[quakerbuck]

So as I read through some threads in here I constantly see that people are bashing CP for being too cliched in his work.. Everyone knows that cliches aren't necessarilly bad in writing (they certainly can have a positive effect), but they can be very boring and uneventful if used too often. I was wondering if anyone has a list or something to that effect of all the cliches that CP uses (or you think he will end up using) throughout the series?

I ask this because like I said cliches are good, but too many of them is usually a bad thing. I'm writing a book series currently and I do not want to become overly cliched without realizing it, so I was looking for a list of the most common ones.

This may be an extremely stupid thing to ask for, but any information would be most helpful. Thanks to anyone who has some input.

This post has been edited by quakerbuck: 19 October 2009 - 08:15 PM

[Buddhist]

Warning: The following site is addicting and may waste many hours of your life.
http://tvtropes.org/

[Behave Yourself]

So as I read through some threads in here I constantly see that people are bashing CP for being too cliched in his work.. Everyone knows that cliches aren't necessarilly bad in writing (they certainly can have a positive effect), but they can be very boring and uneventful if used too often. I was wondering if anyone has a list or something to that effect of all the cliches that CP uses (or you think he will end up using) throughout the series?

Uh, cliches are things that are used so often that they become a cliche. It has to be used amazingly often. There is a difference between trope and cliche, of course - everything is going to have some tropes in it, no matter how well-written it is.

People bash CP for having so many cliches because he did something that you need real skill and talent to do - write a completely unoriginal story - and we're all amazingly jealous.

Seriously though. He wrote a story that was a complete ripoff of basically every popular fantasy story I have read before Inheritance. It really pisses me off how a writer who did basically nothing but rip off other authors is so successful - the problem is, that is probably why he is successful in the first place. He combined everything that was popular before in the fantasy genre and marketed it to people who wouldn't have read them yet, or who won't read those books at all. That, I think, is the major problem with Inheritance - the fact that it's so successful despite being so badly written.

For a list of tropes and cliches, look here.

James

This post has been edited by LyriantheFirst: 20 October 2009 - 07:33 AM

[Go for Gin]

Seeing as tropes have already been covered, just let me say something tvtropes points out somewhere on the site:

Entertainment comes from a cross between familiarity and surprise. Too much familiarity, and its unoriginal, bland, and cliche. This is why people here don't like Paolini--too much familiarity. Of course, do not go the opposite direction. You can't alienate the reader. This is why so few people change the general laws of nature in their books. This is why even the greatest authors have things you've seen before. Make sure that you don't, as the book How NOT to Write a Novel put it, confuse being clever with being stupid.

Originality is a hard line to walk. It depends, in the end, on your audience. I enjoy the Inheritance Cycle like a guilty pleasure. Same with the Shannara series by Terry Brooks. Why? Because I lean a bit toward the familiarity side when it comes to my fiction. Of course, that doesn't mean I don't like being surprised. Like I said, hard line to walk.