Writing

How To Create a BAD Crime Fiction Series With Jackie Speel

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(In the grand tradition ofJohn Van Sickle’s Grand list of Overused Science Fiction Clichés, the Grand list of SF clichés, Things I learnt at the Movies, and Not So Grand Cliché List, Jackie Speel is here to make her own contributions to literature – and what not to do – at MuseHack)

This is an attempt to create a list of clichés and tropes to be avoided in crime fiction, whether written or onscreen. As with other such lists it is the way in which the cliché is handled that is the key factor. Even middling to good series are likely to have the occasional episode which ‘ticks several of the boxes.’

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Every Hollywood Film Seems Alike? We May Have Found Writer Zero

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save-the-cat-imageThe book Save The Cat seems to have had . . . undue influence on the writing process in Hollywood.  As in, most of it.

It’s hard to argue with the thesis of this article (especially with the checklist right there) and with the fact Hollywood films have gone awful checklist – as we’ve talked about here endlessly.  So this might be “Writer Zero” in any attempt to track the epidemiology of sameness.

I might be skeptical that one book could have an influence, but then again there’s the disturbingly believable claim that it looks like one dumb idea helped lead to our cultural-econmic-financial-business culture problems.

Serdar of course will be writing more of this on his blog, which I look forward to.  I wish I could do more than nod and go “probably” and may in the days to come.

– Steven