41–50 of 104 posts
And some of these should definitely be avoided at all costs.
1. They used more than one
2. They were published long before this list was made.
3. Pulp
[edit]
e.g. 5,271,009 by Alfred Bester hits at least 4 of these while also poking fun at various wish-fulfillment stories
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…
Neal Stevenson got away with this by getting rid of Adam and adding six additional Eve's.
I wish I could ask Netfix/recommendation engines to strike stories matching a certain story profile. In particular I rarely enjoy a story about point 4. I like watching something without spoilers so avoiding 'Weird things happen, but it turns out they're not real' is really difficult.
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…
But who cares that The Lion King and Hamlet may be the same story at the base, they're certainly different enough to be enjoyable each in their own right, and I wouldn't substitute one for the other in some strange form of economization.
That's Avatar ruined.
>> White protagonist is given wise and mystical advice by Holy Simple Native Folk. That's Avatar ruined.
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.
"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9, RSV2CE).
Something that stuck out to me was a side-note: > Note that we do like endings that we didn't expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action. This, to me, is probably the biggest thing that makes me hate a story: The character is faced with a situation and reacts in a way contrary to the way we'd expect them to act based on what we've seen so far. It soon becomes obvious they made that decision only t…
That was fine a decade or two ago when a person might guess the ending to a TV show and blurt it out to their partner on the couch. However, now that small group that guesses the plot correctly will share their predictions on the relevant subreddit which will be picked up by blogs and suddenly everyone knows where you were going.
When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled. Westworld is a memorable example of the creators changing the show because fans guessed what was happening next. The end result was that the show didn't make any sense because it prioritized unpredictability over all else and eventually the world and characters didn't make any sense anymore.