"Stories We've Seen Too Often": How many of these have you written?

There are exactly three things on either of those lists that, at least in any of my recent writing—last three years, basically—I have even come close to using. Two were intentionally playing semi-cliché scenarios for laughs (specifically the "mad doctor" and "ambiguously real hallucinations"); one was an accidental consequence of description overload (the "house is scary... yay" one) that ultimately has nothing to do with the actual point of the story.

I'm kind of astonished that I'm not more stereotypical.

@yeah bro sorry I am not in arguing mood.

I wrote a short story that used all three of these at the same time (maybe) in conjunction with time travel (maybe) for extra mind fuckery (maybe).

Maybe? I'm not sure what they mean by this, exactly.

I am fond of this one. Rarely do they get a good ending or portrayal, though.

I guess. That was vaguely the point of the short story mentioned above, except I don't actually give the twist...

Sometimes... for a given value of "more harshly." Rarely is this given in a good light, though. I haven't done it in a long time, however.

I specifically hate this idea and constantly take potshots at it whenever I include space travel.

Yup.

Though I do it to the people I agree with, too.

I use this as a background element, but not really as the whole point of a story... or at least, not overtly.

The protagonist of Innocence Lost has this as his whole schtick until maybe a third of the way through the story. Then it shifts to a masochistic game of violent strategic chess, with a revolutionary movement against a European Great Power and said empire's military as the pawns.

edited 9th Dec '11 3:13:24 PM by USAF713

Anyway, the list isn't of the oldest ideas ever, it's the ones that they find to be most overused by aspiring writers, and tbh most of them really do seem hackneyed, like plot summaries of 'The Scary Door' from Futurama. They're not trying to steer people towards ideas that have absolutely never been done by anybody ever, but away from lazy, uninspired ideas, and obvious ripoffs of things that are very popular.

For the record, I'm pretty sure this

is basically Science Is Bad.

@Yeah Bro: Again, my original point was not that creativity is bad. It was more meant to be that just listing a bunch of one-line "stories" and calling them all overused doesn't mean they're inherently bad (and to their credit, the site actually notes this).

Oh. Science Is Bad is one of my favorite themes, although I don't play it quite as the trope describes.

In my settings, science is bad because people are stupid and selfish, and not necessarily because of science (or technology) itself...

Well, then don't count on me ever showing any sign of respect for your works. It would be misleading to call it my most despised trope, but it's very high up there.

Heh. I scored a big fat ZERO on that list surprisingly. (Unless I want to use Weasel Words on a couple of them because I do do things like revenge and technological breakthroughs, they just aren't core or tangential plots.)

Also this one amused me greatly:

The title of the story is 1-800-SOMETHING-CUTE.

Never written too many short stories, so I don't have any of the things on that list.

And does it count as Science Is Bad if the moral is not so much 'science itself is corrupting' as 'science gives more power to people, who are bastards and/or idiots'? When I think of Science Is Bad I think of the sort of blechy back-to-nature Aesops in things like Avatar; if it's just "people do horrible things to each other using technology", it doesn't strike me so much as Science Is Bad specifically as just Humans Are Bastards that happens to be set in a technological era.

I still dislike that attitude, but you may be right - it's not quite Science Is Bad as such.

This. This a lot. The crazy environmentalists who want to go back to before technology and science as we know it are fools.

My point is, technology and science aren't the mythical, save-everything-from-evil shit that they used to be played up as, and in the hands of actual human beings cause as much death and destruction as they do helpful effects.

Then again, I'm writing a war story. It really shouldn't surprise you that it isn't particularly sympathetic to technological advancements, especially seeing as its Genre Deconstruction of steampunk.

~shrug~

Doesn't bother me.

The fact that we came through the Cold War without blowing ourselves up is, to me, a pretty conclusive argument against the idea of humans being too stupid to be trusted with new technology. Certainly we were lucky, and there were definitely certain individuals who could have killed us all if they had been listened to. But while I don't have that much respect for the collective intelligence of humanity as a whole, I think it deserves more then it frequently gets.

Of course, you've got a point about how your genre is going to influence things (and I can't really feel that bad in this case... I've never grokked steampunk).

I didn't say people were too stupid to use technology. I said it was a 50/50 split.

That, and the setting—with a heavy emphasis on Black Box technology—also dictates that they would be hopelessly incompetent with most of their things, as they didn't invent most of it and have a sort of reverent fear of it all. Almost like the Covenant, but less retarded.

Edit: and ultimately, my critique is less of science and more of the For Science! mentality, if that means anything without elaboration...

edited 9th Dec '11 6:18:53 PM by USAF713

I...apparently don't hit any of these.

I must admit I am surprised.

So, my first really on-topic post. Discounting parodies/deliberate invocation of genre cliches and stories where one of these elements was not a major feature, the only ones that I can actually remember writing are:

In every possible variation, primarily because I like being able to do things in one of my settings that wouldn't really work otherwise.

Not sure if this one counts or not - it was a Start of Darkness for one of my villains that tried to make the point that he did not, in fact, have a real Freudian Excuse and was just a flat-out bad guy.

And I've always wanted to write this one, just for the sake of it:

It's kind of hard to punish somebody who is many times more powerful than an average human being and can't die.

Ehehehe. Sorry about that.

It is actually more complex than that, but it's a valid summary.

I once wrote a subversion of 4c (weird stuff happens, protagonist turns out to be insane) that isn't "protagonist is actually right, is vindicated". The protagonist convinces himself that the things he's seeing aren't real over the course of a few years. Then he gets his arm bitten off by a real monster that he deliberately ignores.

Other than that, I ping a zero. Color me surprised (and teal).

edited 9th Dec '11 8:27:33 PM by Muramasan13

Bizarrely, I have never seen several of the plots listed, and would be interested in examples.

As someone said earlier: I think several of these plots are genuinely bad and so don't show up much in published fiction because of it.

The specific ones that interested me were 10a and 10b. I've never seen anything like them, and though I doubt they could be stretched beyond a short story without wearing thin, it sounds like it'd be entertaining if done well.

If you have'nt seen some of these plot's I'd suggest checking out some of the older science fiction Anthologies, particularly the ones published about the 50's or so. Is there any specifically that you want an example of?

I've never seen 10 outside of fanfic, but the few I did read were funny ficlets.

9. A "surprise" twist ending occurs. (Note that we do like endings that we didn't expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action. But note, too, that we've seen a lot of twist endings, and we find most of them to be pretty predictable, even the ones not on this list.)

33. Protagonist agrees to go along with a plan or action despite not having enough information about it, and despite their worries that the thing will be bad. Then the thing turns out to be bad after all.

Those are the only two that pop up in my works, but they're pretty much essential...

Stories I've attempted:

• 11. Scientist uses himself or herself as test subject.
  • The scientist in my story built a machine to read people's thoughts, meant to help doctors take better care of mute people and people in comas. It ended up giving him a "mind virus" and driving him crazy, to the point where he committed suicide, much to the dismay of his friends and family.
• 18. Man has an awful, shrewish wife; in the end he gets revenge on her, by (for example) killing her or leaving her.
  • The man in my story doesn't kill his wife; he just leaves her. The story deals with his scars from the abusive relationship (he leaves her at the very beginning).

That's it.

Brutal violence against women is depicted in loving detail, often in a story that's ostensibly about violence against women being bad.

Inb4 Stieg Larsson.

I've done 8, but that was the purpose of the assignment.

Saying violence towards women is sexist implies violence towards men is okay, which is sexist.