Young Writers Society

What makes for a cliched storyline and cliched hero behaviour?

It's for an idea for a story I had while watching The Fellowship of the Ring, and it's all rather complicated, and it's probably been done before, but it's not meant to be serious, so I'm not quibbling...

Anyway, what fills a cliched story? Give me everything I need to write a cliched storyline! Every teensy weensy ickle miniscule tiny little microscopic little thing is welcomed.

Fill the Cliche Bank!

topic21596.html

There are 3 cliche links here.

I can't wait to see that story.

Thanks for those!

Have a hero, have a villain who was previously best friends with the hero, have some dragons and other such mythical beasts and there you go - huge cliche. Lol. Okay so you need a few other things like a love triangle wouldn't hurt and some very over dramatic pasts. It depends on your genre though to be honest. For example, a gothic cliche would involve some sort of dark, secret room, perhaps a carriage and lots of black, red and white while a fantasy cliche would involve dragins, hugely superior good guys who doubt their abilities and quests that need to be fulfilled. So which genre is it?

A lot of things on the Mary-Sue Litmus Test are funny cliches.

Fantasy, Kitty. It's kind of weird, but it's these characters who start off by being cliched ones - beautiful heroine, self-doubting hero, sidekick, comic relief, street urchin (who isn't really a street urchin, but a kid from this world and the M/C), annoying weird little creature, etc, etc. The story is about the cliched quest they have to go on to save the world, and how they try and break free from the cliche. They try and change the way they behave, so they're not cliched, and they try to change the events happening to them as well, to defeat the cliches there. I don't whether it'll work or not, but it'd be fun to write.

Oooh, it sounds it and in that case you simply must have some mysterious elf who aids them on their quest. Or maybe an all knowing, wise dragon who loves riddles. Or an all powerful wizard.

Yes, don't forget the wise old man with a long silver beard who seems to know all, but never tells. And, of course, he must die half-way through, but then come back to life, by one means or another. And the antagonist who is the hero's family member, though we don't find this out 'till later.

In other words, mimic Eragon as much as possible?

The end should be a huge battle, where the heroes appear to be losing, but then miraculously a minor character from earlier in the story reappears and sacrifices himself to aide the battle in the heroes' favor.

ئ twit ئ wrote:In other words, mimic Eragon as much as possible?

Exactly And do it in style!

Cpt. Smurf wrote:

ئ twit ئ wrote:In other words, mimic Eragon as much as possible?

Exactly And do it in style!

Star Wars, too! Especially the older ones.

The hero dies a horrible death and miraculously comes back to life when after endless resuscitation, all hope is lost.

Like specific cliches?


There are 25 YA cliches here http://joelleanthony.com/my-non-fiction/red-hair-is-not-as-common-as-you-think-by-joelle-anthony/

here are a bunch of fantasy cliches
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/8584/stuff/cliche.html

Hope it helps, your project sounds interesting!