posted
Story opens. Woman running through a field at night holding a bundled up baby through a thunderstorm. Cliche? For some reason it feels like a very familiar opening to a movie.
And a more general question: What do you do if part of your story is dependant on a cliche piece like this? Do you just change enough of the details to give it a different feel? What if you like the symbolism, of say, the thunderstorm?
posted
Thanks for the link Jules. Tha'l come in handy when I can't think of anything to write for a creative writing assingment. <grin>
Theo- I think the main element that feels cliche is the running. Perhaps if you make her sneaking around, or walking carefully through the field, or hiding somewhere, it woudl seem less cliche. It would help if we had more info, I think.
[This message has been edited by Eric Sherman (edited June 05, 2004).]
posted
I wouldn't worry about the cliche. Most stories are cliche on a surface. It's the extra "something" that you add that makes it unique.
Example: Ender's Game. ***Spoiler alert*** (I assume you've all read it already). Bug-like aliens with hive-mentality a threat to Earth. Little kids getting trained as military strategists. It turns out the video game they were playing was actually real. Nothing new there, it's all pretty cliche. Somehow the book ended up being really, really unique and original, though. It's the extra touch that OSC gave the story.
The same can be true of your story. A woman running through a field with a baby at night: sure it's been done before, but that doesn't matter. Pretty much everything has.
Also, don't confuse cliche with human nature. Sure, if somebody is after the baby (I'm making up my own stuff here) the mother will act cliche and run in the night with the baby. Most mothers would. The fact that other mothers have done the same thing doesn't make it cliche. It's human nature, and that's why others have done it before.
posted
It may seem cliche because there used to be a type of novel (known as the "gothic") that almost always had in the cover illustration a woman running from a house that loomed in the background in which only one light shown--from an upper window.
Adding the baby at least takes you away from the "gothic" cliche somewhat.
posted
Yeah, by distracting us with the "woman spiriting baby away from danger" cliche.
Look, what happens is what happens. You can't make everything in your story totally original...it wouldn't make any sense. A sabertooth/wicked queen/Nazi comes in the tent/prison/sorting shed, you grab the baby and run. Maybe you don't get far, maybe the baby does.
The point is not that some elements of your story is similar to many other stories, but that some central element is new and unique to you.
quote: Also, don't confuse cliche with human nature. Sure, if somebody is after the baby (I'm making up my own stuff here) the mother will act cliche and run in the night with the baby. Most mothers would. The fact that other mothers have done the same thing doesn't make it cliche. It's human nature, and that's why others have done it before.
Sure! And a mother running away with her child to protect it is exactly the element that is going to draw readers in--precisely because they would hope to have the courage to do the same to save their own child. As OSC says, find some way to twist it, make sure you ask 1000 questions about it. The base element might be cliche but the rhyme and reason and result won't be. (Wow, alliteration!)
[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited June 06, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited June 06, 2004).]
quote:The point is not that some elements of your story is similar to many other stories, but that some central element is new and unique to you.
Several months ago, Survivor said something very similar, and I have to say that the more I think about it the more I believe this might be the best single piece of advice I've heard in a long, long time.
It's only when I started to write a lot of dark fantasy and horror did I realize the truth of Survivor's statement. There are only a handful of horror stories one can write, yet there are many, many good ghost stories and vampire stories and werewolf stories and the-thing-that-should-not-be stories. And what makes these stories good and different is because the writers used these archetypes as a way to tell the truth about the world as they see it. What makes a vampire (werewolf, ghost, monster) story good is not the thing, but everything else in the story.
The same is true for SF. How many SF military stories are there? How many Mars stories are there? How many comet-coming-to-earth stories are there? Hundreds. But what separates them is how these "archetypes" are used to tell us about ourselves.
The more I read speculative fiction, the more I begin to see that it is extremely artistic and metaphorical, and that what makes a really good speculative fiction story is not the technology or fantasy element, but how these things are use in a mirror-like fashion to show us something about ourselves.
It's you as an author--your understanding of existence and the human condition--not the "cliches" that separates your fiction from another's.
posted
Thanks for the thoughts. Jules, great link ("Several half-baked ideas can often be combined into one fully-cooked one." I like it. This sounds like a lot of the same stuff I keep telling myself, but still seem to second guess.
Posts: 292 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
A woman escaping with a baby, Now where have I heard that before? Twice at least in the bible. (Moses, and then Jesus.) That's probably why it's so used. From one of the oldest storys. What I mean is it worked well for them. Think of it more of a theme than a cliche. Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Actually, I would add a criterion for something being a cliche that we haven't actually mentioned yet.
To become a cliche, an idea must once have been original and novel, and since then hav become trite and repetitive through overuse. So the woman running away with the baby or the vampire story or the ghost story...all these ideas can't be cliches because they were never new ideas. Women have been spiriting their children away from danger since women, danger, and children were invented. People have been scared of ghosts and the vengeful or hungry undead just as long.
It is only an idea that once derived value and impact from being "new" and "fresh" that has the potential to become "old" and "stale". Even then, after some time being "old" and "stale" it hardens into one of our accepted archetypes (to borrow Balthasar's phrase). Just think, there must have been a point at which the bumbling wizard was a fresh new idea...then there was a time during which it was a cliche, now it is an accepted part of most fantasy work. The same is true for the vampire-with-a-conscience/soul/heart/whatever. Or the female action hero. Or...take your pick, there are a lot of things that have gone from being original to being cliche and have eventually become staples of their genres.
posted
So maybe we're doing literature a favor by using as many cliches as possible to hurry them on their way to archetypehood. Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
I came upon a couple of quotes yesterday, and immediately thought of this discussion.
Goethe said, "The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before."
C.S. Lewis said, "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
Pretty , I thought...
, ~L.L.
[This message has been edited by Lullaby Lady (edited June 08, 2004).]
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, I thought... 
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your killing him! 
