I have issues with promising not to do things in my writing. For one thing, I do not have this strange instinctive horror for anything that might possibly smell of a cliche… as far as I can tell all my favorite books are stuffed full of cliches.
Secondly, I hate to limit my options like that.
So I had been mostly ignoring the meme going around until I ran into Kate Elliot's 11 things in fantasy/sf that I don’t promise not to use or keep using in my writing
And so, suddenly inspired, here are…
11 Cliches which I have used in my writing because I think that it's no fair that I should miss out on them just because they have been done before…
1: Space Pirates — Yum! (I've given mine an entire universe to play in. See Black Flag)
2: Galactic Empires — I just have a thing for imperial courts. I don't know why I should do without just because I'm working in an interstellar environment.
3: Most beautiful women — I'm perfectly willing to hand out this title to any face that can launch a thousand ships, and I don't care that the greeks got there first. (Large chunks of the plot of the Song of Asolde series revolve around the fact that the protagonist's sister is famously beautiful. See Racciman's World)
4: Protagonists with magic powers — I generally, but not always, favor quirky over brute strength, but what's the point of writing a fantasy if nobody gets to use magic? (See Dark Moon Light)
5: Elves and dragons — There is no excuse for this, but I don't care. They're just cool, okay?
6: Melodramatic names — I couldn't do space pirates without them. Not only are the names of the Brotherhood of the Black Flag melodramatic, but nearly all of them are pirated. It seemed appropriate.
7: Vanished Alien “progenitors” — I wanted an excuse for some pretty unlikely worlds. So sue me. (See Cultivator Universe)
8: Orphans — My characters' parents keep wanting to step in and save the day; they seem to think its their job, or something. Killing some of those parents off before the story starts prevents this from getting out of hand.
9: Items of Power — I'm a techie. I need my toys.
10: Characters with titles — Lords and Ladies, Princes and Princesses, Captains and Admirals… I like to work with characters who are making decisions that effect many more lives than just their own. It adds yet another layer of complications to everything.
11: Guys risking life and limb for the girls they love — I enjoy this situation far too much to leave it alone. I let the girls do some rescuing too, of course, but only because I don't want them to get bored and go on strike.
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