Jan 08 2009
Tell Me This Isn’t One of Your Stories
Yes, there’s a magazine called Strange Horizons that pays money for fiction, blah, blah, blah. And since I’m linking to them, I’m supposed to tell you that, “This list (which I’m about to tell you about) is part of the submission guidelines for Strange Horizons, an online speculative fiction magazine.” Okay? We’re good.
But what I really want to tell you about is their hilarious list of “Stories We’ve Seen Too Often”. You don’t want to miss this.
My favorites include:
#4. (Oh, this is like nails on a chalkboard for me.)
- In the end, it turns out it was all a dream.
- In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.
- In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.
I almost snorted cola out of my nose when I read #9 a. and b.:
- The characters’ actions are described in a way meant to fool the reader into thinking they’re humans, but in the end it turns out they’re not humans, as would have been obvious to anyone looking at them.
- Creatures are described as “vermin” or “pests” or “monsters,” but in the end it turns out they’re humans.
Were those ideas ever fresh and exciting? Here are a few more:
#6 b. In the future, all learning is soulless and electronic, until kid is exposed to ancient wisdom in the form of a book.
#22. Superpowered narrator claims that superhero stories never address the mundane problems that superheroes would run into in the real world.
#35. Twee little fairies with wings fly around being twee.
Go read the rest. You’re welcome.
*looks through the list*
How about “People with elemental powers (usually based on the Greek Four plus one) spend a while being Elemental before harnessing the Power of Teamwork.” For some reason, it never occurs to anyone that they’ll immediately lose any member of the audience who’s seen more than one episode of Captain Planet.
Or “People In Tune With Nature/Magic/Femininity/all of the above who have been persecuted by Those Evil Patriarchal Industrialists finally do something about it.” Limyaael has a lot of rants about that one.
One person I knew had a formula that seemed to be along the lines of “Two pages of establishing a world in a manner that was entirely ‘As we all know, Bob’ featuring talking heads you couldn’t tell apart on a reread. Main character Does Something That Stands Out. Main character gets in over his head because of Doing Something, and is saved through no real effort on his own by other people who spend half the story explaining why they saved him, which usually boils down to He Was Just That Speshul.”
….or heck, any story whose main theme is “Awesome things happen with main character who resolves story by being Just That Speshul.”
I wonder if it’s a genre thing?