Lets take, for example, this story I'm writing (called Sieflick, some may remember it from F&F) in which the main character becomes trapped in a virtual world video game. I do a ton to make the game interesting and to surround the whole plot with some attempts at 'twists' to make it interesting. However, the main reason i'm even bothering with it is because of the big twist: THe main character, who thinks he's human, is actually a computer program. Now, to me, I think that this is a great and interesting idea. However, is it cool enough to get me out of that cliche realm that we so despise?

I'm sure you all know of which I speak. In Sci-fi and fantasy so many people want to throw out the "Tolkein Worlds", the "Starwars" alien stories, and the "Vampire" horrors. So many times these things are turnoffs. I'm like...ok, ANOTHER weird alien story. Why do I care again? Or, ANOTHER adventure with elves, didn't I get tired of that with Dragonlance? Oh no, not another vampire. AHH.

But of course it extends even beyond these huge ones. You have your cliches character types, your cliche settings, your cliche plotllines. What do you guys think, is there a way we can write with these things and still survive? Can enough creative twists save these things?

You have caught on that you can get away with this by having a fresh twist. However, unless that fresh twist shows up (or is at least promised) early in the story, people may only see the cliche and never read far enough to get to the twist.

"Fred's taking Janet to the dance." (Rolled eyes or a wink.) "You know why he's taking her."

Stereotype: Janet's easy.

Good for minor characters; it doesn't tax the reader too much. For major characters, we'll need more. How about: he's taking her to the dance because he's gay and is trying to hide it from his mom. Still too cliche? He's taking her to the dance because he can't deal with not having the hottest babe on his arm on a weekend; but anything she says, he'll just say, uh-huh, and dismiss. It took his last girl six months to figure out that he just wanted someone to show off. ...

Or, in one of my stories, he'd be taking her to the dance because he's convinced that if she stays home that night, she'll be abducted by aliens. Hungry ones. But little does he know, they know where the dance is too . . .

For instance, if we take the "trapped in a virtual world" cliche, there are any number of ways that we can set up the "trap". In TRON, the character is physically taken into the computer (never mind the impossiblity) and can only get out when he gains access rights to the device that scanned him in (okay, that's not exactly how it worked out, but never mind--my own fault for bringing up TRON in the first place). In WarGames, the characters start playing a game, and the computer decides to play in the real world with real weapons. I suppose this could also be seen as the premise of...Westworld, was it? Then you have every StarTrek holodeck episode, where somehow or other the holodeck safety and exit protocals are disabled by some entity or other. Or The Matrix, where nearly all humans are born and die within a computer simulation, and almost none of them ever notice. Or you have...I can't remember the name Brainscan or something, but it was a virtual reality program that appeared to terminate yet didn't, so that the user was led to believe that the events in the game (a brutal first-person murder scenario) had happened in reality rather than a game.

Anyway, you can see that all of these are covered under "trapped in a virtual reality game" to some extent or other. I concentrated on fundamentally different ways of being trapped. You could also bring out the various different natures of the "virtual" realities in which the characters were trapped, but I think that's fundamentally less interesting. All the ST holodeck episodes rely on the different reasons there might be to trap the characters in the holodeck, but I think that got lame too. Like, the holodecks were never hardwired to keep the safety protocals from ever turning off, and they never created a reliable emergency exit for the system.

I think that the best way to breathe new life into this particular "cliche" would be to look realistically at the most likely way someone could get trapped in a VR simulation...have a game so addictively "fun" that users would do anything to stay inside it (and yes, this too has been done). I've played a few games almost that fun. But someone else might find some other method, nature, or reason for the character being trapped in a virtual reality to be more interesting.

To be concise (oops, too late), I think that one big twist that is vitally important to your story can succeed where no number of minor tweaks could. Every story that tries to do humans being kept penned in a virtual world as a power/food/processor/labor/whatever resource for somebody else will be derivative of The Matrix. But if they're there to access whether or not they can be allowed to live in a perfect society...that's rather different, isn't it? Or if they're allowed to leave whenever they want, that's quite different too. And how about this, it's humans who are keeping...say, wolves alive in this manner so that they don't have to kill real deer or whatever?

quote:

---

Weird things happen, but it turns out they're not real.
In the end, it turns out it was all a dream.
In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.
In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.
In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we've seen are part of the novel.

---

If you are going to use a cliche plot, be aware that you have one mark against you going into it when it comes time to have an editor review your manuscript. If you are incredibly clever maybe you can pull it off. But if your cleverness is only "ho-hum" you might want to rethink your premise.

Survivor hit it -- the twist has to be an integral part of the plot. Also, while putting two cliches together can actually create a new feel for both old themes, many of these have been tried before, too.

I wrote a story with VR a while back and I never sold it. I had a human forget she was in VR and think it was all real and her family had to coaz her out. In the end, I got the same answer from about ten markets: "We don't want another VR story." To be honest, I'm not even sure they read past the first paragraph when they figured out it was VR. That's what you're up against with this particular cliche. People won't even read to find out what the twist is.

Anyways, I set out to be a Sci-Fi writer and currently only have one SF idea and like 10 Fantasy ones. Rather funny.

You can still tell a story about VR, but right away you're signaling to the reader (or slushkiller) that you don't think VR is such a big deal. In other words, you effectively promise to dig a little deeper than the obvious cliches if you turn your story in that direction.

Then again, if a writer is working a cliche idea, if the writer comes up with a really dazzling and intelligent new take on the old idea, then it might be worth reading. It's really hard work to do---and since most of my ideas are old, I have to work hard to make them new in this way. (Of course I fail a lot at it.)