i09's Top Ten Stories Editors Are Sick of · 12:48am Apr 23rd, 2014
I had this come up in my feed and thought you guys would like a look at it. Basically, it's a list of the top then types of stories or topics that editors are, at the moment, deluged with to the point that they really, really, are tired of getting. It doesn't mean they won't sell per se, and they didn't get a massive sample (for example, they have asked no one from Baen), but it's still worth a look if you're thinking of sending your work into a publisher anytime soon and don't want to have a hefty bit of bias against your work right from the start.
Come to think of it, we could probably assemble a list like this for Fimfic as well. Hmm ... the top ten most overdone stories on Fimfiction. Not a bad idea...
Oh, and I should have be getting Dead Silver back from my editor tomorrow, which means the release is finally just around the corner!
I'm an editor and I have a few of them, but I don't think anyone here cares.
2036593
I'm curious on both accounts. But then I'm always curious.
2036602
You really want me to give you them?
Or would like to see the idea?
2036593
I'd be interested in seeing what you would put on the list.
For me, I think that a lot of the time, it's not the stories themselves that bother me as much as it is the cliches in the stories.
At the top of my list is the "Coming out of the closet" story. Thankfully, I haven't actually seen any of these stories around here in a long time, but back in the early days of the fandom, it seemed like there were a lot of them. I enjoy some good shipping, but the stories need a better conflict than "I don't know if my friends/family will accept me when they find out that I like mares." Because I'm pretty sure that everything that can be done with that has been done too many times already.
After that, the only other things I can think of right now are human-obsessed Lyra (it practically seems to be a requirement for any human who arrives in Equestria to run into Lyra, and most of the time it's pointless and adds nothing to the story except for a pointless nod to the fandom) and the fourth wall-breaking Pinkie (Seriously, people, unless your story is about Pinkie's odd abilities, don't make Pinkie break the fourth wall. It's an awful and overused throwaway gag. I think the problem might be that all of Pinkie's fourth wall breaking in the show comes from visual humor that doesn't translate to writing very well. So instead she's always talking about the author and how she's in a story and how she's already read what happens a few chapters from now. And that honestly doesn't even fit with her character. She's never done anything like that in the show (the closest she's come is probably her freaky knowledge in Equestria Girls, but that was just bad writing). If anyone is going to be doing that sort of thing (and I'm not saying they should), it should be Discord. He at least has been known to blatantly talk to the audience.)
So, I should probably cancel my story where a guy gets a wish from his fairy godmother and uses it to create a steampunk-ish machine that he intends to use to travel through time in order to get pre-emptive revenge on his cheating wife but, instead, ends up in an alternate universe that is in the middle of a zombie apocalypse caused by magical, murderous mermaids bent on destroying those "filthy land-dwellers" and where he comes across an alternate version of his wife who is pregnant with the alternate-him's zombie baby.
Twist ending: He was actually in an insane asylum the whole time. So edgy!
Zombies - I think I've only ever read a single zombie book that I liked (World War Z), and that was more for the anthology/pseudodoc structure than the actual zombies.
Parallel universes/time travel - lazy writing, up there with "inertial dampeners" as handwaving tools. They certainly can be used to good effect, but most authors use them as crutches.
Faux Steampunk - Goddamn will I be glad when this fad passes over.
Revenge - authors jerking themselves off. Either you're excusing monstrous behaviour by doing it to a person who "deserves it" (rape revenge, for example), or you're doing it for catharsis.
Fairytale Retellings/ Mermaids - see steampunk, but even more so. I would like to see the genre expanded to include other cultural mythologies, though (Asian and African folklore in particular have so much great stuff, it makes the overabundance of dark takes on Red Riding Hood even more boring).
Edgy stories/ Pregnancy horror - works in movies, not in books. You need the visuals to cover for the lack of substance.
Puns - just, no.
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Regarding a Fimfiction list, I'd say that "edgy" stories and pun/twist endings are both thoroughly over represented on this site. I'll add Pony Verbs a Noun stories, which have died down somewhat, and the human-cosplayer-sent-to-Equestria-becomes-a-thing-and-is-a-dick genre, which is maddeningly popular right now.
2037665
This one so much. Why is it that this is the only way 95% of writers can think of to put a superpowered human in Equestria?
Really, the entire HiE genre is full of overused cliches like this one. (To be fair, I'm sure there are plenty of overused cliches in other genres around here too, but I've noticed them a lot more in HiE stories for whatever reason. It might just be because of how many HiE stories I've read.) I could probably make a list of ten HiE cliches I'm tired of without much trouble at all.
2037915 Hie's tend to hit this so often, the human tag is almost a massive "Do not read" for that, sadly, because of the near constant risk of that, you miss great stories like Solitary Pinion ,Through the Well of Pirene, The Last Human: A Tale of the Pre-Classical Era, Bloodlines, Fortitude Amicitia, AAG (was in my read later for near a year), Stardust, and My Little Exalt to name a few. (Its a shame its on haitus, the author is one heck of a creative person, and a great GM)
With horror, its something thats hard to do right, because people expect it, or have seen near all the ways it can go, especially any troper. Tropes Warning Link But overall, I guess i'm odd in my likes, and views.
Though back on track, its a power trip for writers, i think to get a carte blanche (I think its called) when they do that kind of story, and it doesn't translate well given a boring invincible (i loose this next term loosely) hero.
In terms of pony works I'd include are the stories wherein any of the cast walk into a bar not expecting to get drunk and walk out pregnant. I'm done with that. It's as though most authors seem to think that their reproduction requires an ovum, a sperm cell, and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Whoa. Quite the response. Maybe I should start jotting down notes on what I think the ten concepts that have been overused to death are (or better yet, make a call for them and get the ten most disliked ... hmmm). Crud, a few of them are pretty easy. Ship-fics rate among my highest instant dismissal. It's not just that it's completely overdone, but also that 99.9% of them are mane-six shipping (so OOC) and they're usually very slap-dash, relying on cheap conventions or sometimes skipping even those! I kid you not, I ran across one where all it took for RD and Twilight to fall into hopelessly into just-under-clop levels of lust was Discord forcing them to be stuck to one another.
Yeeeeah ... anything for an excuse right?
Also on that list, self-inserts. The bane that gives OC stories a bad name, but let's face it, they are destroying the legacy of that tag. And crossovers that are just cashing in on popularity. And "me too!" fics...
Anyway...
2037418
Reminds me of a story I read once in a compilation that started out extremely cliche, only to suddenly break to the editor of the collection tossing the manuscript away in disgust. The actual story was a self-referential metastory about the editor dealing with all the trashy fics sent in for the book (as well as reading and approving some of the stories you'd already read). It was a nice little surprise that won simply for embracing the ridiculousness of the situation.
2038000
Horror is also one of those things that a lot of people think they know how to write, but are just confusing gore, nausea and discomfort for actual horror. The most terrifying stories don't have blood running down the walls or psychopathic creatures running amuck ... they have little things in the shadows, things very close to home, like someone's keys going missing and being a trap, or the person who's just not quite right in the head rather than a full psychopath. You look at successful horror books and then at the huge supply of "horror" out there, and most aren't actually that scary. Gory, yes, but scary? No.
2038265
That's what happens when your prior plot exposure has the options of "does the baby come from the plumber or the pizza delivery guy?"
Seriously though, you've got a point. Handwavium is a commodity around here.
2037915
For me, the first litmus test that any HiE story must pass is "does the human have a valid plot/character significant reason to be in Equestria/interacting with the ponies?" Fortunately, 99.9% of the fics fail this test in the first few paragraphs, thus saving me time. Any other considerations (overpowered, actual character, etc) almost never come up with that rule in place.
2038655 The lovecraft, oh the lovecraft. That is horror, I still get chills with the nameless city. I've read it a dozen times, know the story, but to stop and listen to the worlds, in silence, your view building up the mental imagery that is invoked. And it brings you there, in that depth of wordplay. And only can smile, to the dark abyss staring back.
2038655 Regarding horror; depends what you mean. I think it's a little narrow minded to limit the field of horror to just "things that are frightening", and cut out completely things that are "disturbing or distressing by their horribleness". The first may be better, but the second has a use too. I can't find the book at the moment to source it, and don't remember it exactly, but in Danse Macabre Stephen King separates horror into three big categories: terror (where the idea of something is frightening), horror (where the actual thing is depicted, and is frightening by its nature), and the grotesque (where the thing depicted is frightening through its sheer nastiness), where the three are ranked in "value" in that order.
I do think books have it hard to make the grotesque frightening; it relies on visuals more than psychology, and movies have a shortcut there where literature has a handicap. It's hard to recreate the torture scene from Transsiberian or the opening scene of Un Chien Andalou in print.
Heh, the cosplayer-given-powers-in-equestria is sort of a guilty pleasure for me. Kinda interested in the interaction between the character and crossover 'summons', but I wouldn't consider these great works of fiction. More like the "It's funny, they don't care too much about it and are having fun" type of deal.
Yeah I see a lot of this stuff pop up in HiE fics. Shipping is horribly forced, like "oh we went through this traumatic event together and realized we are destined for eachother" or some kind of junk like this. Here's an example. I actually liked the Piano Man: Act One. Favorite part was when he decided to do a screw you all to Cadence and Twi by playing "This Day Aria". But then the second act kinda tumbled down this self-pity spiral and made Twi into a love interest because squirrels. Just 'cuz you can doesn't make it a good idea to do an OCxManeCast ship.
Another thing is the balancing for HiE fics. Humans being OP gets boring, as in many future-sci-fi fics with the ponies. Ponies being absolutely OP is also not a good idea, unless the protagonist can use his/her brain for more than five minutes. Take Article 2, for example. The ponies at any point can turn the main character into a ragdoll, but now without him setting off a grenade or something like that, so the characters are balanced to a degree. The main character in Misunderstandings seemingly absorbs magic which allow him to ignore his limits. But it's only allowing him to ignore it, which bears repurcussions afterwards, as well as magic generally messing with his emotions. He also has a gun, but is limited by ammo and the aforementioned emotional instability. Stories like these I like. It's no fun to read about someone's power fantasy, as there is no true confict, only a set of speedbumps.