Worst. Adventure. Cliches.

Not that I have anything against it, but I've seen a lot of "Strong, bad girl protaginist kicks ass." kind of stuff lately.

Guys are boring apparently. XD

I'm getting sick of the "Find the magical item that is the only thing that can kill the evil....." There's way to many of those stories.

I'm getting sick of the "Find the magical item that is the only thing that can kill the evil....." There's way to many of those stories.

Phrases with periods after each word for emphasis. :P

Quest to save the world

and

Boy gets girl, girl falls into a coma, boy goes on a quest to get something from a remote location to cure girl and ends up saving the world and getting the girl

When a story ends off with a dream...you know like,
" he realised that it is a dream and went back to sleep"

Seconded. Also, how conveniently new abilities develop just before you need them. Automatic lose if they're discovered fighting the big bad villain. (See Anita Blake books for reference, if you want to. I recommend you didn't, though. Sanity is rather fun.)

Calvin : You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes : What mood is that?
Calvin : Last-minute panic.

When they have really good men at arms to train the protaganist and he is killed by some wimpy little dude. That gets on my nerves. I read this one novel and this dude who was 8 feet tall and fire spouted from under his feet was killed by and arrow going through his shoulder... And he was incased in like, and inch of steel. It was bull. =[

A hero who has to go find a magical ___ that's the only thing that kills an immortal, magical ___ to save a princess.
Also, too much romance in an adventure story is equally bad.
And having the hero's mother and/or father being killed and setting out to take vengance is really overdone.

I'm so glad my story doesn't really fall into any of those cliches :)

Hmm, how about the villain having a daughter who the hero falls in love with? I've seen that in a few, and it seems stupid.

I'm super SUPER sick of the whole "child is discovered to have remarkable powers!! revealed to him by some relative or close family friend who was secretly watching over him/her the entire time. said powers!! usually involve magic or swordsmanship or some combination thereof."

Oh, and while we're at it, can we disband with the whole long-winded expository speeches by said relatives or close family friends? Part of adventure is DISCOVERY, so let's get a move on!

The cliche I hate the most is if a sequal is made, the former protagonist's child will take on the legacy of "SUPER AWESOME FAMOUS HERO!!!" It severly bothers me.

And, thanks for the topic, and this may be off subject, but can someone clarify if my plotline is too cliched? As in, my protagonist is a girl, but not super bad ass, and her mother was murdered, though she doesn't seek revenge. Too cliche?

I came across this website when doing a little research for my novel. I THINK it's a list of jungle jokes that Disney employees are allowed to use on their tours. Pretty freakin' hilarious---I'm definitely going to try to work one or two into my story. Unfortunately, I still haven't found out what kind of trees lions hang out by in the veldt.

http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~yoda/jungle.htm

"We have some pretty smart animals back in the jungle. Take monkeys, for example. You ask them to name one of their relatives, and they go ape. And snakes, they're pretty clever too. Ask them what the 19th letter of the alphabet is and they'll say S-S-S-S-S. Tigers are known for their intelligence, but you can't trust them. Yeah, you never know when they might be a lyin' (lion). But I think rhinoceroses are by far the smartest animal in the jungle. Just last week, I asked what four minus four is, and he said nothing."

"Look at that! It's a large Bengal Tiger. Now, Bengal Tigers are known to leap over FIVE THOUSAND feet in order to catch their prey. That is...when you throw them out of an airplane."

Come on, How can you call it an adventure if there's no world to save? And if there's no girl to get why save the world? Come on people! If you want cliches how about these Not Lord of Rings novels. (I'm looking at you Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan, well, I can't really look at you can I?) Also, Dragons stealing gold. Exactly why are they doing this? Are they selling this stuff at pawn shops to make child support or what?

How about stories that start with "ooooh~ mysterious prophesies of so and so. BEWARE!"
Just once I want to see a story that goes on with no preordained future to think about.

I'm starting to think my story might not be an adventure after all. Coz I don't have of these things in any shape or form. *runs away to find another genre that will accept a contract killer*

I think my biggest pet peeve is when, after defeating the Dark Lord/Evil Emporer/Ultimate Baddie, everything in the world suddenly goes back to normal. It's like everything that happened got erased and life just suddenly became upgraded to perfect. **tears out hair** It makes me so mad when an author ends the story like that, because to me it feel like they're cheating and it just makes the story so lame, especially if someone who has either been killed, mained, or what have you suddenly becomes whole or comes back from the dead. It renders the entire story cheap and makes it as though their sacrifice wasn't worth much.

I would much rather read a story where they triumph in the end, but still have an ongoing struggle to put everything to rights, have time to mourn those that died during the struggle, and learn to live within an imperfect world, but that's just me.

Ugh, I hate the whole 'prophecy-based, young magical child gains incredible power' theme. It drives me insane. 'Save the princess from ultimate evil', yeah, that's out too. I like to write stories with relatively average people (in a world where magic is on par with technology, it's not too difficult to find someone who knows a lot about it) thrown into very paradoxical, dangerous, mentally-damaging situations. Another way I like to screw with people's minds is to give the big baddie a power boost at the end and have him kill the main character. Or, have a weakling kill the main character. Or just plain have the main character be the baddie and have him win. It really throws people for a loop when I they figure out that everything is NOT going to turn out alright.

My main character is a kind of bad-ass female protagonist, but she is also incredibly manipulative, violent, hasty and vulgar. I don't think that many people will like her.

I totally agree with all of these. Another one that I hate is the emo hero. You know, the guy that has at least four breakdowns within the novel, screaming to the world that everything is hopeless, but wait! Then, he finds something worth fighting for, and tears off in a blaze of glory!

I mean, I understand trying to humanize charecters, but if someone is the hero (even if it is the reluctant hero), they're not going to just go on an emo tirade >.<

Aw..my story has a little bit of a few of these. My MC is a slightly badass female hired asassin who was abandoned at birth but is contacted by her parents because old rival of the parents has set out to kill them and everyone they love. There isn't any cheesy world-saving, though, at least I have that.

Not that I have anything against it, but I've seen a lot of "Strong, bad girl protaginist kicks ass." kind of stuff lately.

Uh, oh. I was going to make the dangerous captain with the bad reputation a woman in my story. I was going for something different. I didn't realize it was a cliche.

Tom A.

Hi guys,

I'm new here (I mean, really new) and this is one of the first few things I've stumbled upon.

I was looking for a bit of help and a few pointers about what specifically to stay away from, but this thread seems to contain big red Xs on pretty generic plots that almost any stroy could fall into. Also, the comments are coming off as kind of biased- another thing I was hoping that as writers we could stay away from while giving pointers. I understand that opinion is what gets us writing, but when we're helping eachother, saying what we don't like isn't going to do it most of the time... it'll probably just scare people off from writing the idea they have in their head.

Instead of proclaiming undying hatred for a certain category of plot, maybe get more specific?

Not saying that this thread isn't helpful, just it's kind of disheartening to the beginner in writing.

I see what you mean, but threads like these should always be taken with about a kilo of salt. If you want a more serious, specific thread to discuss the worst parts of adventure stories, then by all means start one. I think this is more for general ranting and raving against the genre of choice, probably because we're all having our asses handed to us by said genre.

~Ally~

If you're going to have a timed bomb or other timed device of ultimate evil, please don't have the protagonist disarm it within the last seven seconds. ;)

Now come on, just 'cause it's the world doesn't mean it's not worth saving!

Non-fatal bullet wounds to the left shoulder are pretty commonplace among the brawly tough-guy type.

Oh, and how the evil mastermind/money hungry corporate so-and-so/mad scientist or whatever surrounds himself with guards and fortresses and such until the very end, only to wind up being a master duelist...and wound the protagonist with a non-fatal bullet wound to the left shoulder.

Or when the protagonists fight their way through a swathe of enemies only to surrender at once to the next swathe of enemies.

Or when the protagonists surrender to a swathe of enemies and escape by fighting their way out of that same swathe of enemies.

And this one is more prevalent in cinema and video games than literature, I think, but...when the evil mastermind has the opportunity to destroy the protagonists easily at the beginning of the quest but doesn't, and then winds up dying at a later, better time for the heroes.

1. Talking bad guy. Look, I know you want to get your evil plan out there for everyone to marvel at, which is why you [i]follow through[/i] with your plan. Don't sit there and brag about it.

2. Bullet-stopping windshields. I swear, every car in a movie has 'em. The bullets break the windshield, sure, but as long as you bob your head a little bit, you're fine. Naturally.

3. Bullet-stopping tables. Turn a wood table on its side, and that doesn't make you bullet proof.

4. Time-lapse. As longas one person is moving in slow motion, the other person can reload a Revolutionary War pistol in the time it takes for the slow-mo guy to aim a rifle at twenty feet. A rare miss for the Gibsonator.

5. Knives. If you ever run into a situation where it's a good idea to drop the gun and draw the knife, you might as well drop the knife too. You're already fucked.

6. see Hot Fuzz.

7. Hitting the ground and rolling. If I had a dollar for every time somebody "tucked into a roll" and escaped injury, I'd have, like, three hundred bucks. You, oh tuck-and-roll writer, were clearly the kid who hogged the swingset at recess, and therefore never fought anybody.

MurderDeathKill- I know one that bugs you that you left out! I can tell, just by reading your post that you hate it when the good guy runs out in the open, followed by a spray of machine gun bullets, and is able to outrun the bullets, staying just one step ahead.

That one always makes me laugh, because my when my brother was going through OCS for the Marines, the first time he did that sort of simmulation, he thought he could outrun the bullets, and he got totally pasted.

:) Jen

Deleted because it was a duplicate.

Deleted because I hate posting the same thing three times in a row!