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Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

strangehorizons.com

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Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#81

Post by SantalBlush »

bsder wrote: post #66
slg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big problem for serialized stories now that fan theorizing on the internet is so common. A good plot shouldn't be completely predictable to your audience, but events need to flow from one to the other because characters and their worlds should have consistency. This creates predictability and means some small percentage of your audience can now guess what is going to happen. That was fine a decade or two ag…

> When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled. I disagree wholeheartedly. The big problem with every single writer nowadays is a complete and total inability to stick the ending . I'm really trying very hard to come up with a TV show, book or movie that I thought really stuck the ending in the last 10 years (I'm being generous…

Breaking Bad had a very decent ending. It wasn't overblown, it didn't have contrived plot twists, and it was consistent with the the way the characters behaved in previous arcs.

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#82

Post by yamtaddle »

liotier wrote: post #8

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.

> This is not a canonical list of bad stories or story cliches. This is a list of types of stories that we at SH have seen too often; it's not intended to be a complete list of all types of bad stories, nor are all the items on the list necessarily bad.

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#83

Post by [deleted] »

lifefeed wrote: post #3

My old least-favorite-trope isn't on here, maybe writers have finally stopped writing it. > (Somehow, a man and a women end up alone on a planet. This is the last dialog.) > Man: I never caught your name. > Women: I'm Eve. > Man: Hi Eve, I'm Adam.

[deleted]

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#85

Post by ManuelKiessling »

bsder wrote: post #66
slg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big problem for serialized stories now that fan theorizing on the internet is so common. A good plot shouldn't be completely predictable to your audience, but events need to flow from one to the other because characters and their worlds should have consistency. This creates predictability and means some small percentage of your audience can now guess what is going to happen. That was fine a decade or two ag…

> When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled. I disagree wholeheartedly. The big problem with every single writer nowadays is a complete and total inability to stick the ending . I'm really trying very hard to come up with a TV show, book or movie that I thought really stuck the ending in the last 10 years (I'm being generous…

„Bodyguard“, the BBC miniseries, and „My Name“ from South Korea, both on Netflix, as well as „Your Name“, from 2016 (now THAT was one final act and ending!).

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#86

Post by rcme »

bsder wrote: post #61
rcme wrote: post #54

> Fatness is used as a signal of evil, dissolution, and/or moral decay, usually with the unspoken assumption that it's completely obvious that fat people are immoral and disgusting. My favorite novel that uses this trope has to be A Confederacy of Dunces.

"A Confederacy of Dunces" struck me much more as a chronicle of weird people and their foibles with a large dose of regional flavoring--sort of like Napoleon Dynamite but focused on a city underbelly. I don't remember "fatness" being a signal of evil, and I don't remember any of the non-fat people being any better than the fat ones. However, it has been quite a while since I read the novel, and I really didn't like i…

The main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, was extremely fat, which was part of his ignoble caricature.

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#87

Post by robocat »

smnrchrds wrote: post #25

> 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?

Similar theme: Service Call by Philip K Dick - in the fourth volume of short stories called "Minority Report".

  Sir, I'm the repairman you asked for; I'm here to fix your swibble.
Yes, contains tropes, but still brilliantly written. Easier to be novel in 1955!?

The book has a bunch more great short stories - old school but good school.

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#88

Post by yamtaddle »

slg wrote: post #50
gregmac wrote: post #30

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…

This is a big problem for serialized stories now that fan theorizing on the internet is so common. A good plot shouldn't be completely predictable to your audience, but events need to flow from one to the other because characters and their worlds should have consistency. This creates predictability and means some small percentage of your audience can now guess what is going to happen. That was fine a decade or two ag…

Show runners and writers giving a shit that someone on Reddit guessed their clever twist is the entire problem here. If zero people out of thousands or more actively speculating online thought of the thing you did, that's probably because it doesn't make sense. Adjusting to avoid anything that's been guessed almost necessarily means veering into bad writing.

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#89

Post by bobsmooth »

yamtaddle wrote: post #88
slg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big problem for serialized stories now that fan theorizing on the internet is so common. A good plot shouldn't be completely predictable to your audience, but events need to flow from one to the other because characters and their worlds should have consistency. This creates predictability and means some small percentage of your audience can now guess what is going to happen. That was fine a decade or two ag…

Show runners and writers giving a shit that someone on Reddit guessed their clever twist is the entire problem here. If zero people out of thousands or more actively speculating online thought of the thing you did, that's probably because it doesn't make sense . Adjusting to avoid anything that's been guessed almost necessarily means veering into bad writing.

>Show runners and writers giving a shit that someone on Reddit guessed their clever twist

This is what ruined Westworld.

Re: Stories We’ve Seen Too Often

#90

Post by slyall »

philipkglass wrote: post #2

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…

I have the old (1975) book "Writing And Selling Science Fiction" by Science Fiction Writers of America (ie various).

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1739693

and it has lots of good advice. Pretty sure it has the Adam and Eve Trope.

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