However, I frequently complain that there aren’t any original stories. I want something more than the Hero’s Journey archetype, I want more than the white-girl-finds-magic-powers-and-is-UBER-SPECIAL plotline. Because let’s be real, it gets boring to read that after a while. When I can successfully identify the major plot twists in a book by reading the book jacket summary, there is a problem.
But nothing is original. So how does this work?
I personally hate the Hero’s Journey story, but it works for this example. Grandaddy Tolkien wrote a fantastic story under the name The Lord of The Rings, which you may have heard of. A few decades later, another guy you probably don’t know named George Lucas got bEST IDEA EVAR to make a movie called Star Wars. And then a few decades after that this fairly obscure woman named JK Rowling came up with a book idea that made a few bucks called Harry Potter. However, if you go into it, they all have pretty much the same story. And everyone knows that.
The question then is, why does this work? How can people literally recycle the same story and characters and continue to make money? Are people just gullible? Do they think slapping a new name on something makes it different somehow?
The personal philosophy that I have maintained over the years is that people want the same story in different packaging. If a slightly new angle can be brought onto it, people will eat up that new facet of the story. True, all three given examples might have a chosen one who meets a mentor with a beard who eventually dies, and a prophecy that they cannot escape no matter how hard they try, blah, blah, blah, Star Wars and Harry Potter do have something going for them. The unique facet is the setting, and the affect it has on the story.
In Star Wars, first of all, it’s in space. That alone is pretty cool. But it is set in a science fiction world that doesn’t have that same shiny newness that is so common in sci-fi. Instead, there are nitty gritty politics and details and aliens and public relations and the FORCE which is a legit magic system. Those all warp the Hero’s Journey just enough that it appears fresh and different and new.
Same deal with Harry Potter. Flying motorcycles and muggles and dementors, and away we go. Suddenly it isn’t the same old story that we used to know. It’s startling and new. It presents new horizons. It’s like walking out of your bedroom expecting the same old floorplan and winding up in the middle of the underworld instead. That draws people in, despite the inherent...em...lack of creativity in the concepts of the story.
But that’s okay. Because people just want prettier packaging than the last time.
Another example of this in the opposite direction is Eragon. (I...kind of have a bone to pick with this series since a lot of people compare me to Christopher Paolini, which irks me because I never liked it in the first place.) Eragon is...how do I say this, literally the Lord of the Rings. Except not all the dragons are evil. Like, there’s even an Arwen character, it’s ridiculous. Oh, people still liked the series. How many books were there, four? Five? I think four, Inheritance was the fourth one. And they were BFF books, to steal the term from Patrick Rothfuss (Big Fat Fantasy). But they told the same story as Tolkien did, without that facet, and people quickly drew the similarities, and grew bored, at least according to the company I keep.
So you can’t just produce a carbon copy. That won’t work very well. Unless you’re Christopher Paolini, who’s parents put their house on mortgage to promote their son’s self-published book.
Excuse me.
So, to quote the late Tadashi Hamada you have to “look for another angle.” (I’m sorry for the feels). Look at a cliche, and say to yourself “This is cool, but what if...?” People will love it. I promise you, if you go over almost any successful book series, you will find that it’s just a reworking of an original story. To have originality, you don’t need to be original. All you need to do is put a new spin on something that has already been done.
To get your creative juices going, I’ll include a few cliches and how they could be reworked (Although the fabulous thing about creativity is that you can do something completely different than me!)
Instead of: It was all a dream
Try: Writing in a rational explanation within your world and magic system as to why everything is so surreal. (That isn’t dreams) Trust me, it will work in your favor. Just make sure not make it too exposition-y.
Instead of: So-and-so is rude because of bad parenting
Try: Living a normal family life and still being rude. People like this exist, I assure you.
Instead of: The CHoSEn onE
Try: Pulling a Lego Movie and making the prophecy fake (Biggest plot twist ever). Or have the chosen one be defeated. Or have him be the source of religious/cultural conflict of a prophecy so no one wants him to be the Chosen One, such as a slave becoming the chosen one, an inferior race, a different race entirely, etc. (Brandon Sanderson kind of did this is Mistborn).
Instead of: Your newly rich heroine is the only one to be nice to her servants because everybody else is just plain rude and thinks of them as inferior (This one pisses me off to no end. I’ve had people try to argue that this is a cliche, but I have never seen any book do it any other way, kill me now)
Try: Having everyone generally treat their servants well. Because generally this is what people do. It’s much more effective if there is one character who is rude and especially mean to their servants, because then we will hate them even more.
(This one kind of ties into the last one)
Instead of: Everyone else getting all dressed up and ‘fake’, and your main character staying simple and ‘genuine’
(Again, this is one of my pet peeves)
Try: Letting your main character get fancied up. Pretty much every girl I know loves to wear big fancy dresses and lots of makeup. Even if it does get annoying after a while, BIG. SWOOSHY. DRESSES. Don’t feed me any crap about how your MC ‘just prefers the simpler things’ and then Love Interest immediately sees her because she is the only one who isn’t trying to hide who she is. Maybe he could like her for something else? (Hint: Guys go for girls who have similar interests as them. Trust me, I’ve asked them. She can wear pretty dresses and still like shooting deer)
Instead of: The king is a merciless tyrant who treats everyone cruelly, including his wife/children. And they particularly hate the protagonist for no justifiable reason, but he’s a dick so that’s good enough.
Try: Making the king a nicer guy? He can snap on occasion due to stress, but perhaps the poor economic conditions can be explained by a famine in the eastern quarter, not the king being an almighty douche. And if he’s going to hate the protagonist, a) give some sort of friendship-redemption arc. It will be more interesting to read, promise, and b) GIVE HIM AN ACTUAL REASON. Maybe she wounded his pride in front of a foreign dignitary.
Instead of: The brooding love interest who is ‘dangerous’ but still is very sweet (*headdesk*)
Try: having them be not as nice as the MC would like. Maybe they really are rude. And if you want a sweet love interest, go right ahead into making your love interest sweet and effervescent and bubbly, because your audience is a lot more likely to melt from cute and not view the relationship as sketchy.
So there you go. There are tons of other cliches that could be twisted around to create something ‘original.’ Try doing what I did for this post, and looking up some common cliches and think of ways to twist them around. Go in a completely opposite direction, or combine it with a few other things to create something new from old. Remember: Originality doesn’t mean ‘fresh’ it means ‘refreshed.’
