Stop With the Cliches!

Cliche plot devises

First of all what is a cliche convenient plot devise? I'm glad you asked. Basically it's when the the plot movement is forced or confusing.

Convenient plot devise: The right way to move a plot example: Let's say in a magical world a person needed a special potion but the only way to get it was to work hours and hours to get the money to pay for it or make a deal with the shop owner to earn it.

So the main character completes tasks and rightfully earned the potion.

Bad convenient plot devise: The person who needs the rare special potion gets it for free without even having to work for it in anyway despite it was made clear that the shop owner wasn't willing to give it up without some kind of cost. The main character didn't earn the potion which makes the reader feel they didn't  deserve it.

2) Plot armor. When the main characters of a story whether it be in a Wattpad book or TV show or movie, is immune from any serious consequences for their actions.

Example: The main character running into on coming traffic and gets hit by a car and comes out alive with only a few scratches, WHAT?!

If you ran out on the street and got hit by a car going sixty miles an hour you'd be dead in a second, that's just how it is.

You'd think I made that I made it up the example above, but I didn't. That actually happened in a Wattpad book where stupid Mary Sue ran into on coming traffic because she was scared, got hit by a car going full speed and survived with no serious injuries.

I say if you want your main character to get hurt for whatever reason but you don't want them to be critically injured don't put them in an extreme situation like a car going full speed at them!

You can have them trip and scrape themselves or get stung by a bee.

Now, I understand why people choose getting hit by a car even though they get minor injuries , it's more thrilling, but there are plenty of ways to get a thrill out of a character getting hurt than that and they get minor injuries.

Another example of plot armor is a character doing something very terrible and getting away with it.

The villain in one book I read completely got away with kidnapping another character and the victim after the event never calls the police. Another character kills him, but he survived and comes back in the end only to be killed for real this time.

Another book I read, Trapped did this plot idea soo much better.

In Trapped the kidnapping was reported but there was a legal loophole, that's why kidnapper got away with the crime the first time, the last throw down with kidnapper was done more exciting and we actually wanted the main character to succeed unlike the other book I was talking about. It's as if the police didn't exist in the other book, which diminished it's realism, not that it had much to begin with.

3) Shock value. This one is pretty terrible plot devise, it's where something terrible happens to someone in a story but that terrible thing is only good for one chapter.

If you need something traumatic to happen to the main character by all means make it happen BUT, if it's not going to effect them at all later on, that means it was completely unnecessary and done out of shock value.

I'll give writers who do this some slack, I've done this by mistake too.

No one ever takes writing classes before college, let alone anyone teaching us to not put traumatic events in a book if they don't matter in the long run.

No one wants to be offensive to people who actually went through those events, but now you know it is very disrespectful to use things like domestic abuse for a plot devise that won't even be addressed or mater later.

If you make this mistake in your story, you have two options to correct it. One you can get rid of the useless traumatic event or two make it important to the characters or plot.

It's ok to make mistakes but it's not ok to continue to make them even after you know you shouldn't.

Please always be respectful if you're making a story about something like abuse, do lots of research, and think about how real victims would feel.

If you're too scared to portray sensitive topics incorrectly don't write about it, there's thousands of plots you can you that aren't potentially offensive in nature.

4) The dreaded amnesia.

I'm sure we've all seen characters lose their memories(amnesia) just because the plot needed them to for a dumb reason. It's mostly seen for me in anime, but that doesn't mean Wattpad books don't do this either.

Sailor Moon my favorite childhood anime is an offender of using memory loss to bullshit the plot. In the Tree of life arc, Serena and her friends lose their memories but with the help of Luna the cat boss, they get their memories back but conveniently Luna can't restore Serena's boyfriend's memories.

When Serena asks Luna why not, Luna gives her a crappy response like 'I can't, it's not that simple.' What do you mean you can't?! Ugh! It just made no sense, but Darien, Serena's boyfriend needed to forget about her to have some other character give her a pep talk during battles.

See what I mean by how terrible memory loss is in stories? They're a convenient way for the plot to drag on things we already knew, or make us think the story will go in a certain way when it doesn't.

Another thing the amnesia plot devise works for is if a relationship isn't interesting enough so they just make the boyfriend forget about the main character so he can be interested in someone else for twenty five episodes.

If the love interest has to lose his memories of the main character for him to leave her, that's pretty pathetic in story telling. That's basically saying the love interest would never leave the main character unless he didn't remember her, rather than losing interest in her or wanting something new or any reasonable idea why he would want to leave her.

If there was actual conflict that divides the lovers other than memory loss that the two could control, that would be soo much more engaging and a lot less frustrating.

I had to bear this issue twice with Sailor Moon and Mermaid Melody, which is sad because they're so enjoyable when the plot doesn't cop out.