I will be working on my writing thi sweekend with a couple of other writers and editors. This is a great chance and I hope I won't blow it.

I am actually quite willing to learn and adjust but I find myself annoyed by people telling me my plots are *clicheed* (it has happened twice now regarding very different stories, and I asked for specifics regarding the plot) I am not sure how to take it and I realize that for the first time in writing I am getting annoyed at others regarding my stuff. Because while I do have issues regarding the events in my stories, and I AM using clichees I usually make a point out of twisting them.

I feel a bit like some people telling me about some minor *mistakes* in my english when I have seen those go by with native speakers without any comments. Sometimes I feel like by telling people what I think I am having problems with (like non native speaker/ plot challenged) they are not really evaluating my work but are conciously looking for the flaws I have been pointing towards. Which is to be expected and the point of being open about them, but on the other hand I do get the feeling that sometimes people are just grabbing for labels.

Like : Clichée

Fact1: What is a clichée  is surprisingly subjective (especially which clichees are ok and which are annoying you as a reader).
Fact2: Clichées change with genre
Fact3: Clichées are useful and have to be dealt with one way or the other
Fact4: CLichées are a cultural thing as much as they are personal.
Fact5: A surprising amount of sucessful books run ON clichée
Fact6: telling somebody a stories is clichéed is of very limited help.

Now, I think the term Clichée is used almost generically when somebody agrees that there is something off with the plot and they don't really know what it is either. Then, they are telling you it is clicheed: a bit like people you ask for directions on the street and instead of admitting that they don't really know they tell you right and left and right and you end up entirely lost until you find somebody who knows and tells you that those direction were ludicrous.

Now back to the people, the most helpful and lovely people, who said *chlicheed*: One specified that the plot was too *sane* after discussing and voila, that is much  more helpful if entirely oposite to the clichee regarding romance which is usually all too pink or all too drama.

The other said it to a story which was deliberately toying with clichees in the dark fantasy genre, which isn't at all the genre this lovely person deals with. So here I am at the verge of getting to know people that might simply not *like* my kind of story. Does t hat mean they are bad? the stories that is? Or does that mean I will not get the help I need to develop my plots more *insanely* without ending up with what I think is clicheed 101 the sassy-spunky-snarky I-can-do-it-all-alone woman finds the man who thinks just like her and they find out !SURPRISE! they are nothing without each other.... In my stories real people have some real problems and problem isn't that they are boring but that nothing happens (meaning that basically RL goes on while they are falling love as far as the romance goes, or fictious life goes on while something happens in the persons mind) and nowadays to sell a book you need some action. something like fleeing the mafia and teh cops while doging bullets ;)

And to evaluate the surprise factor of your stories you might actually have to find a dead-on beta reader. Somebody who is as avid a reader of THAT genre as you are.

Maybe *clichee* bugs me so: because it is en effet a critisism of me as a reader and a thinker because I didn't try to write a clichee I did try not to. and whatever problems I might have been seeing with my plots it wasn't that it was too clicheed.

Not really sure what all that means other than My writing mind is back online