Trite and True

[AMoveableBeast]

When reading a category that makes frequent use of cliches, tropes, or established conventions--particularly the Sci-Fi, Erotic Horror, and Non-Human categories--do you tend to enjoy stories that are more original in terms of setting and scenario, or do you prefer ones that use elements common and accepted in those particular genres?

I sometimes have issues in those categories, all of which I am a fan of, when the stories cross over into something resembling fan-fiction, and I am far more impressed with fresh or unusual takes rather than reimaginings and retreads.

For instance, I love werewolves to an embarrassing degree, but I don't like many of the pieces involving them because they are so very similar, in plot, style, even vernacular and vocabulary.

Likewise, I'm an experienced RPG player but can't help but get burned out on works that borrow heavily from Dungeons and Dragons and other games.

My nerd well runs deep, but I can become frustrated when a writer insists on going back to it again and again. I am perhaps in the minority, however, as, in many cases, the more derivative stories score higher and draw a larger audience than more daring works that stray from the well-tread paths.

Is this due to comfort level? Are readers of these categories commonly scratching an itch, like a fetishist looking for a particular kink or phrasing? Am I wrong in this observation? Is it perhaps due to the fact that the writers of more trope heavy pieces are more well-studied in the genres and frequently more skilled?

And before it is stated, I am well aware that there's nothing new under the twin suns of Tattoine. I'm not looking for a reinvention of the wheel; I just don't want it to have "Firestone" written on the side.

What are your thoughts on this? Does someone feel the opposite way?

 

[HeyAll]

Cliches exist because people want the same things, generally speaking.

For the next Halloween story, there's going to be a couple of incest stories where family members accidentally have sex, and those stories are going to be really popular because that's what people love to read.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But personally, I always try to find different twists and set-ups to popular scenarios.

But overall, people do look for the same things. In incest, people want to read about that hesitancy or play on the taboo. In mature, they want to read about that age gap. In bdsm, they want to read about the loss of control.

If you go to a burger place, you expect certain things, but you also expect something makes makes it special to that place. It's all about finding the right balance.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Cliches exist because people want the same things, generally speaking.

For the next Halloween story, there's going to be a couple of incest stories where family members accidentally have sex, and those stories are going to be really popular because that's what people love to read.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But personally, I always try to find different twists and set-ups to popular scenarios.

But overall, people do look for the same things. In incest, people want to read about that hesitancy or play on the taboo. In mature, they want to read about that age gap. In bdsm, they want to read about the loss of control.

If you go to a burger place, you expect certain things, but you also expect something makes makes it special to that place. It's all about finding the right balance.

Great reply.

I don't think there is anything wrong with it either.

Rather, it almost seems like a short form of communication sometimes, a quicker, easier way of creating a preconceived weirdness instead of constructing an entirely origininal one. That's actually pretty useful, and allows one to get down to the heart of storytelling.

Still, it's that special element I am often looking for, something that makes a story--not unique, I'm not naive--possessed of a singular identity. Often times in the genres I listed, I feel like I could take multiple stories and swap out great swaths of writing and have no one be the wiser.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Whats more cliché than a hamburger or hotdog? McDonalds sells billions.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Whats more cliché than a hamburger or hotdog? McDonalds sells billions.

Your McDonald's sells hot dogs?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Your McDonald's sells hot dogs?

No, but Burger King does.

 

[NotWise]

Rather, it almost seems like a short form of communication sometimes, a quicker, easier way of creating a preconceived weirdness instead of constructing an entirely origininal one. That's actually pretty useful, and allows one to get down to the heart of storytelling.

You're describing literary jargon. Jargon is only useful for communicating among those anointed in it. If you want to reach a larger group then you need to avoid it.

I've always suspected that there are features considered desirable in Lit stories that won't fly elsewhere, and this may be an example. Redzinger posted a link to an article by an erotica published who said he rejects stories for using the same cliché’s and exhausted plot lines over and over again.

How many delivery boy stories do we need, anyway?

 

[Kethandra]

I think the trope-heavy authors tend to read within their own genre and their vocabulary and structures become more similar because they tend to feed their creativity, to some degree, at the same troughs.

I enjoyed those categories too, and especially enjoy the stories that turn the standards on their ears, when it it well done. Other stories seem to fail when they wander away from familiar ground but don't have a well-crafted or well-considered new path to follow.

Of course, genre writers use shorthand, based in their readers familiarity. If every a sci-fi story had to explain FTL travel in detail, or go into the mechanisms that led a particular species to evolve in such a way in such a planet, just to lay a plot down, they would get read less than they do now.

The transendant genre stories can nod to the loyal readers while still welcoming in the non-genre fan.

 

[rjordan]

Whats more cliché than a hamburger or hotdog? McDonalds sells billions.

Yes but they balance it with something that makes them special--particle board pork.

rj

 

[Hypoxia]

How to surpass cliches: Don't read the genre. Don't pick up the jargon. Don't be tainted by the genre's standards. Approach it from the outside, like any other storytelling riddle.

I write incest but I don't read LIT Incest tales. Mine are modeled more on 1950s pulp fiction, or road-trip accounts with family involved; I skip the Oh Daddy! and Seducing Mom tropes. I've not done vamp or were-critter or similar fantasy-inhuman stories yet but when I do it'll likely be nothing like the standard fare, whatever that is, because I don't read such on LIT.

The greatest praise I've received here is: my stories take the reader Somewhere Else. We don't get there by following formulae.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

The greatest praise I've received here is: my stories take the reader Somewhere Else. We don't get there by following formulae.

Yes, yes, but is that even really a destination where most readers want to go these days? Television shows go on for five too many seasons because it is easier and more comfortable to continue to cling to characters who have long since been wrung dry of any authentic storytelling, than it is to invest in new and different characters.

On Lit, the most popular and highest rated stories are generally those that stretch into later chapters where the story is often secondary to the nostalgia for itself.

Is originality in erotic genre fiction something that is even widely desired on this site? And is this site a microcosm for the state of genre fiction at large?

 

[sr71plt]

I don't think it's possible to write without including cliches, as you don't fully realize what is or isn't a cliche or that you picked one up in your own usage that you didn't realize was one. Readers, though, are comfortable with cliche handles up to the point of noticing they are being used a lot--and thus are distracting from the read. The flip side is that they quickly will get tired of reading something with no familiar handles. So, without putting a lot of thought into it when I write, I try to provide a mix of cliches and original (I think) images that keep the reader comfortable without taking them out of the story flow. In the review, I'll be aware of the phrasing and adjust it if I think the writing has become distracting in either direction.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

I don't think it's possible to write without including cliches, as you don't fully realize what is or isn't a cliche or that you picked one up in your own usage that you didn't realize was one. Readers, though, are comfortable with cliche handles up to the point of noticing they are being used a lot--and thus are distracting from the read. The flip side is that they quickly will get tired of reading something with no familiar handles. So, without putting a lot of thought into it when I write, I try to provide a mix of cliches and original (I think) images that keep the reader comfortable without taking them out of the story flow. In the review, I'll be aware of the phrasing and adjust it if I think the writing has become distracting in either direction.

That actually sounds like pretty solid logic: enough cliche to establish cardinal direction, and enough strangeness to allow the reader to get lost in the story. Hmmm.

 

[legerdemer]

I'll take advantage of clichés to make the following highly unoriginal point: sometimes trashy romance or tired sci fi goes down easy and smooth, and is just the ticket. But it doesn't satisfy for long - you have to keep popping it, but it all sounds the same and bleeds together, and is finally sickeningly sweet and boring. No joy. If I read them, it's when I'm tired, sometimes of myself. The most original and moving of stories transport me - sometimes to where they're going, other times somewhere entirely different. They make me think. And I'm sad when I come to the end of one because I know it will be a while before I find another good one.

The problem in both film and fiction is it's so much easier to turn out the third or fourth of fifth of something that's now entirely forgettable than trying for a new angle.

Who do you want your readers to be? How do you want to send them off? And, ultimately, what satisfies you when you write?

 

[legerdemer]

I don't think it's possible to write without including cliches, as you don't fully realize what is or isn't a cliche or that you picked one up in your own usage that you didn't realize was one. Readers, though, are comfortable with cliche handles up to the point of noticing they are being used a lot--and thus are distracting from the read. The flip side is that they quickly will get tired of reading something with no familiar handles. So, without putting a lot of thought into it when I write, I try to provide a mix of cliches and original (I think) images that keep the reader comfortable without taking them out of the story flow. In the review, I'll be aware of the phrasing and adjust it if I think the writing has become distracting in either direction.

Yes, this sounds right. Clichés can also be fun starting points for twists.

 

[Hypoxia]

Clichés can also be fun starting points for twists.

Better yet, outright parodies, like Randy Randy (The Pornomancer) where I threw together as many clichés as possible, inspired by reading a slew of stories by an author who laboriously overused a fixed set of clichés. Some of you may recognize him.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Cliches and tropes don't bother me at all by their existence. But they can be cheap or good.

Sue me, I like chocolate chip cookies. Ill bite into a few. If it tastes like cardboard or something synthetic, Ill move along.

But 1 in a 100 will have milled the grain and churned the butter themselves. Its still just a chocolate chip cookie, but a great one.

 

[PervOtaku]

There's nothing new under the sun.

Stuff feels fresh if you haven't encountered the genre before, even if the specific example you are reading or watching is terrifically derivative of earlier works.

Better yet, outright parodies

Yep, reveling in tropes is a good way to prevent them from killing the fun.

 

[Ewobbit]

I'm probably the wrong peanut in the gallery to be chipping my shells in since I do have a tendency to re-read favorites.

But, I think there is a difference between something meaningful being a cliché or trope and something that is pure audience enhancement.

In 1984, people flocked to see James Cameron's Terminator. And jumped and squealed and clutched their girlfriend's hands when the machine that would become the Governator just would... not... die!

Yet, in 1980, we met Jason ("Friday the 13th") who himself was an answer to Michael Myers ("Halloween", 1978). And, lest we forget, there was also "Alien" in 1979. (Granted, that last has a special place in my heart as I remember a friend telling us about it while we were getting changed in the locker room. I sneezed and he screeched like a little girl and jumped. And neither of us have yet lived it down.)

(Yes, I came unglued watching "Silver Bullet". But that was only because my dog came through the sliding screen door less than three feet from where I was lying in the living room floor at the exact moment the werewolf came through the wall on the screen.)

But, the seemingly unkillable antagonist is nothing especially new. Not even in 1895 when H.G. Wells penned "War of the Worlds". I misdoubt that even Golem is the original. However, it serves a plot point.

What doesn't is the busty co-ed running from the monster, which of course she didn't kill by simply smashing a vase over it's head, running right past the front door, and choosing instead to run up the fucking stairs. Primarily, I think, so the camera can record a little extra boob bounce.

Not that I am adverse to watching the interesting things going on under a woman's shirt when her body is in motion seeing as how I'm an irresolutely hetero male who still has a pulse. And not that I'm not very familiar from my checkered past just how many I.Q. points an otherwise reasonably bright person can drop in a hurry from shock and fear. But, come on! I can think of two thousand other things a big boobed blonde bimbette might have done other than run up the fucking stairs to hide under the bed! And I'm not all that bright. Surely it's time we've seen the last of that other than in parodies.

I guess what I'm saying is that it seems to me there are two distinct directions for cliché and trope to go. One is a salient plot point that has found it's way into modern literature classes as a subset of conflict. The other is... well... mind candy. I think the former is almost something of a requisite unless it doesn't need to be defended why it wasn't included while the latter fits the definition of overused.

Having said that... I think for many the only reason they really enjoy the horror films is because there is inevitably going to be a busty bimbette who will show her boobs before "getting et". Or at least some décolletage.

But, I think scifi pretty much has to include space travel and lasers to be recognized as sci-fi. Even if it does also include horses and gunpowder as "Firefly".

Fantasy pretty much has to include swords and sorcery (although I'm having to rethink the absolute necessity of dragons after Bujold's "Curse of Chalion").

Horror, I think, can be the most open ended as far as scene setting and scenario. But, typically the lizard hind brain of the human animal is more often uncomfortable when it can't SEE what is coming. So, dark and occluded is almost automatically more visceral than sun and sand (The Mummy notwithstanding). Not that it can't be done.

Anyway, we are getting a gang together over at Otik's bar and grill later, Beast. There's an opening for a mighty thewed barbarian if you are interested. Oh, and we need another female elf willing to wear a chainmail bikini if you know any, Our last forgot to roll her D20 distraction against the skeletons in the Cathedral graveyard and got boned.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

The mindless repetition of a cliché without truly understanding it is annoying. No one likes it.

One response is to avoid it like the plague and strive for utter originality. I get that.

Another response is to dig into the (cliché) that clichés are clichés for a reason. I think that's true. There is a reason, but most don't bother to ask why, they just repeat.

For example, the trope in Incest of suddenly happening upon the mom/dad/sibling masturbating. Whoops! You see it a million times, but . . . why? Why is it so common and apparently, so appealing? Im just as interested in someone who can unearth the formation of a cliché in the first place as someone who invents something entirely new. Quite often, making the "why" a starting point can lead to exciting things.

 

[legerdemer]

?....

Another response is to dig into the (cliché) that clichés are clichés for a reason. I think that's true. There is a reason, but most don't bother to ask why, they just repeat.

For example, the trope in Incest of suddenly happening upon the mom/dad/sibling masturbating. Whoops! You see it a million times, but . . . why? Why is it so common and apparently, so appealing? Im just as interested in someone who can unearth the formation of a cliché in the first place as someone who invents something entirely new. Quite often, making the "why" a starting point can lead to exciting things.

Maybe. Or maybe the cliché is only a lazy shortcut to getting to the action.

If you write a piece exploring the why of such a cliché, I'd be interested in reading it.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Maybe. Or maybe the cliché is only a lazy shortcut to getting to the action.

If you write a piece exploring the why of such a cliché, I'd be interested in reading it.

I sometimes think of this as "He-Man writing" in honor of the infamous 80's cartoon that began with the lines,

"I am Adam. Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Greyskull. This is Cringer... my fearless friend. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said... By the power of Greyskull! I have the Power! Cringer became the Mighty Battle Cat, and I became He-Man the most powerful man in the universe. Only a few others share this secret... Our friends: The Sorceress, Man-At-Arms and Orko. Together we defend Castle Greyskull from the evil forces of Skeletor."

Which begs the question, of course, where did he get this magic sword, how long did he have it, why did he suddenly hold it up and say the magic words, and where did he learn them? You could ride a battle cat through those plot holes.

Truth is, it's not that kind of story. It's about a muscular guy who swings a magic sword and fights a skeleton dude. That's the selling point. It isn't trying to be Brideshead Revisited. People who tune-in aren't worried about things as uninteresting as plot and reason. They want sword and sorcery in the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket, damn it!

And that's fine. I used to love Godzilla movies as a kid (if I'm being honest, I still do), but I would get so bored of all the story--you know, the part where the awful, second-rate actors melodrama their way through some ludicrous piece of shit side business that explains why these giant monsters are throwing down. Because...reasons. Oh shit, here comes Mothra! Deus Ex Moth, baby!

I was in it for the monster beatdowns and atomic breath blasts. Similarly, there are people who are cruising incest for the "Oh, daddy's!' and the "I'm cumming in the hole I came out of, mom! Full-circle orgasm high-five!"

That's not to say that is all the category offers. There are a fair amount of well-told, beautiful, emotional, mostly rational tales that use the taboo like flour, thickening the plot and adding texture to the story.

But ain't nobody got time for that all the time! Sometimes you want two sisters showering together, and the shortest distance between two places is having one mistakenly walk in on the other, feel momentarily embarrassed, and then notice, much to her surprise, that the other girl has a pussy, just like she does, and a few seconds later the two are smelling on each other like a bar of motherfucking Irish Spring and moaning like an Herbal Essence commercial.

It's bad writing, from an academic standpoint, but that seems to be the thing a lot of people don't understand: there are people who love bad writing; they prefer it, treasure it, and will accept no substitute. Let them have their fun.

Sincerely,
Man-E-Faces

 

[SlightlyGone]

"I am Adam. Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Greyskull. This is Cringer... my fearless friend. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said... By the power of Greyskull! I have the Power! Cringer became the Mighty Battle Cat, and I became He-Man the most powerful man in the universe. Only a few others share this secret... Our friends: The Sorceress, Man-At-Arms and Orko. Together we defend Castle Greyskull from the evil forces of Skeletor."

Which begs the question, of course, where did he get this magic sword, how long did he have it, why did he suddenly hold it up and say the magic words, and where did he learn them? You could ride a battle cat through those plot holes.

Those aren't plot holes, those are events that were never explored, nor need to be for the entertainment of the cartoon.

Everything I read reminds me of something else ... everything has been done over and over again. If a writer can tell a story, I'm in. If they can't, I'm out. Give me characters I like or even dislike, words that flow and a plot I can make sense of, but don't give me a jumbled mess of shit.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

Those aren't plot holes, those are events that were never explored, nor need to be for the entertainment of the cartoon.

Everything I read reminds me of something else ... everything has been done over and over again. If a writer can tell a story, I'm in. If they can't, I'm out. Give me characters I like or even dislike, words that flow and a plot I can make sense of, but don't give me a jumbled mess of shit.

I watched a terrible movie once (okay, more than once) called The Crippled Masters. It was a bad kung-fu movie that starred actual people with disabilities (one had legs but no arms, the other arms but no legs) who would climb on top of each other to fight. It was actually kind of inspiring if not for its staggering terribleness as a film. They made a sequel.

The two gentlemen battle a warlord who blocks strikes with his back. Whenever he is attacked, he simply turns around and there is a sound effect like metal striking metal. It never explains this, never even mentions it directly.

It is assumed, then, that the man has a metal back, I suppose. Or perhaps a midget rides his back under his shirt holding a cake pan and deflecting incoming blows. If so, the midget was not listed in the cast. I looked.

Fact of the matter is, if something falls out of story logic--being defined as unusual in the context of a story--it must be explained , or at least referenced, or be considered nonsensical.

This varies from story to story, of course. In a novel in which animals can talk, having a goose sing need not be explained. Animals can talk in this world. Cool. Now, having said goose shoot laser beams out of his eyes bears the necessity for explanation, or at the least an odd reaction from the other animals. The other animals can't shoot laser beams. Why can the goose?

Mr. Beaver was sad. The lumber mill had closed and the bills were piling up. He chewed his fingernails nervously. Miss Moose was also sad. She worried that her body type would never reflect the current standard of beauty that was proposed in fashion magazines. She pulled her horns this way and that, contemplating a sex change. Dr. Goose was pissed. What was all this sadness shit. He was ready to fuck some shit the fuck up. He unleashed a blast from his lazer-fucking-beam-eyes and disintegrated a nearby tree. All the animals agreed that they would have a tea party to cheer themselves up.

No story can feature a laser beam shooting goose without featuring an explanation or a reaction unless it is populated by similarly endowed geese. We'll call this the "Rodolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Principle."

In other news, look for my next story, Dr. Goose or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Beam".

 

[SlightlyGone]

In other news, look for my next story, Dr. Goose or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Beam".

Apparently, my adblocker stopped working.