Seeking help. Am I just one giant walking cliché?

[Franzeska]

Thanks Fran, oddly enough I found that rather helpful... not really sure why it's odd either 

I'm pretty sure I would pick up another one, yes, and I too love those types of shows.

I'm just trying to think of ways to make the same thing "different".

*Ponders*

Heh.  It does seem weird, doesn't it?  I think it's because we think that we have to be "original", and we have this really warped idea about what constitutes "originality".  No idea is really that original.  What's important is that the little twists and specifics are distinctive, not the general idea.  After all, every urban fantasy series has done vampires and werewolves and fairies and...  But they all do them a little differently.  If you rip off everything, no one can say you were ripping off anything in particular.  

My best advice is to write yourself a big list of all of the series you can think of that are similar to your idea.  Which ones do you like?  Which ones are crap?  Why?  Which one has the best magic?  Most interesting morality?  Most likable characters?   Personally, I really love Yu Yu Hakusho because it's so unrelentingly hopeful and had all that cool Buddhist hell stuff.  I have a shameful weakness for Heaven Help Us but didn't really like the whitewashed Christianity of either that or Touched by an Angel.  I tend to like the weird foreign mythology stuff and the comic series with the loser heroes best.  If you're going for a Badass Tragic Loner hero, you might want to focus more on morality and redemption and skip the laughs.  Or you could have your hero think everything's all about Tragedy and Darkness but have your universe prove him wrong at every turn.

Another good way to get ideas is to ditch the genre fiction entirely and go find whatever mythology books your favorite authors were stealing from in the first place.  I just love the way The Dresden Files includes all those different types of werewolves and vampires--you can tell Jim wasn't just watching Buffy for research or something.  If you're writing about dead people, you'll want to think about what religions are "true" in your universe.  Is this basically Christianity plus ghostly hijinks?  Does what happens to you in the afterlife depend on what you believed while alive?  What country you lived in?  Your ethnic group?  How you died?  Are there rival pantheons?  (Speaking of shameful weaknesses, I always loved what Hercules: The Legendary Journies did with the afterlife.)  Again, is there something that was really cool in one of those other series?  Something you never want to see again ever?

Remember, the more places you steal from, the more your work is a classic reinterpretation yadda yadda instead of fanfic with the serial numbers filed off.    

[Anduriel]

Nice ideas

I think I will very much take your advice and get some ideas a-rolling.

I do like the idea of having multple pantheons and seeing where that goes. Again to quote something from the great Master JB... or rather paraphrase about teh story of the 3 blind men and the elephant, they were all right and all wrong; they just couldn't see the whole picture (Death Masks).

Just gotta put my own spin on things. Gotta get with the research!

[hamiltond]

Pick up a Dictionary of Angels.  It's got TONS of cool stuff in it. Do know how many personal angels you have.  Did you know that some of the are "Fallen" .  Seriously, if this is your subject it's a must have.

[Anduriel]

It's an interesting subject I know, and have delved into it before. However I'm not sure I want to be... religioun specific. Rather have a whole bunch of ideas running at the same time...

Could present a problem.

[hamiltond]

Who says you have to be?  Not to sound like to much of a geek but, Have you ever watched Babylon 5.  There usage of "angels" was unique.  I mentioned the book because its great as a refernce novel and it's got plenty of names and trivia you could use. 

[Anduriel]

Ah awesome, I shall look the book up. And nah, never watched much. I did see part of an episode where some dude was in a goldy brown space-suit type thing, then it opened up and a glowing thing with wings came out of it. One of those unique angels you were talking about?

[hamiltond]

Without totally geeking all over the place I'll attempt to explain.  The "Vorlon"  were an ancient race that had been watching out for (read; interfering with)  nearly every other race in the galaxy.  When one of the was forced to take of his "enviromental suit" he appeared to nearly every race to be THEIR version of a "Messanger from God"  except for this one race (not Humans) who couldn't physically see them at all. 

I'm not suggesting your character be and alien.  I'm saying that different religons have different "Messanger" A Hindu might see a scared cow, A Hebrew might see a burning bush, and a Christian or Muslim might see an angel.  But that will depend on who's looking.  In reality it's your main character standing there pissed of because someone hindu guy called him "O scared Cow" and tried to drink from his "Holy Udders".     See what I mean.

[Anduriel]

LMFAO! Totally hilarious! Something like this huh?


'And so I appeared unto him, to deliver my oh so holy message. And I’ll tell you this; I could oh so not be bothered. But I had a job to do, and… I did.

“Ahem… I… I come baring news for you worthy mor¬”

“Oh Holy sacred Cow! You have come to absolve me of all the great baddnesses of my life and bring us many pleasures into our village.”

“Mortal¬ I…what?”

Did he just call me a cow?!

“Oh sacred Cow, let me here drink the holy milk from your sacred udders.”

“W-what? Get off of¬”

It was whilst I was trying to remove the crazy man from my udders, that I noticed I actually had udders. I went to find the nearest mirror… or reflective surface, and there I was in all my glory.

A freaking cow!

I hate my job.'

Lol aw you made me giggle with that idea. You got some cool ideas, I think maybe you'd be better off writing it  (Hopefully that sound like the compliment I intended)

[hamiltond]

Nah, I suck.  I'm good to bounce stuff off of and I'm ok for catching little details.  I'm even good for helping out with the big pic.  But my mind wanders too much and I've got no stamina for the whole writing thing, I've got respect for people like yourself who do though. So run with it.   

[Anduriel]

Aw man, I'm sure you don't suck. And thanks :-) I shall see where this road takes me.

I'm not so great myself though, I have faults. Like my constant search for validation! lol. I mean what did you think of my lil reinactment (I know there wasn't much to go with)... if you don't mind me asking. I'm just intrigued.

[hamiltond]

ROFLMAO!!

[Anduriel]

Well I shall take that as a compliment lol.

And I will endevour to work on these ideas and see where the road takes me!

[Starbeam]

One thing to be careful of is that when you start consciously trying to be different from everything else, you lose the story and it becomes obvious.  It's like people who put elves in their stories, but then try to twist them in so many ways to keep them from being Tolkien elves.  It usually doesn't work very well.  An example of elves that did work, R.A. Salvatore's elves in the Demonwar books.  They don't really have much in common with Tolkien elves aside from living in the woods and being longer lived.  An example of elves consciously trying not to be Tolkien elves, and failing, are the elves in Eragon.  They're lithe and longlived and beautiful and live in the forest and are aloof from humans, and to make them different, they're vegetarians.

In other words, just write the story.  Don't worry about being too cliched until after that's done.  Any cliches might work themselves out in the writing.  Another thing you could try is to ask the friend why they think it's too much a cliche.  I can think of only a handful of movies/books with a similar premise, but few of em are widespread enough that too many people would see a comparison.

[sluice]

Ok, hey guys! My name is Julian.

And I would just like to say; my grammar sucks! I’m trying to fix it, but for now… if it’s bad… don’t say I didn’t warn ya! ;-p

Right, now on to business. I am a film and television production student, a musician and a martial arts enthusiast (WOHOO! Jim Butcher and I have something in common!) I try and write screen plays, and am now trying to turn my hand to writing novel-styled fiction. Or at least written fiction that is not in film/television screenplay format. Prose.

I very much enjoy contemporary/ urban fantasy.

And thus I wish to delve into the genre. However I get mixed receptions about my topics… and my writing style.

Clichés are a problem it would seem. I was going to write a short story about a dead guy  who arrives in the afterlife, only to find it’s not such a dream. He gets given a job and is either made a “gaurdian angel” type or has to solve a variety of possession related “crimes” of the afterlife. I wrote a first paragraph but got no further than that after being told it was too clichéd. Here is said paragraph:

You want to know the annoying thing about being dead? I mean; once you get over the initial ‘Agh, oh my god I just died a horrible and painful death and now where the hell am I?!’ thing. It’s the fact that there’s still jobs. Now, you’d think that once you die that you’d pass on to the next life where everything would be amazing and heavenly. Literally. Able to relax for eternity in a paradise beyond your wildest imagination. Well it just ain’t so. Well ok, it isn’t so if, like me; you weren’t a complete Saint when you were alive. In fact Saints are pretty much the only ones who do get the whole paradise beyond paradise deal. But hey, I’m not really allowed to talk to you guys about that. It’s a long story, and one I’m not risking my ass to tell ya. When I mentioned hell earlier? Well that can get pretty literal around here.

Now I do admit that it was… not great… not great at all.

Anyhow, I then went into a mild panic about whether or not I was actually too clichéd in my actions.

So I came together with this idea:

A Bounty Hunter who is an old soul who has been cursed to be constantly reborn only to die terrible deaths. However a second curse was laid on this person to remove all memory of the previous past lives. Then we would delve into why, how etc etc

How does this sound to people?

And also, how do you avoid a cliché or becoming to generic?

Wohoo! That was long winded! But finally done. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Julian

I like the character dying over and over again in terrible ways, but why have him forget?

[Shecky]

I like the character dying over and over again in terrible ways, but why have him forget?

Complete forgetting would be good for a series of vignettes that are resolved, say, many centuries down the line. Or it could be suppression instead, and he only remembers late in life so he can judge his own progress (or lack thereof) - brings home the emotional drama.