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right, thought i might post a thread here, what would you calss as a boring plot? one thats been done to many times (even if written well) or another reason. please say why you think the plots are boring and how maby you could twist it and make it different.
Stereotypes that never change. It's boring because you feel like you've already read it a hundred times. A good plot (to me) affects you deep down so that you feel for the characters and you just can't stop reading. Being unique is also a big bonus
Anything that ends 'and then I woke up' or something similar. I really hate it when the conflict resolution relies on some new element. Same thing applies to characters that develop new unmentioned superpowers in the last chapter. Too powerful characters also make a plot boring. Like Pug in the most recent Raymond Feist series. Everyone struggles to fight supreme bad guy, many die, then super hero comes back and saves everyone without breaking a sweat.
One that's too confuising/too simplistic with lack of relations/emotions between characters.
1. Bad guys that want to destroy/rule the world for no other reason than the fact that it's there. 2. Stories that start out with a seemingly ordinary MC who later finds out he or she is really a [insert really powerful, super intimidating mage/wizard/warlock/witch/sorcerer name here]. 3. When the heroes can do no wrong. Like, say our great hero Pinky (for lack of a better name) 'accidentally' made a mistake that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Then, 350 pages later, Pinky finds out that in those hundreds of thousands of people there was a young wizard who, if he had lived, would have grown up to maim, slaughter, and brutally tickle untold more numbers of innocent people. Ergo, Pinky really saved the world from a fate worse than death. 4. Happily ever after's. Everybody survives, the guy gets the girl, the girl's parents/older brothers decide that the guy really isn't so bad after all, and rays of golden sunshine shimmer down from the gods above. OK, not everyone needs to die or experience a cataclysmic heartbreak, but no real victory comes without some kind of loss. 5. Really powerful wizards/mages that have the power to save the world, but don't do so for their own unscrupulous reasons.
Any story involving an afterlife where the authorial depiction of the happiness of the deceased characters completely invalidates the emotional impact of their death. *cough*brandonsandersonmistborn*cough*
wow, i didn't actually think i would get any replies taimat, your second point is my writing wrapped up in a sentance. the MC's are always ordinary to start with but in the book discover somethig that will change their lives: they get magical powers; ment to be king oe sometimes even both, maybe i should stere away from that kind of stuff!
huh, I guess Harry Potter is out for most of you
But Harry Potter was never really an ordinary boy, number one. And he didn't turn out the be the world's greatest wizard either. He was pretty average on the wizardry front, actually. So it's cool. I'm talking about stories in which an ordinary bar wench goes on an important quest with some majorly powerful wizard or a gallant knight or a wicked troll or some other cliché, and then, after being practically useless for most of the journey, she finds a magical tome or amulet, or gets struck by lightning, or gets really pissed off and therefore awakens the magical powers she really had all along. Sorry to hear that describes your writing, fantasy girl. But that's been done. A million times over. You can always see it coming, and each time it happens, I die a little inside.
The last book of Harry Potter failed miserably, falling into my 'and then he wakes up' catagory. Absolutely nothing that was important to the storyline was mentioned in the earlier books. That said I did enjoy the earlier books.
