McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Your Pet Urban Fantasy Cliche Peeves
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--- Quote from: Wordmaker on May 07, 2013, 10:50:32 PM ---I just threw up a little in my brain...
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I am honor-bound to repost it whenever the slightest chance presents itself.
Snowleopard:
Sigh, rolls out several 55 gallon drums of Super Duckie Strength Brain Bleech.
Help yourself folks.
arianne:
--- Quote ---Unwanted romance. Not just sex, romance. When I read a book with a strong character, be they male or female, they don't necessarily need a significant other for the story to progress. And even if they did have a romantic partner, that relationship doesn't need a front and center description all the time. It's like in real life, how often do you go on and on about your amazzinnnnnnnnnng relationship at work? Because in an urban fantasy story, whatever the character is doing (fighting bad guys or hunting down clues to something that the bad guys did) it's all "work".
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Sometimes I wonder why it is people can slay vampires, hold down two part-time jobs on the side to pay the rent, untangle Fae politics, investigate mysterious murders on the side, and STILL have a romantic life....
I've heard people say that you should always add some romance to a storyliine to draw in the female readers, but speaking as a female reader myself, I'm fine with a story that doesn't have any romance in it.
--- Quote ---Detailed descriptions of sex. Accepted that sex is something authors like to write about and people like to read about, but not in urban fantasy. Given the number of books out there with such scenes, we almost need a new sub-genre "Erotica with urban fantasy elements".
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I've taken to skipping most of these. They're probably endlessly interesting to write, but seriously, after about the third "urban ero-fantasy" novel, you begin to realize that there really are only a number of things that can happen, and they very very seldom make any difference to the plot whatsoever.
Very very seldom = never.
--- Quote ---Predictable use of other author's ideas. Let's talk about sparkly vampires for a minute. Those books have sub-par writing and a very horrible story line, but that aside, at least there's a different reason for vampires not going out in the sunlight
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I keep hearing people say that this is original, but I could never see it myself. Sure, I've never heard of any other fictional vampires who sparkle (although I'm sure if I went digging hard enough I would probably find something similar somewhere--nothing new under the sun etc), but it didn't seem to make THAT big of a difference to me. I mean, the rest of the 99% of traits are still borrowed from someone else or mythical sources or wherever. JB's vampires feeding on lust felt more original to me than the sparkly-sparkle.
--- Quote ---A lot of cops and emergency responders have, what they call, gallows humor. They have to find
the funny in what are often grotesque and tragic circumstances - in order to stay sane.
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This makes total sense to me. If everything in your life is going crazy, something has got to give sooner or later. Either it comes out in gallows humor or your brain blows apart into piles of mush. And honestly in really bad situations what sort of horror/sympathy/pain/fear can you express that hasn't been expressed before, or can truly do justice to what has happened? Sometimes all you CAN do is be sarcastic or make sick jokes.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: arianne on May 08, 2013, 04:43:59 AM ---Sometimes I wonder why it is people can slay vampires, hold down two part-time jobs on the side to pay the rent, untangle Fae politics, investigate mysterious murders on the side, and STILL have a romantic life....
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I find it no less plausible than holding down a full-time job, a happy marriage, a complex and busy social life, several fairly active internet presences, a couple of other incidental hobbies, and still having time to write a new chapter or do equivalent amounts of other writing-related stuff about 85% of weeks (and catch up before or after the weeks that's not possible.)
Galvatron:
One thing I could do without is a main character that is broke/down on their luck, working dead end job, not sucessful. That sorta thing.
Seen it, its been done, can we move on.... its almost as annoying as stories about "the chose one"
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