historical). They live up in the mountains in California similar to the Santa Cruz mountains, not necessarily so out in the middle of nowhere that they’re inbreeding but far enough out for peace and quiet. Enter earthquake. Surprise, surprise. Did I mention boy plays in the woods a lot? Nothing funny before the earthquake. Some weird noises after the fact.
Turns out the weird noises are coming from a tree, nice large sequoia. Said tree hides an entrance to another world that exists parallel to the modern one. Humans, completely unaware. Members of said fantasy world, fully aware of that door (and others) and have taken the care to maintain their sealed status in order to prevent a bleed from one into the other. Apparently there are some nasty little sprites that would wreck some havoc if they found the breach. Ha! You only thought those were mosquitoes! So if you can tear the bark away enough, you can go into what looks like a dark tree trunk (remember, sequoia, these things are huge) but you come out on another side that isn’t 6 feet from where you were previously standing. The fantasy people are freaking out because the door’s been broken and nasties are seeping out into the standard world and slashing tires and all that fun stuff.
Is this a portal? Deep down I know the answer but humor me here. Am I working with a portal and is it redeemable? I like my sub-world sequoia slide. Help!
The wealth of information the Snarkives has. This article discusses cliches not in terms of genre but just everyday usage. While this piece is focusing on overused cliche terms in print media, I think it’s entirely relevant when it comes to writing.
Usually when people think of cliches and fiction they think of “farm boy turns kingdom savior” or “portal to a new world” or “boy on a quest to find X” or whatever else you can think of. It’s what springs to mind first. But I think there are far more detrimental cliches that are used in writing that, if morphed into something more original, might possibly make the genre cliches appear less cliche. They can be sneaky like that.
I’m talking about just your average, every day sayings. “She rolled her eyes” is a statement that appears probably in every book at least once. I’d hazard a guess, though, that it’s in there multiple times. It’s almost a safety net. You know how the character is feeling even if you’re not in their head when you see a statement like that. Unfortunately it can become a little redundant and picture quite psychotic if that’s all anyone’s doing.
Another saying that makes me want to rip my hair out is “he turned on his heels.” OMFG STOP! Try turning on your heels! Go head. Try it! Most of the time I see this the character doing the heel turning is spinning away in some kind of defiance or anger. Go try and turn on your heels PLURAL, NOT the balls of your feet (which would make a load more sense) and maintain a defiant, angered poise while you’re at it. Doesn’t quite work when you try it, does it? I picture the number of times Snape turned on his heels and I giggle every time because 1) spinning on both heels to face the opposite direction would land you directly on your face and 2) spinning on only one makes you look a bit like a ballerina. Imagine if it were a woman in stilettos! Yikes! Hope she has insurance!
It seems that fantasy, and all other genres, really, are plagued with clichés and when people see them, they make crosses from their pointer fingers and call upon a priest to perform a ritualistic exorcism. The thing is, though, no matter how much those people bitch and moan about the existence of a cliché in a fantasy or a horror novel, they’re still reading them. Yeah, they like the writing but “another farm boy turns out to be king and saves the kingdom?”
God forbid, right? Well, what makes something cliché? It’s the appearance of a theme or multiple themes throughout many stories within a genre. Horror has their mass murderers escaped from a mental hospital. Fantasy has their benevolent king usurped by an evil overlord and the fate of the kingdom lies in the hands of one person. Well, are those necessarily bad? I don’t think so. I don’t mind reading about crazy people escaped from Bellevue or quest stories, so long as I don’t feel like I’m reading the same story by seemingly different authors.
