Here's just a small list of odd cliches I've noticed. I'm going to be making a bigger list in The Book Club, so make sure to check up on that too for that coming chapter.
All Characters have a Motive (Especially Villains)
I'm sure you always hear about articles, and professional authors telling new writers to make sure your characters have motives. This especially applies to villains. They always say you shouldn't just make your villains pure evil or bad for the sake of being bad. I don't know how many people actually use this advice, but let me tell you, this is gonna get old quick. Hundreds of great movies have plane, one-sided, evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil villains. That doesn't change the fact that the movies were great. Sometimes peeps just want to see a truly evil dude with little empathy or compassion. Giving the person who's suppose to ruin your main characters life, a motive, that's relatable or understandable, is just plane confusing sometimes. You don't always have to give these characters super deep back stories or anything. They're just the bad guys. Let them just be that for once.
Dumb Survival Characters
Survival movies are something I think we can all get behind. They're usually pretty good, suspenseful, and satisfying. Most of the time. Unfortunately, there's a lot of survival cliches. One of the most prominent is the dumb characters. These people just make the worst decisions. A lot of times you can find yourself screaming at the screen for the person to just do the smart thing, but they never do. Listen, normal people aren't like that. Someone in a survival situation would want more than anything to survive. Why would they make these horrible decisions? If you can't find a way to progress your story other than your character making a bad choice or mistake, at least make it understandable, not unimaginably dumb.
The Quiet Character
Chances are, if you're also a writer, that your not all that talkative in real life. You might be shy or even anti-social. Because of that you might be tempted to put a shy or quiet character in your story. Now, if that character is a side character who you just want to add in because you think they'll be pretty charming, that's okay. However, a character who almost never talks can't be your protagonist. Well, maybe they can, but pulling it off is really hard. If you're going for a first person narrative this might work. The character needs to have a personality. Just because their quiet did not mean they don't have a personality. They need to have things they like, things they dislike, people they like it dislike. If they don't have a personality they are just characters for the author to see themselves as and that is not going to be fun for someone else to read. If you're going to make this character you need to give them character! Otherwise their just the quite kid with no personality cliche.
Alright, that's all I've got for now. I hope these helped someone. I'm not that great at giving advice, but I tried.
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