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I confess: I love a good cliche or trope.

A cliche is a phrase or expression that has been used so often that it is no longer original or interesting.
A trope is a common or overused theme or device, as in the usual horror movie tropes.

I’m in the middle of plotting a massive 3-book story and I need all the help I can get. Here’s the problem: what happens next?

No, let me rephrase: what could possibly happen next?

Sometimes, I just need to know possibilities, or what a story typically does at a particular stage. What are the possibilities? Is this a place for a murder, a confession, a love scene, or a time to gather information?

Literary folk say that there are only a limited number of stories in the world. Depending on who you talk with, there might be just two stories: a character leaves town, or a stranger comes to town. Others say there are up to 32 plots. I’ve written about 29 plot templates before. And it helps immensely to narrow down the choices.

But that’s on the level of an outline. Now that I’m deep into deciding on scenes, my imagination comes up short.

Enter tropes. A trope is a common theme, something that’s been done before. That doesn’t scare me away, because it’s the same as the variety of themes. Every story is a cliche, trope or template in many ways. It’s all in how you TELL that story. The beauty is in the particulars.

Romantic Subplot

My story needs a romantic subplot. I know the basics.
Act 1: Boy Meets Girl/Girl Meets Boy
Act 2: Boy and Girl Fight or are otherwise kept apart.
Act 3: Boy and Girl get together.

But what else? What is possible at each stage?

I turned to TVTROPES.org for help. Their site is a wiki that list all sorts of tropes. The Romantic Arc Tropes list was helpful because it listed typical things that happen at every stage of a romantic relationship.

For example, a story might start with this trope/subtropes:
Love Before First Sight

• Because Destiny Says So
• Childhood Marriage Promise
• Red String of Fate
• Girl of My Dreams
• New Old Flame

Each of the tropes listed has its own wiki page, which explains the trope in detail. Particularly valuable are the examples drawn from traditional literature, manga, comic books, fanfics, films, live-action TV, professional wrestling, table top games, theater, video games, webcomics, western animation, real life and more. It’s a treasure trove of examples of the POSSIBILITIES of a particular stage of a relationship.

In fact, I used this romance arc by choosing one trope from each stage of a relationship and slotting that into my story.

Place Holders

Are you afraid that my story will be trite and boring? I’m not. I know that this is a trope and therefore, I must transform it in the storytelling phase of the project. Right now, though, this trope acts as a place holder, something that indicates approximately what will happen in this spot of the story, but not exactly. The nuances that make it fresh await the actual writing.

Using tropes to hold a place with something reasonable makes the plotting easier. I’m loving this help in plotting.

Here are some Arcs to get you started. Be warned: this is a massive wiki and it’s easy to get lost in it. Know what you are looking for and get it/get out.

• Romantic Arc Tropes
• Mystery Arc
• Rescue Arc
• War Arc

We tend to ignore characters if they make things difficult for us. We see so many vampires and werewolves because they're much sexier than mummies. We avoid the parents because we want to put our MC in danger. We're all aware of the trope - the teen MC with dead or otherwise incapacitated parents, or the uninvolved, either selfish or simply ignorant mother/father. I'm talking YA, but the truth is this is even harder to deal with in MG because of the level of independence a 12 year old has when compared to a 16 year old. 

1. The parent is part of the story in an integral and positive way. Sometimes they can play the role of guide or support. Yes, the MC needs to solve the problem herself. But we allow her friends and love interests, so why not adult interaction? Don't be afraid to give it a try, you might be surprised with what you find.
2. The parent has an agenda of his/her own that whether well intentioned or not, is in some way at odds with that of the MC. So they may be around, offer guidance even, but it may not be what the MC really needs.
3. The missing (whether physically or mentally) parent. I'm absolutely guilty of ditching the parents in my own work. I admit it. Sometimes it's just plain necessary. But (and here's the key I think) I TRY to make it a genuine part of the story - not just a convenience. It's important to me to make the pieces connect back to the larger puzzle. Sometimes I strike out, and I have to work even harder, but it's a worthy goal so I strive to meet it.

Tweet

By Mark Peters

If I had a lemon for every time I heard “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” I’d have enough lemons to open a lemons-only Wal-Mart. If I had another lemon for every time I heard a variation like, “When life hands you lemons, run straight home and hide them because the apocalypse is upon us and soon everyone will want them,” I’d have an absolute monopoly on the lemon market, fulfilling my boyhood dreams.

This expression and its variations are everywhere, nowhere more so than on Twitter, the richest source of jokes and un-self-conscious language use we have at the moment. For the month of April, I collected the many mutations of this idiom to look for patterns among the proverbs. Thousands of lemon-y tweets prove this isn’t just a cliché or a snowclone: lemon-ology consists of clichés within clichés, snowclones within snowclones—and every once in awhile, a burst of originality. Here’s a look at the lemon landscape.

First, some lemon history. In Fred Shapiro’s wonderful Yale Book of Quotations, he spots the first example of “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade” on Oct. 4, 1972 in the Dallas Morning News. But he finds this line in 1917: “If life hands you a lemon adjust your rose colored glasses and start to selling pink lemonade.” Sure enough, the Oxford English Dictionary shows handing someone a lemon has meant “to pass off a sub-standard article as good; to swindle (a person), to do (someone) down” since at least 1906.

Over a hundred years later, one of the most common forms of lemon subversion basically says, “Screw lemonade. How about some booze?” The alcohol-related suggestions all involve using the lemons in some kind of drink, like so: “When life hands you lemons find some vodka and make margaritas!” Hundreds of tweets are almost identical, though the booze-soaked suggestions do get a little more creative: “When life hands you lemons, have a tequila shot…errr crap, can’t for a week, darn antibiotics!”

Other distortions use the lemon juice not as an alcohol-enhancer but as a potential torture device, as in “If life hands you lemons, find an annoying guy with paper-cuts and make it worthwhile.” Here’s a more self-serving, self-abusing approach: “When life hands you lemons, squirt one in your eye and go on disability. Then sue the guy that grew them. He’s got insurance for that!” And here’s one for the S&M crowd: “When life hands me lemons, I put on my leathers and squeeze the juice into the eyes of the man hogtied & ballgagged in my closet.”

Violent variations go far beyond the painful properties of lemon juice. Various tweeters say you should take the lemons and “throw them at hobos,” “hurl them at a random CEO,” “freeze them so they can knock people unconscious,” “open a lemon aide stand and use the proceeds to buy an assault rifle,” “put them in a tube sock and beat a hipster over the head with it,” “whip them at those dumb jerk kids who set up lemonade stands to show them how you feel about their price gouging,” or “shove them down the bastard’s throat and laugh maniacally as he chokes to death.” I kinda like the bluntness h

By Julie Daines

Dear Cliche,
We are always taught to avoid you. But, isn't there a way for you to be useful?
Sincerely,
Troubled Writer

Dear Troubled Writer,
Why, yes. There is.  Let me explain:

I can be very useful when you use me in the form of Stereotypes.  You want to develop characters with depth.  I can help you get started.

Look at your cast of characters.  Assign them each a stereotypical trait.

Harry: Reserved
Ron: Funny
Hermione: Bookish

Then take those stereotypes and dig deep until you unearth a whole world of complex traits that grow and take shape throughout the story.

Harry: Reserved, self-doubting but with quiet determination, resourceful, temperamental, brave.
Ron: Funny, coward, complainer, envious of other's accomplishments, loyal friend.
Hermione: Bookish, smart, condescending, sure of herself, opinionated, honest, responsible.

And the list could go on.  But if you, dear writer, can find a starting place for your characters in the world of cliche, you can grow them into something individual, dynamic, and unforgettable.  Work with them and mold them until you know the secret desires of their hearts--and what they do when no one is looking.

Good Luck.
Love,
Cliche.

Now that I have your attention, I thought I'd do another reader participation blog.

I have a feeling many of you, like me, are still coming down from Holiday high, so here's something easy we can do.

Let's share some dreaded cliches' to remind each other what not to write.

Finishing up the series on plot: We’ve talked about the outline level of plot, plotting with scenes and now we’re at a finer granular level as we talk about pacing of a novel.

Pacing Helps Plot Succeed

Nick Lowe, in his article, The Well-Tempered Plot Device, criticizes many well-loved fantasy novels because of their use of plot coupons. A plot coupon plot is where the story is set up someway (riddles, prophecy, commands, etc) so that a certain number of objects must be collected (or tasks completed), in order to defeat evil or accomplish the main character’s goal. Lowe says there’s little question left what will happen in the novel, because, well, duh!, the hero/ine will collect those the tasks/objects/coupons and defeat evil. So why read the novel?

Lowe berates novels such as The Lord of the Rings or Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series as having flawed collect-the-coupon plots. Well, yes. So what?

If there are three levels of plot (outline, scene and pacing), a story actually can be cliched at the outline level and use a plot coupon and still be a great story because it excels on the pacing level.

Pick up the first book in the Dark is Rising series (I love the audio versions) and begin reading and you’ll be drawn immediately. Why? Because it has excellent pacing. On this local level, you are totally involved in the story and the minor ongoing conflicts.

So, here’s one thing about pacing: it can’t overcome all the objections about bad plot, but it can keep a reader going and enjoying your story.

Pacing: How to Keep Reader Interested

Pacing is the trick of continually changing something in the story, creating some uncertainty in the reader’s mind, which results in the reader wanting to know, “What happens next?”

The change is what’s important and what will create a strong pace for your story:

• a new piece of information
• a realization
• a change in emotion
• A deepening of emotion
• a small action
• a small reaction

Basically, these are the “beats” of a scene (See Dirty White Candy’s Beat Sheet), the small back and forths of momentum. It’s like the last two minutes of a basketball game, when the teams are tied:

The Razorbacks (Yes, I’m a Hog

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No matter where you stand on the climate change issue, hopefully this blog will convince you once and for all that someone really needs to come up with a better joke about it.

Posted by Adam Koford on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 5 comments
Tags: Cartooning, cliche

Some time ago (I’m talking July here) the lovely Lauren Cerand pointed out that Carrie Frye at About Last Night was yearning for a copy of Faustus: From the German of Goethe Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge edited by Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick.  So I ordered a copy with the intent of sending Ms. Frye a surprise package.  Alas, the book did not arrive until November! So with my deepest apologies I am putting the book in the mail today, with the hopes that it will still brighten Ms. Frye’s day.  Better late than never right?  Sadly, I can not send you all a copy so I have excerpted the introduction from the book which gives us some background on Coleridge. Enjoy!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the youngest of the ten children of Reverend John and Ann Bowden Coleridge, was born at Ottery St Mary in Devon. He attended the local grammar school until the year following his father’s death in 1781, when he was sent to the charity school at Christ’s Hospital in London. In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1794, he met with Robert Southey and became engaged to Sara Fricker, the sister of Southey’s fiancee. With Southey, he planned to establish a commune, a pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susqehanna in America. In their political zeal they also jointly wrote The Fall of Robespierre, published September of that year. (more…)

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