"Plots We See All The Time"

[rhetoretician]

I recently ran across Strange Horizons's list of "plots we see all the time," which is a subset of stories they don't want to have submitted. (Strange Horizons is a magazine of fantasy and science fiction.)  I found the list very entertaining (although perhaps a trifle painful) and so I reprint it here in full. If you want to see the original, the

Comments

[girlspell]

Well, I already see a LOT of novels and sci fi short stories with some of this. Even movies as in especially no.31. Examples of 32 are hilarious

LOL..I love your "location" Ah the music...

Hope you're having a good holiday.

[rhetoretician]

Hi Rachel. Yeah, they do. Hope you're having a good holiday too.

[rosathome]

That's a scarily long list. Although I have deftly avoided most of these by writing only about people, and specifically about people who live on planet earth. Though some of them do magic. And keep dragons. Oh, well.

[rhetoretician]

Hm, several of them are about people, aren't they? And ordinary people? But it's good that you've avoided them. The dragons are a problem, though...

[mickawber]

Hee!

The funny thing is, each of these reminded me of at least one classic Asimov/Bradbury/Niven/Whoever story.

Which I suppose is precisely the point!

And...

Mmmmmmmm, latkes! X

[tunxeh]

It might be an amusing exercise to list some classics, or at least, published fiction of decent quality, that fit each of these.

3. Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead.
4a. Wizard of Oz (movie version).
7c. Does it count if the redemption part happens earlier? Say, Les Miserables?
9e. Twelve Monkeys
16. My favorites in this subgenre are D. J. Heydt's A Point of Honor and Will Shetterly's The Tangled Lands (both of which could also qualify as 4b).
17. Stranger in a Strange Land
20. Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End (now available free online, but I read it in paperback).
21b. The classic example of this is by Borges. I forget the title offhand.
23. Niven, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

[rhetoretician]

A lot of texts in there I love, Hex. The time travel scenario, I think, is much more complicated in Twelve Monkeys than is suggested in the 9e plot summary. That movie is another classic plot, that the past as it exists is the past as you changed it, you just didn't recognize it as such. *Shiver.*

[rhetoretician]

I think each of these ideas was the "new and fresh thing" once. I was most amused by the "writer's block" plots. Can't you just picture it? "Well, okay, I can't think of anything to write, so I'll write about someone who can't think of anything to write!"

Latkes are great, but the stuff is coming out of my pores...

[dolorous_ett]

Here via tunxeh - thanks for sharing this fascinating (and worrying) list!