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[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]

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.

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.

[julilly]

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.

*blink* Wow.

That just proves my earlier statement that it is virtually impossible to not use cliches, but they only become cliched when you use them improperly and don't give it your own flare.

[julilly]

LMFAO at Julilly and Mare - cracking me up!!

Didn't you know? We are the in house entertainment!

We're here all week! Try the veal, tip your waitress! 

[mare]

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.

'

lmao whoa! And how can I forget the Brian heart problems story? I did the long lost sibling fic as well. I mean it was an AU, but still.

I have never written about an evil twin though!

[julilly]

Just because I really want a 200th post before bedtime:

I'm now desperate to find good cliches in my fics (excluding shorts), so here goes lol I have the Brian a tough police detective, Nick as a sex trade worker, tailor, WWII vet, deranged juvenile detention centre prisoner, kidnapper with a kind heart, robot out to save the world from tyrrany, 19th century scholar, MS sufferer, and ghost solving his own mob murder...

So I have the sick angle, and the supernatural ghost angle covered, but it seems that all of my cliches lie in my short stories! I have lots of cliches in there! Depression, statuatory rape leading to illegitimate children -- the lot.

I gotta keep myself away from cliches, lol good thing my next fic is about bank robbers...I mean, I didn't tell you about that... *runs away*

[mare]

LMAO now I want to do that too!

[RokofAges75]

'

lmao whoa! And how can I forget the Brian heart problems story? I did the long lost sibling fic as well. I mean it was an AU, but still.

I have never written about an evil twin though!

LOL, that's right, I have TWO long lost sibling fics!  One was an AU, and one is the evil twin fic.

[nicksgal]

When I do flashbacks I just use the same thing I use for a scene changer: ~*~

It seems to do the trick... Though I don't know if they're really flashbacks, so much as memories....

And the best friends sleeping in the same bed together... No one does that! Every time I stayed at my best friend's dorm, I slept on the floor.

[honey]

omg this thread is killing me! You guys are friggin hilarious!!! You don't want me to list all the cliche's I'm guilty of. I might shut down the server-lol  Let's just say that my very first story that I wrote when I was like 14/15 has pretty much every cliche you guys have mentioned in it. Except it's not like "Five Backstreet Boys In Search Of A Plot"  Mine wasn't meant to be funny... oye. If I ever write another story like that, shoot me please!!!

[honey]

You know, I don't think I've ever done a flashback. A couple of dream sequences, but no flashbacks.   Weird.

[RokofAges75]

omg this thread is killing me! You guys are friggin hilarious!!! You don't want me to list all the cliche's I'm guilty of. I might shut down the server-lol  Let's just say that my very first story that I wrote when I was like 14/15 has pretty much every cliche you guys have mentioned in it. Except it's not like "Five Backstreet Boys In Search Of A Plot"  Mine wasn't meant to be funny... oye. If I ever write another story like that, shoot me please!!!

Most of the cliches I listed were from the stories I wrote the first year I started writing (I averaged at least one or two a month LOL), but not all of them.  I did have one I wrote that year (not my first story, but still when I was 15) that was soooooo teenybopperish .  It had the girl band, a love triangle, at least one car crash, cancer, eating disorder (not a Bsb though), SIDS, quite a few deaths, and... maybe more but that's all I can think of right now.  In any case, it was like my parody story Not Another Teenybopper Fanfic, only for real.    It was fun to write though, cause it was like a soap opera LOL.