[Clarion West 2k1 week 3: we now join our program, already in progress]

Tuesday. As I've mentioned before, we seem to have days where all of the stories we critique appear to have a common theme. The three stories we critiqued this morning all seemed to be written to advise the reader: don't have sex with ethereal beings.

Nalo suggested to the class that we should be wary of writing stories around cliches or "well used furniture", including:

* school for underprivileged youth with psychic ability
* privileged individual exchanges places with poor individual who looks remarkably similar
* warships full of steely-eyed, hierarchical tough guys and gals
* furry fiction
* elvish anything
* all the heroines are heartbreakingly beautiful, young and able-bodied and all the heroes are tall, strong, handsome, and utterly capable
* martial arts studios run by magical non-Asians
* the kindly old (male) druid, mage, wizard, sorcerer
* man of principle forced to become a killing machine (oops. I think I did this one)

While writing these kinds of stories is fine, they are done quite frequently. Therefore, there is an even larger onus than usual placed upon the writer to make a major effort to create something original.

The story I plan to hand in this week has been causing me grief. At one point, I was worried that it might even ultimately fit into the category mentioned above about heartbreakingly beautiful, young, and able-bodied heroines (since my characters are in the Ms. Solar System contest).

But, one of my fellow Clarionites gave me a work-around (presumably without realizing it) when he mentioned that he wanted to see a King Arthur story (which are also overdone) so that he could make a pun during critique (which is supposed to be *my* job, but never mind). Anyway, I've decided to add a character named Arthur, and the story will be in *his* POV, and not that of one of the heroines.

(The pun, by the way, is this: now my story will be in the "Arthurial voice".)

(Incidentally, there will be no puns in the story itself. You can see why.)

This will all make sense when I tell you more about the story... after I've written it.

In the meantime, tomorrow is the fourth of July. We are preparing for a big chili cook-out meal and then we'll watch the evening fireworks from our penthouse lounge or -- hopefully -- from the roof of our dorm. Yee-ha!

This means that there will be lots of distractions tomorrow, and since I still have a story to turn in on Thursday morning, I'd better get at it.

Later, potaters.