We’ve all been there. You’re reading a book you picked up on impulse because it sounded good when, a few chapters in, you’re struggling to maintain interest because every character and situation seems like something you’ve read a dozen times before in other books. Don’t you hate that? Editors and agents go through that a…
Tag: cliches
Tropes That Need to Go Away
One problem any popular genre develops tends to be tropes that pervade too much of it all. In and of themselves, maybe they work. Often they work quite well. They can, anyway. But when we see the same thing over and over and over again, we enter into the realm of the cliche. So here’s…
A Twist on the Myth
The heart, a drummer to whose beat we are all forced to march. When the beat stops, so do we stop marching, well, stop everything really. The importance of the heart is demonstrated time and again in culture and history, often placed aloft upon a pedestal. With vampires, a stake of wood (or perhaps silver…