Cliché Stories (Got the idea from the other post)

[AlexM]

Well hey there guys I was just curious about what you see as a cliché story? Is there a certain storyline which has been overused and that you just can't read books that run a long that line anymore? Are there any books which are just jam packed with lines or characters that are cliché?

Cheers,

Alex

[Ghost of Harrenhal]

A world in which the humans, elves, dwarves and possibly halflings or gnomes make up one faction and the other faction is something like orcs, trolls, vampires and lizardmen.

The two factions will constantly be fighting each other and the evil side will always outnumber the cornered goodies who will all be brave, selfless souls in shining gold armour that, despite all their bravery, go down with a single tap on the side of the helmet.

Hundreds of the thousands will die on both sides throughout the course of the story but it will all be for nothing because all the Hero had to do was realize he had some divine power that he inherited in the form of a ring or necklace or gemstone. Once he has it fully under control, which has to happen after his first mentor dies, he will then go on his final quest to destroy the evil wizard, king, undead lord, etc.

In the end the evil hordes that outnumbered the goodies will be disbanded or will have died in the blast that killed their king and the goodies will ALL be together in just one place to praise the Hero. The Hero also may or may not have some romance at the end.

Of course, no story will follow these exact rules because that would be just stupid. But if a story has a lot in common with them then it is generally a cliché in my eyes. The details are things like the Hero learning how to master his power in a dramatically reduced amount of time. Also the presence of a King or Queen for the forces of good but no clear order of government for the rest of the country. There is the King, the army, the hero, and the peasants. Stuff like this ruins stories for me.

[The Curious Orange]

Young farm boy discovers his father's sword and embarks on a mighty quest under the tutilage of a kindly old mentor. He meets various loyal side-kicks and has various exciting adventures before breaking into the Dark lord's fortress, killing the Dark Lord, rescues the beautiful princess, falls in love with her and becomes king.

There's an enormous amount of fun to be had with this.

[Aes]

Most importantly, the hero has to start out as a complete nobody and is always a young male in his teens or just entering adulthood. A peasant, a slave, or an orphan are all ideal choices, with a strong lean towards his assumed parents not being his actual parents. His real parents need to come from some noble and powerful bloodline in which he is the last of: Royalty, dragons, legendary hero, powerful wizard, and such are all great starting points. Don't forget to include a prophecy or destiny where the hero is the only person capable of stopping [generic dark lord]. At first, our hero needs to deny/refuse to accept this, but when his mentor (see 2 posts above) dies, everything changes, he mans up, and despite not having any real combat experience, is untouchable by the bad guys.

Another thing to consider is fantasy races. Be sure all the "good" races are mostly attractive, hard working, kind, peaceful, and loyal. At least one needs to be on the brink of extinction for some reason. Now the "evil" races are all ugly and disfigured somehow, only obey those stronger than they, live only to do battle, blah blah blah. Despite their apparent lack of any functional society, they are always plentiful and very well organized.

It's funny how much of what we're all listing off can be found in Lord of the Rings.

[jenna]

Originally Posted by The Curious Orange

Young farm boy discovers his father's sword and embarks on a mighty quest under the tutilage of a kindly old mentor. He meets various loyal side-kicks and has various exciting adventures before breaking into the Dark lord's fortress, killing the Dark Lord, rescues the beautiful princess, falls in love with her and becomes king.

There's an enormous amount of fun to be had with this.

*coughgoodkindcough*

[Lioness]

It'd be interesting to read a story that was the complete opposite of a cliched story. I.E the hero of high birth, ugly, old, etc. All of the 'good' races ugly and malformed, all the 'bad' races extremely beautiful and seductive...

[Tobytwo]

If we're talking about fantasy, I agree with the above. Particularly tired are stories where the hero appears to be a nobody but is actually some sort of genetic inheritor to success.

Also tiresome are stories in which the hero is some sort of custom-built uber-soldier, or where evil women are all good looking but have questionable sexual interests. There are also some story concepts so cliched that it would take a genius to write them as anything other than comedy or utter pulp: sexy vampires, dragonriding, techno-undead Nazis, joining teh uber space commandos and learning D&D-style magic whilst wearing an oversize robe fall into this category. Not that they'd be automatically rubbish, but that you'd have to be very clever to make them anything more than ok.

[Mammon]

So with fantasy it is mostly: if you have read one of them, you have read them all?:P
How about Harry Potter? Can that be categorized as fantasy? It is about a poor boy who is raised by people not his parents. Discovers unigue powers and there is a prophecy about him destroying the evil lord. Also very cliche then:P Maybe we should make a list with all the cliche thingies. Would be an easy look-up when your writing a story to see if it is not too cliche.

[Precise Calibre]

I'm a little confused by what exactly the term "D&D Style Magic" means. I personally have "magic" in a decent amount in my current works - though the world does revolve around how tenuous the walls between dimensions are, I don't make overt magic use the main theme in any but the first narrative I have planned - but I'm not sure if it's what one would describe as cliché.

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The main problem you see today is the fact that many many things are cliché. Most aren't the grand folly you could run into with some of the ideas that have been written above already, but it's rather hard to come up with a good NEW idea without completely losing a reader anymore. What truly matters is how well you present the story, whatever it is.

You might find this list humorous, if only partially relevent to the topic.
The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches

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Clichés:

The villain is the ultimate incarnation of generic evil. Always wears some sort of big and impressive baroque armor. Talks like he's your stereotypical Satan type.

The villain has control over untold numbers of minions, all of whom are willing to sacrifice themselves for him.

There is a large-scale conflict to decide the fate of the world.

The hero has to collect some sort of artifacts in order to decide the fate of the world.

The protagonist has no problem with his lot in the story and will gladly go sacrifice himself for some greater good.

Avoiding clichés by attempting to do just the opposite.

If there is a male/female hero pairing at some point in the story, they wind up being romantically involved at the end. (I actually like seeing this, but it is used a lot).

Cannon fodder characters, introduced merely to be killed in some impressive way a short time later.

Armor or Weapons which, aside from great historical or familial value, are quite magical and very powerful.

People being saved by something they have no control over/coincidences, something similar to that magical amulet they forget they have in their pocket but it protected them from that arcane bolt that would have certainly killed them otherwise.

[chrispenycate]

Has a quiet grumble about nomenclature.
You can't have walls between dimension; a dimension is a direction. As in the four dimensions of a box might be length, height width and duration. The important thing is that they are independent; the modification of one does not oblige any change in any of the others.
Who ever heard of a wall between "up" and "north"?
You can introduce other independent characteristics (such as "pinkness" or "value") and treat them mathematically as dimensions, but generally we work on spaciotemporal coordinates. Adding an extra one of these doesn't give you an extra space, id gives you an infinity of extra spaces displaced along your new axis or, assuming interval is quantum, an inconceivably large number. Since our sensory apparatus is all in the three spacial dimensions we can detect, there is no way of telling how much energy might be required to displace something in this additional direction (or be generated by something being displaced)nor what form (since presently recognised energy is all contained in three dimensions) it might take. But you certainly don't need more than one or two extra dimensions to spice physics up.

Grumbles away, realising that some may take his comments as off topic.

[Malloriel]

I agree with Calibre. A lot of what's considered cliché is only that because of how often it's done, some of which is even considered standard fare. Now, it's not to say you should avoid use of ALL of these, but certainly steer clear of certain combinations of clichés and just remember to tell YOUR story, regardless of the market or wide opinion. Worry about that after you've written, and to some extent in the editing phases, in my opinion. Worrying too much about what others are going to think or say (especially when you provide a small snippet to be critiqued and you address points they bring up, just later in the story) can really confuse the creative process, because then it can be like "am I writing my story, or allowing others to write it for me?"

Just my two cents.

[Precise Calibre]

Forgive the misnomer, if indeed it was one. Even though it is used as a "slang", dimension can also mean a plane of existance containing space, matter, and energy which is separated other universes by some physical difference in the space, matter, and energy itself. If you prefer, I can simply call it a plane, realm, world or any other appropriate term.

[Tobytwo]

Apologies to D&D players, against whom I bear no grudge! By D&D-style magic I meant magic of the more standard sort - fireballs, lightning etc. I think you have to be careful writing about this "up close" without the reader saying "seen it all before". Ultimately this requires either an original take on magic itself or good writing. I certainly wouldn't say that magic in general or principle is a cliche, any more than putting cars in a story is a cliche.

On the Harry Potter point, this is going to raise some hackles, but I think there is a fair amount of cliche in Harry Potter in the sense that a lot of the basic concepts are familiar to readers. However, Rowling's skill is in what she does with them and how they are developed. One of the things that marks a book out as good, I think, is how it deals with its ideas, not just what those ideas are. I remain convinced that if the writing is good enough, cliche can be overcome.

[Malloriel]

When you really think about it, it's perfectly okay to be using these elements in you fantasy story, cliché or not. I mean, if you're going to write a modern story with modern themes, you set it in, say, downtown L.A. right? How many stories have been set in downtown L.A.? How many have used the Hollywood angle, or names of certain streets, or makes of cars. There's a finite amount of information you're working with as a setting. It's then all about how you TELL the story within that setting, so use your orcs and your elves and your fireballs and whatever else have you within your setting and focus on the telling of the story. Anything can be pulled away from the throng if it's approached properly, in my opinion.

Fantasy lends itself well to really exploring the depths of creativity, I think, in that it allows you to pull from your own imagination ANYTHING you want and no one can tell you it can't work that way, because you're working of your own set of rules that readers have to accept as admission into your tale(s). It means that you can use anything in any way you see fit, as long as you explain in some way the ways that something like an orc, to take from the other thread, is different in your world from the ones that most people expect. You can set up new physics, new ways to make magic work, races and beings. Heck, make it sci-fi fantasy with mechanics and science in a fantasy world, why not?

There's standard fare because it works. It makes writing easier in one sense because you can know it as well as your own home town, so that it takes as much thought to build the setting as going "okay, which way is the supermarket? Oh right. Got it." So it's convenient to work within the fantasy rules that are considered clichéd and lets you really focus on the telling and the content a little more, is my feeling.

I do personally like taking the established stuff as a launching point and morphing it into completely different items, or looking at magic from a different angle (at least I think I am), etc etc. But that doesn't mean what's been established is in any way bad or should be shunned entirely.

[daisybee]

The thing about cliches is, well in a genre such as fantasy, the desire to avoid them, can undo a story entirely. Harry Potter is a total cliche-but with enough invention to misdirect from the obvious. Romantic fiction needs the elements that make it so-as does fantasy. Being too cautious or wary of using ideas that may seem tired, prevents the opportunity of refreshing them.

Not all fantasy needs a quest-but it has and does enable you to traipse your hero/anti-hero/princess disguised as a prince or whatever all over the world you spent lord knows how long building and agonising over.

War in fantasy is also another familiar tool used to show off the scenery you invented, and a handy way to introduce the people who live off there-without actually going. Plus it is usually the whole point of the plot-war. Hm. What is it good for? The scenic route for starters.

Cliches when relied upon make for bad books-but cliches however mocked, are what got most of us hooked in the first place, bizarrely; so don't sweat it!

So in answer-No-bad writing puts me off books, or unlikable characters. Not familiar themes, I find them comforting.

Oh-what Malloriel said too.