Genres and subjects I really like to write

The stuff I like to write is the stuff I like to watch and read. Like our scriptwriting teacher said, you ought to write the thing that you wouldn't mind watching.

Apparently I really like watching pirates, hardboiled Noir detectives, superheroes, sci fi anything and fantasy quests. I'm a sucker for good old-fashioned fantasy quests. I know that it's beyond cliche at this point with all the movies (Harry Potter, Eragon, LOTR) and by the time anything of mine makes it to print (hopefully even make it that far) or to the screen it might be at the tip of the cliche iceberg. Which means, what can I do to make it different?

I've got an inkling on that with the superhero take, I've got a script that I'm halfway working on and will probably end up completely revising. I know quite a bit about the superhero take on things from being a complete and utter comic book geek which helps a lot.

I've also got a unique take on my pirate script (which is officially registered with the WGA-East, and it managed to get me into the MFA program at my school, I feel so accomplished, lol) and I hope that it's unique enough to be...well, unique.

Noir? It's gonna be cliche and that's what I like about it. I've seen what seems like a million stories start out with "It was a cold, gritty rainy day in the city, rain that seemed to suck the warmth right out of you. I'd just come back from getting information from Steve the Swindler. He won't be walking straight for at least a week. I went back to my office, threw my fedora on my chair, and froze. Behind me, was a dame waitin' for me in the shadows." But I don't mind, oddly enough. Maybe it's an integral part of the detective within Noir.

I'm okay with Sci-Fi, there's still a busload of things one can do to twist the conventions around and make it more interesting than just a battle in space that has noise that shouldn't be there. Sci-Fi can be light, it can be a smaller story about a family like in Signs rather than a huge epic Star-Wars-esque battle. (Honestly I'd take the epic battle though.)

But fantasy, ah, there we have a problem.

Perhaps it's just my problem, but I feel that everything has been done to death. Princess Bride, I think, is a great example of making an old story new again. It's very clever and even though it's something we've almost seen completely before it manages to be fresh.

That's why I'm doing my fantasy story in a very different way, hopefully it's different enough to be...different, but it's still got the quest elements, the old mentor, and the plucky young hero. I'm not changing the story to make this part different, because that's a huge element of it. After all, the hero's journey is, well, a hero's journey! It's gonna end up having some bits of that, if it's a hero's journey. Maybe I'm just worried for no reason, but the 2nd act quest seems a little too cliche for my tastes and I'm figuring out a way to make it more interesting Or even if I want to make it different. After all, if you're looking for someone or something, you're going to run into trouble along the way. There are going to be people that help you and people that take from you.

A particular scene that I think I might erase or change completely is when the heroes get away too easily. But I don't know how else to do this, cause they have to get away for the story's sake. I have a super-powerful bad organization and luckily they put just enough guards for our heroes to take. Luckily! I just don't want it to be so obvious that the reader can go, 'oh yeah, that's just a plot device, there's no way they'd naturally be able to escape.'


I suppose we'll see.