Zompist Bboard Again

The setting has our fifteen-year-old protagonist going to a kind of quasi-magical prep-school/boot camp [1] and having to overcome several obstacles, including various sorts of prejudice and institutional bias, in order to make it through to the end. I happened to be reading a list of "fantasy clichés your story must absolutely avoid at all costs" - probably not a good idea when you have a fragile creative ego - and something very similar to this type of setting was one of them. I duly became beset by visions of potential readers saying "Oh no, not another magical school story" and derisively tossing the book aside, or whatever one does digitally nowadays.

But as some of you have pointed out, which I greatly appreciate, it's the execution which matters, and I feel better about it now.

[1] made maximally distinct wherever possible from a certain popular series written by another Edinburgh-based author, I hasten to point out.

@alice: I remember reading somewhere that there's only about a dozen different basic plots in world literature and all of them have been used thousands of times. I guess something similar is true for settings. So yes, write in an engaging way, whether it's execution of plot, characters your reader wants to spend time with, fresh ideas, fresh language... and then readers won't care whether they have seen a similar setting before.
(Of course, if your main hero is named Jerry Otter, and he makes friends at that school / camp with a Jon Easily and a Jermayne Ranger, and they defeat an evil necromancer called Mouldewort, than you may really have a problem )

My kid picked up a fantasy comic book series at the library, which involved a boarding school, kids fighting ultimate evil and just about any cliché on these list; plus the premise is It, if It was set in rural France instead of rural Maine.

Tell you what; it was one of the best thing I'd read in a year.

So frankly, who cares if it's a cliché?

I read a fair amount of thriller and detective fiction. Neither the writers nor the readers seem to care one bit about clichés.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 5:39 am
(Of course, if your main hero is named Jerry Otter, and he makes friends at that school / camp with a Jon Easily and a Jermayne Ranger, and they defeat an evil necromancer called Mouldewort, than you may really have a problem )

Damn, now I want to read a book about someone named Jerry Otter. Preferably an actual otter.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 5:39 am(Of course, if your main hero is named Jerry Otter, and he makes friends at that school / camp with a Jon Easily and a Jermayne Ranger, and they defeat an evil necromancer called Mouldewort, than you may really have a problem )

Dammit!!! How the hell did you know?

Sometimes, clichés are clichés because they're fun.

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:33 am Sometimes, clichés are clichés because they're fun.

And sometimes, they're present because it would be simply practically impossible to do without them:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... pelessTale

Some are just a part of reality. People do, in fact, generally sit on chairs.

I wouldn't call that a cliche, though. a cliché is a common figure of speech, or a common language flourish, or a common trope, not a common fact about reality being featured in the narrative... for example, in the Jeremy Robinson novels Infinite and Infinite 2, the first person narrator-protagonist has a few cliches like saying that something "nearly undoes him" when something causes him significant emotional distress. Or like that thing landscape photographers do of including like a branch to make the photo feel deeper and broader, since the subject is far but the branch is near, that's a cliche. having things fall down because of gravity, or having people die when their heart stops, is not a cliche: but the thing where they go for the defibrilator, shout clear, and do the thing with the sound and the arching of the back in order to impress upon the audience that the doctors are fighting against death itself and thus that this is a very dramatic moment, that kind of is.

Much amusing ado over a facetious remark.

My first review on my blog was about one of these boiler-plate fantasy novels, and believe me, what held it back was not the cliches, but the way the cliches were leaned on as a crutch.

Boarding school is just an inherently good premise for a story. There are plenty of interesting things you can do with that.

Also, if I may put on my cynical publishing industry hat, the representation bandwagon has not left town, yet. You can literally find-and-replace one of your characters to be a trans teenager and get plenty of attention for your story. I'm not saying the Wokes have gone to far; I like representation in literature. I'm just saying this is a fact about the industry you should know if you're trying to make your story feel distinct. If your story is already about discrimination, you can make a publisher very happy by giving them the opportunity to tick new boxes. Publishers love that shit.

alice wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 5:22 am The setting has our fifteen-year-old protagonist going to a kind of quasi-magical prep-school/boot camp [1] and having to overcome several obstacles, including various sorts of prejudice and institutional bias, in order to make it through to the end. I happened to be reading a list of "fantasy clichés your story must absolutely avoid at all costs" - probably not a good idea when you have a fragile creative ego - and something very similar to this type of setting was one of them.

Maybe it would help to note that if something has been done 10 times, it's a cliché; if it's been done 100 times, it's a genre.

I was an editor for a humor site for awhile, and editor fatigue is absolutely a thing. You can get really tired of the same idea repeated over and over, and editors sometimes need to vent about this. But, try not to think about editors when you're writing. (Unless you have a particular one you can use for your supervillain.)

I’m done with dating and romance. It only ever leads to failure, and thence heartache, for me.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:10 am I’m done with dating and romance. It only ever leads to failure, and thence heartache, for me.

I'm sorry to hear that. Best wishes to you!

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 12:34 am Maybe it would help to note that if something has been done 10 times, it's a cliché; if it's been done 100 times, it's a genre.

Good point; but I'd argue that there's also something that might be called a kind of "mini-genre".

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:10 am I’m done with dating and romance. It only ever leads to failure, and thence heartache, for me.

Some mood music. I hope for you that the heartache will pass.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:10 am I’m done with dating and romance. It only ever leads to failure, and thence heartache, for me.

sana sana, corazoncito de rana. si no sana hoy sanará mañana.

Torco wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:04 am

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:10 am I’m done with dating and romance. It only ever leads to failure, and thence heartache, for me.

sana sana, corazoncito de rana. si no sana hoy sanará mañana.

I've always heard this version in the context of child ouchies and boo boos:

Cura curita, sana sanita, si no te cura hoy, te curará mañanita

yeah, that's where we use such... what are those things called? nursery rhymes? conventional expressions? spells? don't mean to, ofc, imply your heartache is childish or anything. I hadn't heard that version, tho, where is it from?