31–40 of 104 posts
Might as well go to the authority for recycled story bits: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes There is more to storytelling than just originality.
Tropes exist. What matters is what you build with them.
My least favourite story is "A lot of things happened to the protagonist and the world around him, but in the end everything is exactly like it was before all that". Homer is dead, we live in linear time, can we please please have some progress for a change? A notorious offender is Terry Pratchett's Discworld. When the world needs to change, it happens between the books. In any book, you know you will end up with the…
The wording implies an offense has been committed, but this is not the case.
For one, because it's false: progress happens in book in Discworld. There's a series of "industry/progress" novels that illustrate change in the Discworld.
But also, because the timelessness of Discworld is what makes it appealing. With some exceptions, you can read a lot of the novels in any order. This makes them good, not bad.
If you liked this list, you may also find the Turkey City Lexicon interesting: https://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/18/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer... It's also aimed directly at aspiring science fiction writers, but it's been referenced enough times on Charles Stross's blog (and other SF venues) that some of its terms have entered my vocabulary and that of other SF readers I know. EDIT: this list does contain the story type…
> 10. Someone calls technical support; wacky hijinx ensue. > a. Someone calls technical support for a magical item. > b. Someone calls technical support for a piece of advanced technology. This one seems appealing. Are there any good books with this theme?
No hugging, no changing.
So he was reversing the standard (by then) TV trope of "characters learn from their mistakes, hug each other, the end."
Of course, "no hugging, no changing" itself is a trope.
As an aside, I really like the disclaimer's approach, kind of like the Disney+ messages on certain movies, where they say they don't necessarily agree with something but still present it in the original form.
To me, it was a little disconcerting, like "we've stopped receiving these things too much, people got the message, and now we're receiving other things too much, but aren't going to update this to tell you what they are, and are leaving it for posterity." Maybe there aren't new overdone stories, people see the list and stop. But that seems unlikely to me. In either case, it would be nice if there was a list that was…
Some publishers have a short list of things they don’t take due to having too many submitted. I don’t think that’s what this list it. For one it is far too detailed to keep updated.
I see this list as a subset of bad storytelling they were seeing often. It’s not a subset of things they didn’t accept. (There is significant overlap.) It’s an important distinction.
Lists like these get published occasionally and they become part of the history of the internet. They truly are a snapshot in time.
I actually quite like those bits.
If you're reading this and thinking "aw damn, my idea is cliche, I'll never get something published!" or similar, don't worry too much. Once you subtract the ones that are either just straight-up wish fulfillment, or otherwise reliant on racist/sexist/ageist stereotypes, a lot of the ideas listed here are still perfectly good ideas for a story. They'd be more than "original" enough to drive an episode of Black Mirror…
> 10. Someone calls technical support; wacky hijinx ensue. > a. Someone calls technical support for a magical item. > b. Someone calls technical support for a piece of advanced technology. This one seems appealing. Are there any good books with this theme?
If you're reading this and thinking "aw damn, my idea is cliche, I'll never get something published!" or similar, don't worry too much. Once you subtract the ones that are either just straight-up wish fulfillment, or otherwise reliant on racist/sexist/ageist stereotypes, a lot of the ideas listed here are still perfectly good ideas for a story. They'd be more than "original" enough to drive an episode of Black Mirror…
The list seems to cover 90% of all sci-fi, and, if you squint a little, 80% of all stories ever written.