Rules Breaker

[rowyn]

haikujaguar commented in a recent post that long dream sequences in fiction are usually bad, and that authors should avoid 'em "unless you're good enough to Break the Rules". Which I have to agree with, but it also got me to thinking about exceptions: what kind of authors have pulled off the "generally bad" plot devices?

For making dream scenes that are relevant, interesting, and not trite, I thought of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. But there are other bad ideas that consistently grate on me when I see them in a novel. Like the ubercharacter -- the character who can not only do everything, but who'll beat the other characters in their own specialities. I'm not sure I can think of any exceptions to that one that work for me. River from "Firefly" almost does, but the truth is the more uber she gets the more annoying I find her, so I'm thinking not.

Another one is the "evil twin" syndrome, where the author composes a scene showing her protagonist doing some horrible thing -- ta-da! -- it's really an evil twin. Or, for bonus crappy-writing points, it's the real protagonist under the influence of drugs/mind control/red kryptonite/McGuffin du jour. The original Star Trek did this with a virus, and I think that episode was pretty good. The rehashes of it in episodes in the later series, however, were increasingly meh.

But I'm having a hard time coming up with exceptions, overall. So I throw this out to you: what tropes of fiction do you feel are consistently misused or abused when they show up in fiction? And what authors have managed to pull them off anyway?

Comments

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

Foreshadowing and exposition are the lifesaver of most other tropes, if introduced well before the trope is invoked. (They exterminate deus ex machina outright, and can cover almost any other trope.)

The one I have never seen these save, is the übercharacter (in even the milder versions that what you mention) — because the übercharacter is a gross failure to emulate social, physical and moral reality. So...if faced with a character that is a candidate for über, inordinate amount of effort to make them not-über is fine. (I hope I successfully have applied such effort to all candidates in my fiction.) And even then they may be mostly restricted to McGuffin plot and storyline functions.

Part of the problem is that my fiction reading has imploded since I went self-employed...don't really have decent background on recent reading. But Robert Heinlein is a good study in making characters non-über — Stranger In a Strange Land, Friday, The Number Of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Though Walls, Sailing Into The Sunset.

[kirzen.livejournal.com]

Personally. I think my favorite cliche bit is the episode in Star Trek : Next Gen when Data suddenly goes berzerk and takes over the entire ship, using Picard's voice commands and locking down the entire vessel before taking command of the bridge to pilot the ship to a nearby planet where Soon is waiting for him.

Despite the fact it was "Good guy suddenly goes back because of funky mind control" the way that it was handled was very shocking, Spiner did a superb job of acting out the sudden cold, calculated, mechanical manner.

That I find is the one dividing line in the whole "Good guy suddenly acts evil" if they can -accurately- and -convincingly- describe just why they're acting in such a manner, then it doesn't seem as trite and mechanical.

Its just like the whole 'Blackmail' garbage. Every time a main character gets blackmailed these days I want to throw popcorn at the screen and boo at the top of my lungs... Not because its not implausible, but because its horribly, pathetically cliche and no one can see to properly set the scene where the character would reasonably submit to it.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

It was all a dream...or was it?

David Mitchell does this well in Number 9 Dream, and I'm sure there are other good examples from writers that have done a lot with this. But there are an awful lot of, well, awful examples of it too.

[lady-anne.livejournal.com]

Walter Mitty is my favorite example of "out of real life" (day)dreaming sequences.

And the "Rose is Rose" daily strip has one of my favorite housewives going from housewife to biker babe in a heartbeat.

Doesn't mean everyone should do it but these two examples work for me.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I think the psychically linked soulmate thing is one of those really overused tropes and I cringe any time it's made a main selling point of the back cover blurb.

But I find myself reading the Stardoc series by SL Viehl anyway, and the Agent of Change series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. They throw in enough other cool stuff - medical emergencies in Stardoc, a great trading/starfaring setting in Agent of Change - that I forgive them for it. And it's usually not the focus.

[krud42.livejournal.com]

Terry Pratchett creates veritable works of art out of 'tropes', including various ubercharacters (Lord Vetinari, Granny Weatherwax), and your cliche'd character types (Captain Vimes the jaded but honest, just but ruthless, lawful but plays-by-his-own-rules street cop). He often plays them for humor, but they still work as fiction. (As far as I'm concerned, anyway.)