Inverting a Cliche

So I'm plugging away at getting some plot stuff done right now, and I hate hate hate HATE the cliche where some dude kisses the heroine and suddenly she's in love and he's always been the one and oh god please make it stop before my brain melts out my ear.

Now, I do actually think that there will be a two particular couples together at the end. One couple was together before the story starts and will stay together through the entire tale, because I kinda like that. The other couple will be one of those ones that develops over time, the kind that starts as something like friendship and slowly builds.

So I'm kinda thinking I'll invert the cliche like so:

Guy: *kisses girl*
Girl: *blink blink* *bemused expression* WTF are you doing?

It amuses me. Would you guys want to read a scene which fucks with expectations like that?

 

Wouldn't that be just like a woman? Send all the signals and then act surprised when you make your move. Fucking teases. Hell, as long as you're going for realism, why not have a guy pursue the heroine desperately, and once he has her in the palm of his hand he gets bored and ditches her. Or maybe after the scenario you described, dude handles rejection by spiking her drink and raping her while she's unconscious.

Here's one for you: Let the romance stew gradually for a few chapters, then when they're about to kiss, they get interrupted by an ambush, he gets captured and thrown in a dungeon for a few years. He then makes a daring escape and fights through all hell to be reunited with his love. Once he finds her, she lets him know that she was never that interested, and she just wants to be friends.

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ertedTrope

 

Ahhhhh! Must... not... click... TV Tropes... link.... *click* Well fuck. There goes another few hours of my life. I have such a love/hate relationship with that site...

The girl's reaction is more to do with it being such an out-of-left-field, completely unexpected action by the guy. The guy has Issues, and their friendship is mostly based on him being a cranky bastard and her being about the only person to have the balls to smack him upside the head and tell him to grow up. (And yes, she might be a bit nuts herself to be trying to befriend this guy.)

 

Sounds like a Takahashi Couple if there ever was one. He's alternately cranky and lustful, and she's...well, she alternately likes him and wants to beat some sense into him.

This can be done well, but just be careful; it can also be dumber than Twilight. My suggestion is that after about two chapters of it, you stop and take a look at how the relationship is going. If you think it's going to be painful to read, stop and try a new tack. If it looks like you can keep the romance interesting, as demonstrated here, then feel free to plow ahead.

 

Thank you for that picture. No, really. I've been reading Yaoi all day and you've just made the CliffxAlbelxFayt threesome even more demented. Gah. >_<

I will keep your point in mind, though, as it's a damn good one.

 

Reading yaoi and clicking links earn no sympathy from me. Suffer!

 

Huh? TV Tropes? Oh come on, it can't be that bad.
:click:

...

:a few hours later:
OK, I get your point.

 

Make it meaningful. Dodging cliches for the sake of dodging cliches is cliche.

 

That's true, although having a romance subplot will on some level be a cliche.

Best advice I can give is do something original, leave it at that and go back later. If you're anything like me, re-reading a suplot with the intention of modification straight after writing will mean countless hours changing crap although there wasn't really anything wrong with it.

 

My inner editor is an EVIL BITCH. Last year's NaNo, I wound up rewriting about half my novel WHILE I WAS STILL WRITING MY DAILY GOALS. If I could just turn the bitch editor off, I would have been finished in about half the time. *sigh* At least this year my main character is a bit more agreeable about actually following the plot - to a degree, she's told me if she doesn't like something she's going to ignore me and do what she wants to do.

Yes, boys and girls, the original plot of Fundamentals of Alchemy has been recovered, is being polished, and this time will most definately include a certain enemy soldier in the original role he was gonna fill. (Not the one who got tied up with his own belt by a girl half his size.)

Ramidel: The Cares Bears can no longer harm me. I've built up an immunity.

 

Types of plots are technically always cliche, since there is actually a very minute number of them. Real cliches involve actual formulaic happenings, like the bad guy having a bellowing laugh, or the hero's mentor dying tragically near the beginning. Going without a romance subplot in an adventure-type writing is folly, anyways.

I still don't understand what you're doing, though, Xiao. You can't start your NaNoWriMo early. That's cheating. If you start writing your NaNo two months early, all you're actually doing is writing a book.

 

Actually, the point of the NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in a month. Some people write clusters of short stories, some write uber-fanfics from hell *shudder*, some people write biographies... you get the idea. I wouldn't be the first person to start a little bit before the NaNo starts and I won't be the last.

Also, your comment assumes that I've started writing - which I haven't. I'm PLANNING.

 

There is no way in hell I can write 50k words in a month. It took me all day yesterday to write less than 600.

 

I hate it when there's a word limit....my wifes professor, in his drug induced genius, demands only page count. I long ago solved the problem for my wife by pointing out that she merely needs to enlarge the text to meet the page count requirement...too bad it doesn't apply in this context.

 

Heh, that professor was a tard then.

I'm not too worried about the word count - I've done it twice now, so knowing that it can be done makes it a little easier. The problem is getting everything to fit together and make sense without stooping to the level of Paolini or SMeyer, which is much harder.

 

Word counts are a bitch, especially when you're penalised for going over. I find it hard to fit everything I want in just 1500 words, let alone a novel in 50,000.