Horrible Clichs To Avoid

Lillian Csernica
Editor/anthologist Ellen Datlow defines horror as what scares her, notably something that
could happen in real life. Dark fantasy she defines as fiction that takes place out of
reality, using mood and atmosphere to take the reader into another world. Keeping those
distinctions in mind will help you sharpen both your writing and your marketing.
Editorial preferences might vary, but if you can sell a story to Ellen Datlow, your chances
for selling it elsewhere are good.
Say you're new to the genre and you have an idea for a story. The place to start is in
knowing what not to do. Before you plunge in and spend all that time writing and (I
hope) rewriting, check your idea against the following lists to make sure you've avoided
these mistakes.
These are the plotlines editors have seen over and over again. Submit one of them and
you're asking for a form rejection slip.

A really horrible main character gets his just desserts. Typically, this plotline
features a male character no one could possibly like, much less feel much
sympathy for. The "story" is little more than this man skinning kittens, shooting
babies, or committing similar hideous acts until someone or something finally
delivers the gruesome punishment. This is known as the "punishment plot," for
obvious reasons.
Sex and death. Those are all the plotline consists of, and usually far too much of
both. In the first variation the main character has a taste for kinky sex, picks up a
stranger to have said sex, then kills that stranger. Why? Either to make sure the
kinky tastes aren't revealed or just as part of a really sick night out. The second
variation features the stranger who gets picked up as the suddenly murderous
member of the pair. That provides an artificial climax wherein the main character
dies horribly for no damn good reason. This isn't a story. It's an excuse to write
about explicit sex and violence with no respect for story fundamentals like
motivation, rising action, and real characterization. In all fairness I will say that
such sex and violence can be made to serve a purpose in a fully developed story.
They cannot and should not be the whole point. If you want to write something
like this, you're certainly free to do so. Just don't force innocent and unwilling
editors to read it.
Revenge for its own sake. Several magazines' guidelines specify "no revenge
stories." Why? Because they're usually underwritten, boring, and predictable.
Either the character seeking revenge will get it or he/she won't. The first ending is
predictable, and the second fails to satisfy. Vengeance by itself is a rather dull,
one-dimensional motivation. It can be an important part of a complete story, but
the other fundamentals have to be there, with additional motivating forces to add
needed depth. Otherwise this can easily become just another sex- and-death
plotline with a little extra malice thrown in.

It's just not scary. When I was reading the slush pile for a small press magazine,
I ran into a lot of stories that had all the trappings of horror but none of the
feelings. Horror without the booga-booga factor simply isn't horror. Editors and
readers of horror want to be scared. With dark fantasy, your atmosphere and plot
must be compelling. Be it a little spookiness, mounting suspense, or outright
mind-blowing terror, give it to them and give it to them good. Keep rewriting
until you're positive you've made it as scary as you possibly can.
The personal fantasies of that writer. This can include various genres, but they
all share certain common elements. They're of interest only to the person who
wrote them. They're laughably trite. All realism is sacrificed for the gratification
of the writer's thinly disguised main character. They tend to involve people,
situations, and acts that should never be allowed out in public. Common examples
of this are fiction based on somebody's most recent role-playing game adventure,
or on the sex life that writer wishes he/she had. Yawn. Some writers start out
writing such things, just because they need to write. The ones who become
successful learn how to write quality fiction, using the early stuff to line birdcages
or fuel their fireplaces.
Here's an idea. The End. This encompasses all of the above and then some. Too
often writers will come up with good ideas, but fail to develop them as fully as
they must into honest-to-God stories. Does it have a beginning, a middle, and an
end? Does the action accelerate toward the climax? At the climax, must the main
character triumph or lose everything? If not, you have an idea, a set up, or at best
a vignette. Sometimes a story will appear to be complete, rushing toward a climax
that's lopped off to create what looks like a shocking ending. What's really
happening here is the story ends right at the moment where the real problem
situation begins. Build a new story from that moment onward, even if it means
trashing all the previous work.

Now let's take a look at mistakes you can make with your monsters. A well-constructed,
believable monster is a joy. Unfortunately, a lot of beginning writers will merely use
monsters that have been around forever, without putting in the extra effort to make their
monsters unique. Classic monsters such as werewolves and mummies are fine, but they
must be updated so they do or become something fresh and new. The latest film version
of Dracula was marvelously effective because Dracula was shown as a human being
suffering the consequences of tragedy after tragedy. All he really wanted was to get his
wife back. Who among us can't sympathize with grieving for a lost love? Look at your
monster and ask yourself "Has this been done?" If the answer is yes, you have two
choices. Do it differently and better, or do something else. (That's a good rule to live by
no matter what genre you write in.)
Thanks to Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Nancy Kilpatrick, vampires are currently the
hottest monsters to stalk the living. Now for the bad news. As a result, the market is
flooded with vampire stories. There are markets such as Prisoners of the Night and Dead
of Night who specialize in vampire tales, but by and large editors are weary of vampires,
especially the trite vampire plots. Vampires catches AIDS. Vampire masquerades as
prostitute (see sex and death above). Vampires who do nothing but wallow in angst about

their condition when they're not out being all sexy and omnipotent. If you can find a new
and better way to portray your vampire, go for it. Otherwise, spend some time
researching all the other lesser-known types of monsters that have been terrorizing
humankind since we first started living in caves. In this age of multiculturalism, it pays to
get out of Western Europe and look at monsters around the world. In a future column I'll
be doing just that.
There are also a few subjects that editors have seen far too much of and won't be thrilled
about reading again. Here are the ones that turn up as undesirable in many guidelines:

Child abuse. Yes, it's a terrible thing. It's also one of the most frequently and
vehemently discouraged topics. Orson Scott Card had the last word on this idea
his Lost Boys. The clichd plots here involve the abused child complaining of
monsters, then a real monster devours the abusing parent; abused children as
grownups experiencing terrors connected to past abuse; and even plots where the
abuse is a background issue. Editors just don't want to see it.
Homelessness. Another sad and tragic issue which has produced a flood of
stories, usually centering on some bizarre subculture that exists beneath the
everyday surface. There are plenty of other really frightening urban realities out
there. Listening to the nightly news and doing some statistical research should
provide lots of material for horror and despair.
AIDS. This is a very scary subject, but it's become part of our everyday world.
While AIDS can hardly be avoided in any contemporary story involving sex, it
can't be the central device.
Extreme gore to no purpose. Those last three words are the operative ones. This
is the motif of the splatterpunk movement, typified by the work of David Schow.
It has its uses, but most editors will not read, much less accept, stories where it
doesn't serve a necessary purpose. At the recent World Fantasy Convention,
speakers on "The Future of Horror" panel agreed that splatterpunk is largely
passe.
Explicit sex. There are markets that will buy such material, such as Hottest
Blood, but they buy stories, not endless descriptions of two (or more) bodies
banging away at each other. Call it erotica, call it pornography, but don't call it a
real story. After all, unless you've got all the other story fundamentals in place,
even the most titillating sex gets dull and repetitive.
Stupid, passive main characters. The archetype here is the woman alone in the
house who hears noises in the basement and goes down the dark stairs carrying
one small, flickering candle. Nothing is quicker to annoy editors than main
characters who do nothing and simply get acted upon by the plot events. Worst of
all is the main character who gets yanked out of the monster's grasp by some last
minute rescue that comes out of nowhere. Deus ex machina endings might have
worked for the ancient Greeks, but modern editors despise it. Make your heroes
and heroines solve their own problems, or at least die valiantly in the attempt.
Nobody wants to read about a witless wimp.
Media-based settings or characters. Unless you have a contract to write a Deep
Space 9 novel, for example, or a specific invitation to write in someone else's

universe, do not use copyrighted people, places or objects in your writing. The
only place you can get away with this is in fanzines, and if you're reading this
you're obviously interested in paying markets. Remember, you want to become
such a terrific writer that someday they'll be making movies and TV series about
your characters, the ones you made up all by yourself. Won't that be great?
But why does familiarity of plotlines, monsters and subjects breed editorial contempt?
Well, a story that does nothing but repeat the same tired old mistakes will have nothing in
it to make it stand out from the other five hundred stories the editor received that month.
That tells the editor three things about that writer. One, the writer is ignorant about how
to write well and how to avoid what's been done before. Two, the writer is too lazy to do
much research and/or the amount of reading required to keep up with what's happening in
the field. Three, the writer lacks the imagination and experience necessary to recognize
the flaws in the story and create something fresher. Put them all together and they add up
to rejection.
Don't let this happen to you. Avoid these clichs by writing the best and most original
stories you can. When you get that acceptance letter, you'll be glad you did.

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