Fic Talk > General Discussion
Fanfic cliches
MellzBellz:
I'm SOOO guilty of the flashback thing with UMS, but my big dilemma with UMS is that it orginated from an old unfinished story of mine ad I wanted to rewrite it without having to rewrite the whole entire story and never get into the present time. So my solution was to flashback to certain events and try to parralell them to the present day plot. I always italicize flashbacks though. Yea... I don't need to be told lol
Hmm... Some other cliches... I agee w/ Jullily about the best friends plot especially when the best friends seem to think its perfectly acceptable to sleep in the same bed together regularly and be scantily clad. To me its like okay... What best friend does that like EVERY night? Almost everthing is a cliche though seriously... Kidnapping stories, Nick getting cancer, Nick cheating on his g/f and the other woman getting pregnant... For a while there I was REALLY getting sick of stories where the main character was either in an abusive relationship or a rape victim. Also cutting is beginning to become a cliche. I feel like a lot of stories just ramdomly have their characters be "cutters" just cuz it seems more angsty.
mare:
I haven't seen cutting stories in awhile but I do rememebr those were really big at one point as was the Nick has a eating disorder stories! There used to be a ton of those.
I use flashbacks a lot, in fact i'm guilty of almost all of these cliches lol (minus the best friends thing) I think anyone who has written more than ten stories eventually finds themselves in the position where they are rewriting scenerios. It's hard to keep them original and creative but I think all good writers manage to do a fine job with it.
RokofAges75:
LMFAO at Julilly and Mare - cracking me up!!
I get really tired of the rape/abuse victims. I've never really liked that storyline, for the most part. And yeah, the best friends sleeping together all the time (but not actually *sleeping together* - until they finally do LOL) is weird. Can be cute in the right situation, but not when it's all the time, cause like you said, who does that??
As for flashbacks, I hate when they're labeled as flashbacks, like Mare said, as if the readers are too stupid to figure it out LOL. I use italics when I do flashbacks. I don't think I use them too much, but sometimes there is just no less cheesy way to tell part of a back story, and also, with BMS, since it's a sequel, I like to put in short flashbacks of parts from Broken when I refer to them cause I'm afraid no one will remember what I'm talking about otherwise LOL. It helps me keep my story straight too LOL.
julilly:
Even writing something like ...
3 years earlier.
... is better than actually writing flashbacks. Novels and screenplays flash back to specific times by letting the reading/viewer know exactly when they're going to, for plot purposes, but they don't have some guy in the background or a big note at the top of the page screaming: ***FLASHBACK***
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: mare on June 23, 2007, 09:47:56 PM ---I haven't seen cutting stories in awhile but I do rememebr those were really big at one point as was the Nick has a eating disorder stories! There used to be a ton of those.
I use flashbacks a lot, in fact i'm guilty of almost all of these cliches lol (minus the best friends thing) I think anyone who has written more than ten stories eventually finds themselves in the position where they are rewriting scenerios. It's hard to keep them original and creative but I think all good writers manage to do a fine job with it.
--- End quote ---
Oh yeah, the eating disorder stories used to be big too!! That's one I don't think I've seen in awhile.
And yeah, I have used most of these cliches too. Even the ones I say I don't like LOL. I've done the best friends, the childhood best friends (slight difference there), the abused chick, the bus crash, the car crash, the plane crash, the cancer story, the kidnapping story, the stalker story, the Brian heart problems story (there's one no one has mentioned yet - though that one is not so popular anymore either), the love child after a one night stand, the drug abuse fic, the long lost fictional sibling (sort of - in reverse), the stranded on a deserted island fic (almost), the vampire fic, the ghost fic, the angel fic, the suicide attempt fic, the transplant fic, the sick child fic, the star-crossed lovers fic, the NSync-are-the-bad-guys fic, the girl group fic...
I am a walking cliche. :D
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