A Practical Guide For All Writers. Keeping Cliche-Free And Original.
I shall be posting a series of at least 3-6 posts on originality and cliches that - especially young writers - often get caught up in. Now I'm not saying I've mastered this area, but I do know these things, and I shall share them for your benefit! So, here it is!
~~~~
Introduction.
Every good fictional or non-fiction piece of work has a plot - believe me, even soap-operas do, but that's about as low as you can get.
Often times though, the plots that we come up with are unoriginal. Obviously, inspiration is what sparked it, and inspiration it good! But there's a clear line between inspiration, and so much inspiration that it no longer is inspiration and turns out to be either plain copying, or just flat out cliche.
Now, I will not spare you the hard truth, your writing - undoubtedly - has or was inspired by something, whether or not it was too much inspired, well, you'll have to figure that out for yourself. What I'm saying though, is that we all take off thing from others.
Since J.R.R. Tolkien published the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the genre of High Fantasy has never been the same.
After J.K. Rowling published her series, the genre was impacted.
When George Lucas released the Star Wars Saga, the Science-Fiction genre was entirely overhauled.
Yet, J.R.R. Tolkien wasn't entirely original. No, in fact, he reaped a MASSIVE amount of inspiration (and really just took) from the legends of Finland, the Norse, the Anglo-Saxons. You see, he was NOT original.
J.K. Rowling too, used an exponential amount of legends - primarily that of Witch-craft and the sort.
George Lucas himself said he was greatly inspired from Flash Gordon.
And the first humans undoubtedly got inspiration from God's creation and the nature around them.
So you see, no one, absolutely no one, is completely original.
But that's okay.
Being original won't get you published in and of itself - don't get me wrong though, it will help greatly.
Moving On.
So now that I've covered that, I'll let you in on one cliche that nearly every Sci-Fi writer falls into.
A mixture of world terror and romance.
Number 1, why does there have to be romance? Sure, people may be looking for companions because they're scared, but does that really have to get into romance??? The answer, no. Because do you really think, if the world is seemingly about to explode, people would go get married in the dozens? No, they wouldn't. At least I sure wouldn't. There's far more greater things to worry about, like, well, just from the top of my mind we'll say, SAVING THE WORLD, duh.
Certainly, some people would be doing that, but that writing tactic is cliche and boring.
I'm not saying you can't have the two, but having the two combined is overused.
Now it comes to world terror. Why does it always have to be aliens? Okay fine, if it's not aliens it's mind-control, if it's not mind-control it's a dictator who just invented an army of robots who will destroy the world.
Woopidy doo, I've seen it a millions times already, I KNOW what I'm going to get out of this book (or movie) - boredom.
What really annoys me, though, is when Science-Fiction is over fictionalized. For instance, aliens coming in saucer spaceships.
A round ship couldn't even fly, nor would it be arrow-dynamic. Yes, fiction is cool, but Science-Fiction should be what it tells us it is - Science, mixed with fiction, not fiction mixed with fantasy.
~The WordWeaver
I shall be posting a series of at least 3-6 posts on originality and cliches that - especially young writers - often get caught up in. Now I'm not saying I've mastered this area, but I do know these things, and I shall share them for your benefit! So, here it is!
~~~~
Introduction.
Every good fictional or non-fiction piece of work has a plot - believe me, even soap-operas do, but that's about as low as you can get.
Often times though, the plots that we come up with are unoriginal. Obviously, inspiration is what sparked it, and inspiration it good! But there's a clear line between inspiration, and so much inspiration that it no longer is inspiration and turns out to be either plain copying, or just flat out cliche.
Now, I will not spare you the hard truth, your writing - undoubtedly - has or was inspired by something, whether or not it was too much inspired, well, you'll have to figure that out for yourself. What I'm saying though, is that we all take off thing from others.
Since J.R.R. Tolkien published the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the genre of High Fantasy has never been the same.
After J.K. Rowling published her series, the genre was impacted.
When George Lucas released the Star Wars Saga, the Science-Fiction genre was entirely overhauled.
Yet, J.R.R. Tolkien wasn't entirely original. No, in fact, he reaped a MASSIVE amount of inspiration (and really just took) from the legends of Finland, the Norse, the Anglo-Saxons. You see, he was NOT original.
J.K. Rowling too, used an exponential amount of legends - primarily that of Witch-craft and the sort.
George Lucas himself said he was greatly inspired from Flash Gordon.
And the first humans undoubtedly got inspiration from God's creation and the nature around them.
So you see, no one, absolutely no one, is completely original.
But that's okay.
Being original won't get you published in and of itself - don't get me wrong though, it will help greatly.
Moving On.
So now that I've covered that, I'll let you in on one cliche that nearly every Sci-Fi writer falls into.
A mixture of world terror and romance.
Number 1, why does there have to be romance? Sure, people may be looking for companions because they're scared, but does that really have to get into romance??? The answer, no. Because do you really think, if the world is seemingly about to explode, people would go get married in the dozens? No, they wouldn't. At least I sure wouldn't. There's far more greater things to worry about, like, well, just from the top of my mind we'll say, SAVING THE WORLD, duh.
Certainly, some people would be doing that, but that writing tactic is cliche and boring.
I'm not saying you can't have the two, but having the two combined is overused.
Now it comes to world terror. Why does it always have to be aliens? Okay fine, if it's not aliens it's mind-control, if it's not mind-control it's a dictator who just invented an army of robots who will destroy the world.
Woopidy doo, I've seen it a millions times already, I KNOW what I'm going to get out of this book (or movie) - boredom.
What really annoys me, though, is when Science-Fiction is over fictionalized. For instance, aliens coming in saucer spaceships.
A round ship couldn't even fly, nor would it be arrow-dynamic. Yes, fiction is cool, but Science-Fiction should be what it tells us it is - Science, mixed with fiction, not fiction mixed with fantasy.
~The WordWeaver
RSS Feed