Actually I've never seen a story about this one that wasn't a joke. Did somebody in the 1920s or 1930s or 1940s actually get one published in the first issues of the SF magazines? And if so, why hasn't it been anthologized where we could all see it and laugh?
Here's a sampling;
The Jar of Tang
Squid on the Mantelpiece
You Can't Fire Me, I Quit
Dennis Hopper Syndrome
The Kitchen-Sink Story
Re-Inventing the Wheel
The Shaggy God Story
The Slipstream Story
The Steam Grommet Factory
The Whistling Dog
Abbess Phone Home
Kudzu Plot
"As You Know Bob"
Eyeball Kick
Ontological Riff
Funny-hat Characterization
Consensus Reality
Intellectual Sexiness
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited March 26, 2009).]
And their...
Horror stories whe see too often
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited March 26, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited March 26, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Denem (edited March 26, 2009).]
Strange Horizons' "Stories We've Seen Too Often" link;
http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited March 26, 2009).]
The white room is the blank page ahead of the writer just as the waking up is the writer waking up to his story.
This was used to great effect in the movie "Stranger than Fiction". The author in that story has had writer's block for 15 years--her apartment has white walls with nothing hanging on them, which makes perfect sense for her dilemma.
I've never heard that one before. I like it!
This is especially true of plots...most plots have been done repeatedly, and in almost every possible permutation with almost every possible slant.
So as far as worries about being "cliche" go, I say write whats in your head. It will be yours, not someone elses...maybe you will find some all new slant on something but even if you dont its your world, your characters, your magic or super science or whatever. Also remember...theres a reason why things become cliche: Because people LIKE them and because they resonate.
Once or twice I've gotten comments that a particular story element is cliched even though I've never read a story where that occurred before, which means it's probably not actually cliched. *shrug*
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited March 27, 2009).]
Good writing may overcome all, but when you are dealing with competition in the 1,000s for some attention,knowing what's overused and what's not may serve as a guide.
quote:
As writers seeking markets, cliches can become overused at certain times, such as YA supernatural novels seen to be flooding agents and editors everywhere as a result of H. Potter and Twilight.
Your certainly right, although I don't necessarily consider this the same thing as "cliche." What your talking about is massive oversaturation within a particular catagory or sub-genre. I think the same kind of thing happened and is probably still happening with high fantasy due to the LOTR and Narnia movies and the like. But that sort of thing tends to come and go more quickly, I think, than those things that the term "cliche" is generally used to describe.
quote:
Good writing may overcome all, but when you are dealing with competition in the 1,000s for some attention,knowing what's overused and what's not may serve as a guide.
True, but I dont think we should not write or not submit things just because they may be considered "cliche", for a wide range of reasons. What is or isn't "cliche" is subjective, things become cliche generally because they resonate with people, are true things or things people like...as far as plot, theres only really so many to use.
I mean while their might be a lot of alien invasion or damsel-rescue stories around, I'm willing to bet there are likewise editors with a soft spot for same.
I believe you can incorporate nearly any idea/milieu into a good story, and if you use characters in strong dramatic situation as the glue and focus for the story rather than an intellectual concept, you probably won't run into too much trouble with overdoneness. Caveats would include using characters that go beyond archetypes (or over-replication of widely known characters) and refraining using pedestrian tricks to produce surprise that aren't outgrowths of the dramatic setup.
In that sense there's tons of room for re-use of "old ideas", because I think a well conceived and developed character and her/his response to a dramatic series of events can be as unique as the writer in his/her personality.
I also agree that a lot of times trying not to be "cliche" can wind up creating a lot of problems of its own...as in what you said about gimmicks and overly clever tricks.