Do Not Write Like This!!! A List of Tired Plots.

Photo: One of the banners from www.strangehorizons.com.


This is a partial list of plot elements seen way too often in the business, from Strange Horizons, an online speculative fiction magazine.  Click the link to see the whole list, which I'll blog in partials.  (Strange Horizons allows this list to be published, in case you were wondering about copyrights.) 

After every story of this genre I write, I check out this list (of 51 things, most of them sub-headed, which will, as I said, be blogged about later as separate blog entries) and make sure that none of my stories in any way comes close to matching any of these.  You would think that this would be difficult, right?  Surely there's something in my story that has to match one of these.  Actually, no.  And stop calling me Shirley.  Sorry.  Anyway, upon a close inspection, I see that time and again, my stories do not match any of these main plot elements.  This doesn't mean my story is any good, of course, but it at least means that it won't get rejected solely for being one of these things.

If you've read as much of this genre as I have, or if you've watched as many movies or shows in this genre as I have, a few of these may remind you of one of the stories, books, shows or movies that you already think of as one of the worst you've ever come across.  I've read a lot of amateurish stuff--much of it self-published--that fit quite a few of these.  And they were all very, very bad.

And so I offer these to you, should you ever want to write and publish in this genre.  How many of them do you recognize in something truly awful?  (Not that you would ever do this, but comparisons to my published writing will earn an immediate delete when I moderate the comments!)

P.S.--2a sounds familiar, especially in lots of Stephen King's works, but I would argue that it's not the main plot element.  Jack Torrance in The Shining, for example, definitely has writer's block, but it's due to the evil of the Overlook messing with him, plus a healthy dose of the recovering man's blues.  Besides that, he was able to type "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" several thousands of times, sometimes in poetic form.

1. Person is (metaphorically) at point A, wants to be at point B. Looks at point B, says "I want to be at point B." Walks to point B, encountering no meaningful obstacles or difficulties. The end. (A.k.a. the linear plot.)
2. Creative person is having trouble creating.
   1. Writer has writer's block.
   2. Painter can't seem to paint anything good.
   3. Sculptor can't seem to sculpt anything good.
   4. Creative person's work is reviled by critics who don't understand how brilliant it is.
   5. Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.
3. Visitor to alien planet ignores information about local rules, inadvertantly violates them, is punished.
   1. New diplomat arrives on alien planet, ignores anthropologist's attempts to explain local rules, is punished.
4. Weird things happen, but it turns out they're not real.
   1. In the end, it turns out it was all a dream.
   2. In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.
   3. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.
   4. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we've seen are part of the novel.
5. An AI gets loose on the Net, but the author doesn't have a clear concept of what it means for software to be "loose on the Net." (For example, the computer it was on may not be connected to the Net.)
6. Technology and/or modern life turn out to be soulless.
   1. Office life turns out to be soul-deadening, literally or metaphorically.
   2. All technology is shown to be soulless; in contrast, anything "natural" is by definition good. For example, living in a weather-controlled environment is bad, because it's artificial, while dying of pneumonia is good, because it's natural.
   3. The future is utopian and is considered by some or many to be perfect, but perfection turns out to be boring and stagnant and soul-deadening; it turns out that only through imperfection, pain, misery, and nature can life actually be good.
   4. In the future, all learning is soulless and electronic, until kid is exposed to ancient wisdom in the form of a book.
   5. In the future, everything is soulless and electronic, until protagonist (usually a kid) is exposed to ancient wisdom in the form of a wise old person who's lived a non-electronic life.
7. Protagonist is a bad person. [We don't object to this in a story; we merely object to it being the main point of the plot.]
   1. Bad person is told they'll get the reward that they "deserve," which ends up being something bad.
   2. Terrorists (especially Osama bin Laden) discover that horrible things happen to them in the afterlife (or otherwise get their comeuppance).
   3. Protagonist is portrayed as really awful, but that portrayal is merely a setup for the ending, in which they see the error of their ways and are redeemed. (But reading about the awfulness is so awful that we never get to the end to see the redemption.)
8. A place is described, with no plot or characters.
9. A "surprise" twist ending occurs. [Note that we do like endings that we didn't expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action. But note, too, that we've seen a lot of twist endings, and we find most of them to be pretty predictable, even the ones not on this list.]
   1. 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.
   2. Creatures are described as "vermin" or "pests" or "monsters," but in the end it turns out they're humans.
   3. The author conceals some essential piece of information from the reader that would be obvious if the reader were present at the scene, and then suddenly reveals that information at the end of the story. [This can be done well, but rarely is.]
   4. Person is floating in a formless void; in the end, they're born.
   5. Person uses time travel to achieve some particular result, but in the end something unexpected happens that thwarts their plan.
   6. The main point of the story is for the author to metaphorically tell the reader, "Ha, ha, I tricked you! You thought one thing was going on, but it was really something else! You sure are dumb!"
   7. A mysteriously-named Event is about to happen ("Today was the day Jimmy would have to report for The Procedure"), but the nature of the Event isn't revealed until the end of the story, when it turns out to involve death or other unpleasantness. [Several classic sf stories use this approach, which is one reason we're tired of seeing it. Another reason is that we can usually guess the twist well ahead of time, which makes the mysteriousness annoying.]
   8. In the future, an official government permit is required in order to do some particular ordinary thing, but the specific thing a permit is required for isn't (usually) revealed until the end of the story.
   9. Characters speculate (usually jokingly): "What if X were true of the universe?" (For example: "What if the universe is a simulation?") At the end, something happens that implies that X is true.
   10. Characters in the story (usually in the far future and/or on an alien planet) use phrases that are phonetic respellings or variations of modern English words or phrases, such as "Hyoo Manz" or "Pleja Legions," which the reader isn't intended to notice; in the end, a surprise twist reveals that there's a connection to 20th/21st-century English speakers.
10. Someone calls technical support; wacky hijinx ensue.
    1. Someone calls technical support for a magical item.
    2. Someone calls technical support for a piece of advanced technology.
    3. The title of the story is 1-800-SOMETHING-CUTE.

Zero Dark Thirty

photo: from the film's Wikipedia page

I'm posting this entry quite a bit after I'd seen the film because I wanted to post the entry for Silver Linings Playbook before Sunday's Academy Awards--as at least Jennifer Lawrence should win something from that very good film--and because I wanted to post an entry about the Awards show itself, leaving a few days in between each entry, to give my readers time to breathe between my entries.  And to not overdo it.  So, anyway, this post is probably happening about a week after I'd seen this film.

This film is not to be missed, and, as with The Hobbit, I'd heard some things about it that made me question whether I'd want to see a two-and-a-half hour film that ended up being disappointing.  But once again, I needn't have worried.  This was a great film and quite an experience in of itself.

That says a lot, because we all knew how this one would end up.  What we didn't know, though, is how it would get there, and for that, the experience of watching this is worth it.  The movie is essentially a director's showcase, although all of the actors deliver solid performances, especially Jessica Chastain--who is very suddenly everywhere, and in every type of movie imaginable--and Jennifer Uhle, whose character plays with your expectations for awhile until suddenly hers, and Chastain's, are good friends.

Jessica Chastain's character changes rather dramatically during the movie; the turning point is when she loses a friend quite close to her.  (This is a situation an astute viewer should see coming, though when it does, the scene still packs a solid punch.)  She's the quiet observer during the interrogation scenes (more on those later), but when she's spoken to by the prisoner, she delivers a solid, professional answer--though her character clearly feels for his plight.  (Viewers should keep in mind, as she did, that he is a professional killer and liar--and would do both again.)  This keeps her humane, yet growing in her job, and shows that she won't back down when others might.

She becomes more haggard, emotionally and psychologically, rather than physically; I didn't see it when another character comments about how she's looking like she's falling to pieces.  Frankly, Jessica Chastain never looks like she's falling to pieces.  If she lost an arm in a battle scene, she'd look beautiful doing it.   

(An aside here.  A friend disagreed with me about this, but it seemed unrealistic to me that not one single male commented to her character about how beautiful she is.  Now, I know that they were all professionals, and I know this is a no-nonsense movie directed by a very talented [and Oscar-winning] no-nonsense female director [Kathryn Bigelow], but it is not conceivable to me that not one single guy, in a male-dominated, stressful, testosterone-laden profession, would comment, lewdly or not, about how incredibly striking she is--especially given that Jessica Chastain is one of the most classically beautiful actresses to come along in quite some time, and also given that a large percentage of the shots of her in this movie are close-ups.  In short, her character did not hide her beauty [except to put on wigs to hide her red hair], and the camera constantly zoomed in to show it.  There, I said it.)

Anyway, though she gets emotionally and psychologically haggard, that seems more to do with the bureaucratic nightmare that is her job, rather than what she has to go through at her job.  This, despite the fact that she almost gets blown up in a restaurant (a very effectively shocking scene) and shot up in her car.  (Surprising that the shooters didn't wait just a few seconds longer for her there.)  But she does change, and not to the dismay, too much, of her (male) superiors.  They constantly comment on her intelligence, by the way (and she is very smart), but never once about...well, never mind.  Anyway, it gets to a point where she's writing in large red figures the number of days that have passed since she, in her opinion, positively proved where Usama bin Laden was (referred to as UBL frequently in the movie--not OBL, for those who called him Osama; keep that in mind when you hear the next Obama / Osama diatribe).  But finally she gets the deployment she's been asking for.

And what a sequence of montages that is, all of them sans Chastain's character, as the elite troops go in there, ostensibly to see what there is to see, as most of the people involved are not 100% sold on the fact that UBL was even there.  (The leader of this troop says he's still willing to go in only because of Chastain's character's bullheaded certainty.)  The scenes of how they (maybe?) did this are intense and gripping--again, despite the fact that you know how it's going to turn out.  This part of the movie alone is worth the price of admission, though it shouldn't be the only reason to see this film.

Now, back to the interrogation scenes.  One of the reasons I was hesitant to see this film is because I'd heard and read that it supposedly okayed the use of the torture that it depicts.  I don't necessarily agree with this.  Firstly, the characters clearly don't like what they're doing (the guy who's "good" at it is so disgusted by it that he leaves the area) and they know that Congressional leaders are talking about them doing it--and they know that they can't be the one caught with one of the instruments in hand.  This shows me that the movie-makers are showing that it was done, that the people didn't necessarily find joy in it (which would've been even more disturbing), and that...well, they got exactly the information they needed because of it.  If not seeing a character make a speech and take a moral stance against it means to you that the film-makers were condoning it, then you would think they were doing just that.  But, really, what they were doing is showing that it was done, and showing that nobody liked it, and showing that they knew they couldn't be caught doing it, and showing that it gave them the information that ultimately led them to bin Laden--all the while showing the reality of that whole situation.  If the movie-makers had taken a moral stance about it in this movie, that would've been completely out-of-line and unrealistic, considering what they were trying to do.  They were trying to show how one woman, and her colleagues, got the information that ultimately led them to bin Laden.  Period.  To see a film about the morality of that type of interrogation, you'll have to go elsewhere.  That particular criticism against this film is unfair and untrue.  They didn't sanitize and condone that type of interrogation.  They depicted it, and that's all.

The second reason I was hesitant to see this film is that James Gandolfini apologized for his portrayal of his character.  As I watched the film, I tried to figure out why, and by the end, I still hadn't figured it out.  I am still confused about this.  He's not in the film long enough to create a standing and unfading characterization, and his character doesn't say or do anything that would come close to needing an apology for.  He's not a weenie; he's not a blowhard; he's not too tough; he's not anything at all that would need an apology.  He questions whether Chastain's team ever agrees about anything, which is reasonable to do, because they don't agree about anything.  He questions whether anyone can concretely prove what they're asserting, which is appropriate, because they can't concretely prove what they're asserting--and they are not all, in fact, asserting the same thing, to the same degree.  He's a political businessman looking at the engineers of this thing, wondering if they're doing the right thing, wondering if he'll be doing the right thing--whether he agrees, as the CIA Director, to sell the plan to the President or not.  And he's clearly appreciating everybody while sort of shaking his head at them all at the same time--which, again, is completely appropriate for his character to do.  I don't know what Gandolfini was apologizing for, unless it was the hairjob, which was indeed terrible.  Other than that, I just don't know.

So that's it.  Sorry for the long review, but there was a lot to say because there was a lot to see.  And there's a whole lot to like, so go see this one.

P.S.--The Academy's snub of Bigelow for Best Director is much harder for me to digest than its snub of Ben Affleck, who also did a great directing job, but with immensely easier material to direct, for a movie that was much more of an actor's showcase, rather than a director's showcase, as Bigelow's film is.  This is one of the best-directed films I've seen in years (and I agree with a critic's announcement that it blows Argo out of the water, and I liked Argo), and is surely one of the best (if not the best) directed films of this year--in a year of many very well-directed films.  (I admittedly haven't seen Life of Pi yet, which is high on my list of things to do--but that film, from what I've read, is heavily CGI.)  This film was a better film, and a better-directed film, than Bigelow's own award-winning Hurt Locker, which I also liked a lot.  She has already won directing awards for this film from the New York's Film Critics Circle, as well as from similar circles from other cities.  (Affleck won the Director's Award.)  I'd have to say that she deserves the Oscar more than anyone nominated, which says a lot, since I love Spielberg's work, and he was brilliant enough to cast me in one of his films.  But this movie was better-directed, and much harder to direct, than Lincoln was.  I can only assume that her snub was due to the unwarranted political firestorm attached to this film.