Cliches

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maestrowork

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There's a thread in SF/Fantasy about common SF/Fantasy cliches.

What about other genre/mainstream? What kind of cliches can you think of (they can be plot cliches or "phrases" like "she has raven hair.")
 

RGame

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My least favorite cliche: "...like a puppy peeing on a laptop."
 

Ivonia

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Well, this site is a list of role playing game cliches, but I thought it would be funny to post the link here anyway, just for laughs (these are much funnier if you've played RPG's on game systems).

http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

Here are some of the funnier ones (which could probably be put into stories too lol. My personal comments are in italics):

18. Crono's Complaint
The less the main character talks, the more words are put into his mouth, and therefore the more trouble he gets into through no fault of his own.

32. You Can't Kill Me, I Quit (Seifer Rule)
The good guys never seem to get the hang of actually arresting or killing the bad guys. Minor villains are always permitted to go free so they can rest up and menace you again later -- sometimes five minutes later. Knowing this rule, you can deduce that if you do manage to kill (or force the surrender of) a bad guy, you must be getting near the end of the game.

33. And Now You Die, Mr. Bond! (Beatrix Rule)
Fortunately for you, the previous rule also applies in reverse. Rather than kill you when they have you at their mercy, the villains will settle for merely blasting you down to 1 hit point and leaving you in a crumpled heap while they stroll off, laughing. (This is, of course, because they're already planning ahead how they'll manipulate you into doing their bidding later in the game -- see Way To Go, Serge.)

35. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Grahf Rule)
It doesn't matter that you won the fight with the boss monster; the evil task he was trying to carry out will still get accomplished somehow. Really, you might as well not have bothered.

41. George W. Bush Geography Simplification Initiative
Every country in the world will have exactly one town in it, except for the country you start out in, which will have three.

58. But They Don't Take American Express
Every merchant in the world -- even those living in far-off villages or hidden floating cities cut off from the outside world for centuries, even those who speak different languages or are of an entirely different species -- accepts the same currency.

62. Thousand Year Rule
The Ancient Evil returns to savage the land every thousand years on the dot, and the last time it showed up was just about 999.9875 years ago. Despite their best efforts, heroes of the past were never able to do more than seal the Evil away again for the future to deal with (which brings up the question of just how exactly does this "sealing away" work anyway, but never mind.) The good news is that this time, the Evil will get destroyed permanently. The bad news is that you're the one who's going to have to do it. (This is so true for some stories/movies too LOL!)

65. First Law of Travel
Anything can become a vehicle -- castles, cities, military academies, you name it -- so do not be alarmed when the stones of the ancient fortress you are visiting shake underfoot and the whole thing lifts off into the sky. As a corollary, anything is capable of flight if it would be cool, aeronautics or even basic physics be damned. (The Final Fantasy games violate this cliche' quite a lot, particularly in 8, when an entire university lifts off hehe).

86. Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss!
Defeating a dungeon's boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes. (A lot of movies and games use this cliche, I think I've seen a few books do something similiar too).

106. Law of Traps
No matter how obvious the trap, you can't complete the game unless you fall into it (someone should make a joke about this cliche more hehe).

121. Child Protection Act (Rydia Rule)
Children 12 and under are exempt from death. They will emerge alive from cataclysms that slaughter hundreds of sturdily-built adults, often with barely a scratch. Further protection is afforded if the catastrophe will orphan the child. (Rydia is a character in Final Fantasy 4, and she's orphaned after your character unwittingly brings a bomb which destroys her hometown).

I guess I'll let you guys read the rest if you're interested. Contrary to what you might think, many RPG's have pretty deep and compelling storylines, and you could learn a thing or two from them. I'm just presenting these here for laughs, but you never know what you might find there hehe.
 

Ali B

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Well, in romance novels there's:
His pulsating unit
Her heaving bussom
Eyes as blue as the sky

Gee...there's so many...
 

Mistook

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Unfortunately for me, I'm a cliche' machine.


"stuck out like a sore thumb"

"flew off the handle"

"blind as a bat"

"knew the place like the back of her hand"

"and it was sitting in my own back yard all along"

"right under her nose"

"serious as a heart attack"

"In one fell swoop"

"naked as a jaybird"

"hit him like a ton of bricks"

"in the palm of her hand"

"wrapped around his little finger"

"by the seat of his pants"

"come hell or high water"


That's all I have for now, but just let me sit down and work on my WIP for another night and I'm sure I'll have about 100 more for you in the morning. :)
 

NicoleJLeBoeuf

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Load-bearing bosses

Ivonia said:
86. Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss!
Defeating a dungeon's boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes. (A lot of movies and games use this cliche, I think I've seen a few books do something similiar too).
OMG! Metroid. I hated that. And the steps you had to jump on to get out of the self-destructing space fortress were, like, these tiny ice-floes.

Your post totally made my day, and nearly destroyed my keyboard.
 

Maryn

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Mystery Plot

I'm starting to throw paperbacks to the floor in disgust when I find this plot:

Damaged Cop has retired after a case he was in charge of went bad and someone innocent died, either a civilian or his partner, sometimes both.

Damaged Cop doesn't need to work for a living but lives simply, often in a scenic yet he-man environment such as a rural area, mountain or forest cabin, or beach house. His home is sturdy but needs much manual labor, so he spends his days fixing, and maybe fishing.

A Good Woman loves Damaged Cop, but he can't open up to her. She is beautiful, in a hard way, and their sex life is rich even if their emotional life isn't. Often there's a kid in tow, theirs or hers.

A heinous crime is committed in The City. The police recognize it as part of a series--an escalating series, with the time between events growing ever shorter.

The police in The City have exhausted their ability to solve the crime. Their staff includes no one whose skills rival the Damaged Cop's. An old friend, often Damaged Cop's former boss or partner, goes to him for help.

Damaged Cop refuses. He is rough in bed with his Good Woman, and very tender when he realizes he has scared her, but he still won't tell her what happened, only that they asked him to come back. He promises he won't.

Another heinous crime is committed--even more gruesome than the others. Damaged Cop returns...

It can be an excellent formula (Thomas Harris applies it well), but usually it's so obvious what's going to happen that you could discard the first half of the book without missing a thing.

Sheesh.

Maryn, having steamed herself up
 

katdad

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Damaged Cop Redux

Maryn said:
I'm starting to throw paperbacks to the floor in disgust when I find this plot:

Damaged Cop has retired after a case he was in charge of went bad and someone innocent died, either a civilian or his partner, sometimes both.

The Alex Delaware novels and the Robert Crais novels seem to fit this, especially the "wilderness house" bit.
 

katdad

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Movies?

Ivonia said:
Here are some of the funnier ones (which could probably be put into stories too lol. My personal comments are in italics):

These all seem to be movie cliches, not from novels. Unless you can name a novel I'm forgetting.

And I don't get the George Bush one.
 

Ivonia

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katdad said:
These all seem to be movie cliches, not from novels. Unless you can name a novel I'm forgetting.

And I don't get the George Bush one.

Actually, these are cliches from RPG's (role playing games like Final Fantasy), and yeah, I just posted them here for fun (and you never know, you may see a couple of these in novels too hehe). You can pick just about any RPG today, and they'll have many of these cliche's in them (although some do tell good stories too).

Regarding the George W. Bush one, I don't remember for sure, but early in his first term, didn't he say things about other countries in a way that basically made it so that the US was "us", and the rest of the world was "them"? I remember seeing a political cartoon about that, where it showed a "before" world, which had some countries labelled and U.S. (note the periods), then the next cartoon showed "George W. Bush's vision" of the world, and the U.S. turned to "US" and the rest of the world was one color and labelled "Them". Which is where I think this joke comes from. Sorry if I confused you more :p
 

WerenCole

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Ivonia, I think I saw that Us v. Them thing in the Onion, which you are probably familiar with being from Wisconsin. . .

It's funny, a lot of these cliches that are being brought up can be found in Lord of the Rings. . . the load bearing boss, the evil coming every thousand years or so. . . and so on. We should all aspire to write in such a way that in fifty years or so our originality will be cliches in video games and rpg's. . .

-W
 

Denis Castellan

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Their staff includes no one whose skills rival the Damaged Cop's. An old friend, often Damaged Cop's former boss or partner, goes to him for help.

Damaged Cop was working on this very case before he quit, and part of his "damage" is that he never resolved it.
 

Mistook

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Denis Castellan said:
Damaged Cop was working on this very case before he quit, and part of his "damage" is that he never resolved it.


But of course, when he finally does resolve it. He's even more damaged than before. Poor damaged cop - just like his house - ever sturdy, but ever in need of repairs.

:)
 

katdad

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Ivonia said:
Actually, these are cliches from RPG's (role playing games like Final Fantasy) etc Regarding the George W. Bush one, I remember seeing a political cartoon about that etc Sorry if I confused you more :p
Ah, RPGs. Sorry, I left my Spock ears and Hobbit feet back in my dorm room... Yeah, I guess if it was in a political cartoon, that was the prima facie proof. I was confused, as I don't have a degree from Yale or an MBA from Harvard. I understand those are available via coupons in comic books. Any dunce can get one.
 

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Damaged Cop

Denis Castellan said:
Damaged Cop was working on this very case before he quit, and part of his "damage" is that he never resolved it.
When I began to write my series of private detective novels, I assiduously avoided cliches. When you're writing in a solidly defined genre, especially something as specific as hardboiled PI, it can be a challenge, because you must stay within this genre and yet not become trapped by it.

An example. Someone meets my PI and is a bit surprised at him ---

=========

Decorating the back wall were three art prints, a Georgia O’Keeffe flanked by a Paul Klee and one subdued, murky print I couldn’t quite recognize. The Klee was his painting Unterwasser, a subsea panorama featuring a cheery and whimsical little orange fish that I’d always been
fond of.

(etc)
I pointed to the wall where the prints hung. "I know the Klee and O’Keeffe. But is that a Rothko?"

"Why, yes. Mark Rothko indeed."

"From his ‘very depressed’ phase, or from his ‘really terribly depressed’ phase?"

She laughed (etc) "Just the ‘very depressed’ phase, I’m afraid. The ‘really terribly depressed’ ones cost too much." Then she frowned at me. "Surprised you know about art." Meaning, how does a dumb private eye get beyond a Velvet Elvis.

=======

And later, at lunch ---

"You certainly don’t look like one of them."
"Like I don’t wear a Burberry trench coat and slouch Fedora, dangling cigarette, pint of rye in the back pocket, hot and cold running dames, blazing gat in each hand?"

She laughed and nodded. "Yeah. Exactly."

=========

My protagonist is highly educated, a cum laude history major with a minor in fine arts. He's handy with computers, embraces modern technology (instead of scribbling on the back of a sleazy tavern matchbook cover, he uses a Dell handheld). He reads thoroughly and enjoys classical music and opera. Yet he's capable of serious violence and is quirky, impulsive, and vindictive.

When writing within a genre-steeped tradition, it's a constant balancing act. You have to keep within those boundaries and still you must be unique. A challenge.
 
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