Strong verbs not only enliven writing but can bring out character. Think about the difference between a character who slinks from the room and one who tramps. Of course it’s easy to go overboard trying to never use the same word twice. Better to rewrite so the first mention of the movement goes a long way.

Advice on substitutes for said is all over the board. Some say never because dialogue should be written so the speaker and tone is clear. Some say rarely use said because it’s repetitious. As a reader I’m fairly oblivious to the word said and only want reminded who’s speaking. As a writer, I occasionally substitute said when there’s something extra going on that won’t come through in the dialogue like “rasped” or “whispered.” One thing to watch out for is writing dialogue like “WATCH OUT FOR THE TIGER!” Sebastian shouted when it’s obvious he’s shouting.

As a fun exercise the writers on the list came up with a slew of Said substitutes several years ago that has surprisingly few repeats from Deanna’s list.

1000 Verbs to Write By
by Deanna Carlyle

---

All the writing advice in the world can’t replace good tools and lots of practice. This is why I’ve compiled the following list of over a thousand action verbs. I needed a handy, printable reference tool that didn’t strain my eyes or my wrists. Try it for yourself sometime. It works.

For “walked” or “ran” lumbered plodded scurried sidled slinked/slunk proceeded wended scuttled went on his way shuffled scuffed scuffled stumbled shambled waddled wobbled scooted slouched scrambled scampered minced trotted strolled sauntered ambled marched stepped paced roamed roved meandered shadowed pursued trekked continued on drifted past/along strayed glided along strode stalked stomped strutted swished swaggered stamped tramped trudged traipsed trod/treaded/trodden limped hobbled lurched staggered tripped crawled crossed traversed inched across hurtled galloped charged darted advanced approached bushwhacked chased climbed crept along, crept away sneaked/snuck tiptoed stepped lightly pussyfooted dashed danced pranced descended ascended dodged edged eluded emerged entered evacuated escaped evaded fled flitted flew hauled off groped his way launched across scaled lunged moved paraded passed patrolled plowed prowled propelled pursued raced sailed rushed sidestepped skidded skipped stole stomped steered swerved veered listed trampled ushered waded wandered hiked withdrew ambulated perambulated absconded trailed after bolted tore tore along made rapid strides covered ground sprinted careered scudded hastened raced hurried jogged cantered loped tripped took flight decamped drifted For “reacted” reeled back rocked back flushed blanched blushed scowled nodded her consent nodded his agreement smiled grinned grimaced fell silent shrugged and said admitted with a nod shook his head beamed smirked simpered listed tilted swayed keeled over flinched shivered sniffed blinked retracted sighed exhaled inhaled flicked flung reclined shifted relaxed swallowed pouted looked + adj. yielded hesitated made no attempt to frowned made no answer fell silent paused stared gasped started startled slackened reclined drew back stepped back stiffened resisted retreated raised an eyebrow cocked her head to one side put her head to one side tilted her head chuckled yawned laughed snickered giggled stifled a yawn stifled a laugh took a deep breath glanced off glared shrugged devoid of emotion grinned sneered For “said” uttered mumbled drawled parroted echoed said half-aloud snarled blurted moaned muttered murmured cooed whispered crooned hollered shrilled sassed prompted questioned demanded queried replied suggested responded sang out scoffed screamed yelled yelped shouted inquired chirped squealed squeaked asked herself asked assured commanded cried out exclaimed advised announced growled stuttered stammered instructed told jeered scolded lamented mocked objected questioned roared speculated snapped spat stated whined jabbered prated prattled gibbered cackled gabbled sputtered blathered rambled on rattled on maundered digressed sermonized preached came out with declaimed pontificated harangued ranted rhapsodized gushed spouted let slip enlightened him pointed out chatted revealed boasted crowed vaunted bragged disparaged belittled notified addressed blabbed nattered bantered yakked whispered wondered aloud rejoined retorted replied recited repeated remarked came out with conveyed declared summoned imparted mentioned added put before revealed let out divulged disclosed made known vented aired breathed betrayed recited predicted advanced averred avowed avouched assumed imagined professed claimed purported insinuated cited named offered proposed pleaded imputed implied asserted expressed pledged ascribed affirmed professed admitted

For “jumped” vaulted leapt/leaped pounced startled flinched sprang lunged launched jerked jolted erupted exploded shot from For “took” drew withdrew pulled out a picked selected chose plucked removed snatched out scooped up rooted out snatched trapped took up raised picked up hoisted set upright elevated seized prized open wrenched wrested produced extracted extricated accepted fetched grabbed snitched took hold of jimmied gathered grasped gripped fingered nabbed packed ransacked appropriated swiped snared dragged acquired obtained gained procured garnered gleaned pilfered lowered took down tore down swapped For “pulled” pulled out removed took out extracted produced tugged extricated lugged drew dragged yanked For “pushed” propelled ballasted set in motion drove trundled shoved thrust pressed forward made one’s way squeezed through roused prompted forged ahead For “put” stashed placed posed posited plunked down mounted positioned stationed set before dropped crammed stuffed stuck lodged plopped plunked parked stationed planted perched inserted lay set set upright stood on end upended deposited consigned relegated strapped tossed threw flung lobbed hurled heaved cast slapped onto draped dunked eased shifted interposed installed For “looked, saw” glared glanced off regarded made out descried remarked had in sight glowered squinted shot him a look fixed her with a stare sighted ogled cast a glance his eyes begged her to amplify gazed gaped spotted surveyed turned an eye on looked upon distinguished fixed her gaze on noted recognized identified took a look took a glance stared leered scowled scanned peered squinted gaped noticed observed considered watched viewed took in studied examined inspected scrutinized perused sized up took stock of skimmed glanced through flipped through perceived discerned beheld watched for looked on eyed detected contemplated kept in sight held in view stood guard kept watch monitored For “thought, remembered” wondered asked herself pondered noticed reflected struck her as entertained the notion held in one’s mind It occurred to her It came to her realized knew she considered. she considered this. he was tempted to brought to mind he was taken with the idea that she reasoned understood considered went over reviewed pictured featured imagined pretended hoped feared envisioned deliberated envisaged called up conjured up conceived of fancied allowed the conceit judged suspected intended expected planned concentrated mused ruminated recalled mulled over brooded over projected anticipated concluded esteemed took heed kept in mind guessed supposed formed an image of conjured hatched fabricated fashioned formulated concocted reasoned that turned it over in her mind flirted with the idea recollected bore in mind deduced inferred thought back to put her in mind of called to mind reminded her of acknowledged weighed reconsidered thought better of For “felt, seemed, showed, looked like” sensed had the impression understood detected seemed appeared betrayed indicated betokened foretokened revealed bespoke suggested signified connoted hinted at alluded to implied intimated presaged portended forewarned disclosed displayed lay open made manifest exposed bared struck her as looked as if looked like had the look of had every appearance of had the earmarks of resembled sounded like exhibited evidenced showed manifested emblematic of

For “touched” clutched pawed gripped grasped took hold of adjusted felt manipulated maneuvered twiddled palpated palmed handled thumbed rummaged through caressed fondled stroked grazed rubbed tugged squeezed scratched pinched patted tapped tamped rapped brushed bedaubed dappled dabbed swept across scraped glanced alighted pressed wrung kneaded shoved gouged grazed prodded ticked trapped jabbed poked pressed probed goaded twisted wedged pried prized open pry/pried pulled pushed primped preened rattled pumped mangled massaged felt flattened smoothed scooped up flicked flipped flogged fondled groped handled held knifed mauled tapped drummed wiggled worked stubbed scoured scrubbed For “had, held” bore exhibited showed displayed betrayed wielded carried was furnished with contained wore sported spanned suspended grasped gripped clutched contained toted possessed retained embraced evinced For “hit” beat socked bumped clapped thumped lashed pummeled punched rammed crashed thwacked slapped smacked pumped impacted attacked hacked swiped swung trounced tackled For “was, were” stood sat took up perched lay hung took place contained spanned loomed occupied remained stayed persisted befell (happened) bechanced occurred happened For “sat” slumped eased into lowered himself sank into sat himself was seated plopped down crouched squatted hunkered down roosted perched settled straddled sat astride sat bestride reposed leaned reclined lolled lounged sprawled lodged For “stood” got to his feet jumped up rose rose to his feet got up remained upright held herself erect stationed herself For “smelled” got scent of sensed sniffed detected snuffled snorted inhaled scented snuffed breathed in savored perceived discerned reeked stunk assaulted the nostrils For “tasted, drank” savored relished nibbled at tried sipped gulped took a deep swallow chewed ingested ruminated sampled sank his teeth into bit into crunched melted licked slurped chugged smacked suckled sucked swigged swilled chomped ground munched gnawed rended quaffed imbibed tippled nipped supped drained washed down swilled down guzzled down lapped up soused quenched For “heard” overheard caught detected picked up perceived apprehended eavesdropped listened listened in gathered heard tell of strained her ears harked harkened attended to took heed of took in gave audience to gave an ear to lent an ear to heard him out within earshot out of earshot For “lie down, lay” reclined eased onto flopped onto lay prone lolled luxuriated lay prostrate lay recumbent lay back rested reposed lazed sprawled lounged slouched slumped For “entered” stepped inside went in came in sailed in burst in set foot in/on broke in forced her way in intruded penetrated passed into For “left, exited” ran off walked off went out departed retreated decamped deserted repaired retired withdrew quit took off fled sallied forth bowed her way out For “turned” wheeled around twisted to one side whirled about rotated spun on her heels pivoted revolved swiveled reeled trundled circled eddied swirled sheered veered shifted divagated angled off shunted

Copyright 2004 by Deanna Carlyle at deannacarlyle.com

A plot ninja is a person, place, thing, idea that you drop into your plot when you get stuck. Started on the NaNoWriMo forums from the suggestion that every NaNo book should include a ninja jumping out of a wardrobe, they’ve expanded to be anything that pops into someone’s head.

These come from the Take a Prompt, Leave a Prompt folder at the forums.

Cut them up and put them in a bowl to draw out a random idea when you get stuck. If you’re not doing NaNoWriMo, pull out and idea and start writing. When you get stuck, pull out another.

• start your writing with a description of wet feet
• Dreams
• crumpled clothing
• a llama
• pink post-it notes
• three uneaten oranges..
• overhearing a conversation of a tourist and a local
• a pet curled up in a chair
• tumbleweed
• some moldy cheese
• a disgruntled landlord
• an antique quilt
• a picture of a gorgeous man
• an unusual locket
• an unusually detailed, oft-repeated doodle
• a Rubik’s cube
• Your MC gets a headache
• frosted strawberry pop tarts
• old ugly wallpaper on a grandparent’s bedroom wall
• a Halloween bucket full of candy wrappers, with one piece of candy still left at the bottom
• A water proof safe, Full of water, left in the middle of the desert
• a pair of gangly teenagers with braces, making out
• a mannequin
• a battered dart board
• a homemade birdhouse hanging from a street sign
• a one-eyed chicken
• a slimy slug trail
• Finding a stranger in your bathtub
• Getting caught in the rain
• A child with a pink ice cream
• The couple in the apartment next to you having an argument about a mysterious person called ‘Phil’
• the sound of a prom dress being thrown away
• A notorious thief finds a baby in a boat on the Thames
• An unopened love letter from twenty years ago
• A broken doll
• A handful of sugared violets
• An angel on a park bench
• And a duke box
• a soggy cardboard box that has sat out in the rain all night
• a perfectly round rock with an X drawn across it in crayon
• Three people from the same office thrown together under canvas for one night. It’s raining. There’s no booze. There’s only two sleeping bags
• one woman who sits next to you on the bus with her ipod turned so loud you can hear Christmas Carols, and it’s still November
• A motorcyclist zooming by, wearing a helmet cam and a microphone
• two people walking down the street wearing a horse costume
• a piece of broken, dusty yellow-orange glass
• a camera with everything intact except the film, which is melted
• a row of empty seats with one in the middle occupied. Then another person comes along and takes a seat right next to that person, instead of an empty one further down
• a book in a foreign language with the covers ripped off, found in a public place
• a necklace with the cord snapped, beads bouncing every which way on a tile floor
• A lone operator working by herself all night in a deserted building
• A homemade lasagna falling as the cook is knocked over by a large Rhodesian Ridgeback (breed of dog)
• One very expensive hairless cat (cannot remember the breed) being held for ransom
• 2 people dressed up for Halloween — one as Santa Claus, the other as the Easter Bunny
• A pet dog with a phobia of anything smaller than him!
• a chewed up pen in the parking lot (you decide whether it still works or not)
• a book in a foreign language with the covers ripped off, found in a public place
• a cell phone that fell into a toilet
• weapons, elements of battle
• The sound of sobbing coming from the attic
• someone finding out there is no water coming out of the tap on a given day (while they wanted to take a shower, for example)
• Several strands of hair stuck together with sticky tape
• Highlighters that have run out, but smell nice
• A cracked, glass statue
• a candy bar wrapper
• a broken timepiece
• a teddy bear with (detachable) bunny ears
• a puddle of water on the floor
• a penguin where it doesn’t belong (say, in a house)
• A painting of a snowboarder, with a dinosaur hidden within the background
• a goldfish swimming in the toilet
• A palm tree oasis in the middle of the desert
• an old Underwood typewriter with the ribbon stuck somewhere between black and red
• a three legged cat, (you decide how he lost his leg, or if we even know)
• a bloody razor blade found in a public restroom
• A smell which reminds your MC of their mother’s home cooking
• A dusty trilby lying abandoned on the pavement, and no one else around
• A frog that squeezes under a gap in the door when it’s raining
• A wallet filled with money in an empty car park
• a purse - shaped necklace that can open and close
• a lighted train rushing by at twilight
• a pizza delivery guy delivering a pre-paid pizza to the wrong address
• a pair of mismatched flip flops
• a set of four spoons, all bent out of shape
• a maroon moose that sings Christmas carols. (can be a stuffed moose, if you like)
• the landscape of Cocoa Puffs…go nuts
• the moon as a consolation prize
• a broken doll
• Mindscape
• A doll missing one of its limbs
• The dog barks at midnight
• A shoe impression was left in the tomato
• A platinum ring found in the bottom of a bargain bin in a music store
• three rusty lug-nuts
• an old gas lamppost
• a throbbing headache
• a thrift store shopping spree
• a dollar bill with writing on it
• pumpkin pie
• An ornate clock on a wall
• the futility of sweeping potato chips off the side of a mountain
• A paperclip lost in the septic tank
• a half-finished crossword left on the train, that must be returned
• a cold, clear mountain stream
• a Chinese pagoda
• a shovel stuck into a mound of dirt
• a mislabeled lollipop–it’s a flavor you don’t like or weren’t expecting
• a plastic green dinosaur whose head is a staple remover
• A pangolin
• A moderately rainy day
• A flamethrower
• Miniature Robots
• three old batteries and a change purse
• an unexpected strip of duct tape
• a strangely addictive song
• a purple permanent marker
• a barrel of monkeys
• a field full of talking flowers
• Three glow-in-the-dark Troll dolls
• Whenever I think of Paris, I think of..
• Fur-dyed poodles! (either pink or blue or green… I’ll leave that up to you)
• a forgotten sock
• watching TV from a safe position behind the sofa
• a Mysterious Stranger (abbreviated sometimes to AMS)
• a strange cloud formation
• the sound of a baby crying, or laughing
• a facial expression completely at odds with what a character is saying
• an extreme temperature change, you decide how or why
• a dead body, killed with that shovel (the traveling shovel of death)
• a case of identify theft
• the feeling you get when you are in the house on your own, and you could almost swear that there is someone behind you, and it gives you a weird burst of speed, and you run into the next room, slamming the door
  1,000 baby turtles gone missing
• An egg that cracks open and nothing is inside
• A horse named Albert with OCD
• A girl named Doug
• A one hundred on a test that you paid the teacher to get
• The smell of the keyboard
• Ten chickens that have no idea that they are chickens
• ginger beer
• a fight/action scene at a zoo
• the last leaf on a tree
• Dwarf tossing
• a rescued turtle
• a British phone booth found anywhere except the UK
• three gold star stickers
• a mallard duck
• A cape
• a pitcher of eggnog
• a pair of mismatched curtains
• an experience that fills the MC with both joy and fear
• a dozen cigarette ends floating in a wine glass
• a man wearing fingerless gloves
• a dead shark
• a house with peppermint-themed interior decor
• a villain who loves pie
• a broken computer on a doorstep
• a trophy tarnished with age
• a ceiling full of mold
• a cry for forgiveness
• twenty ancient unopened jars of apricot jam
• a blue stuffed elephant named Trunky
• your MC suddenly finds him/herself in possession of a prized racehorse
• A very wet dog on the couch
• A cozy fire on the hearth
• a Dixieland jazz band
• A funeral where everybody’s laughing and cheering about how the deceased will not be missed
• A black kitten named Matt
• a broken wine glass
• a repair bill
• a half empty Coca-Cola
• an old grandfather clock set to the wrong time
• the making of a salad
• a very old bloodhound
• hot peppermint tea with little mini biscotti from a boxful bought at Shoprite
• two blue ballet shoes and a claddagh ring (which have a relation to one another, a tied significance)
• a pair of fairy wings
• a stove timer that always adds five minutes onto the time inputted
• an unjust accusation
• the scent of freshly baked bread
• the taste of a lie
• a red haired girl with one blue and one green eye
• an ingrown toenail
• squirrels in the attic
• A flower pot getting thrown off a roof
• a dog kennel that washes up on shore
• a TV show involving robots
• a river without any fish
• a baby with colic
• the number 7
• a roaring fire
• a burning bush
• a dead rose in a vase
• a frozen pond with the ice broken in the center
• An impromptu dancing lesson
• A parakeet that can only say, “Schpedoinkle!”
• A single glove found lying on the sidewalk
• A car catching on fire
• a white tank top
• ceramic dwarves
• blue highlighted hair
• a nightgown in a washing machine
• a cat sitting on feet
• the ending of a video game
• multi-hue eyed girl!
• an illicit affair
• A horse named Albert
• A purple spotted toad
• A grandmother who thinks that she is a fish
• needing badly to go to the bathroom in the middle of a meeting
• a plastic carnation painted green with nail polish
• A red wedding dress
• Afternoon nap when it’s raining outside
• A purse filled with brown leaves
• Tangles headphone cables
• The salt cap falling off while salting a dish, and all the salt falling in
• A train ride
• Getting pizza for the mixed herb packets
• Playing cards all night
• another character’s perspective
• voices in the attic
• “I can’t sit still.”
• an over-enthusiastic nude photographer
• a pair of papier mâché clawed hands
• a midnight snowfall
• a selection of brightly coloured boxes in an empty room/house
• a light-up, plug-in, green gnome
• a well-preserved dinosaur skeleton
• a missing iguana
• gypsy dancing bears
• your character’s reaction to running over something on the road
• someone wearing mismatched socks
• a niggling memory that you can ALMOST remember, but not quite
• “Of course I’m fine. I’m more than fine. Who wouldn’t be with someone like you landing on me??”
• a messed up judicial system causing an arrest and detainment in jail
• fine, realistic costume jewelry
• a rickety, creaking white gate that gives someone away
• a spy who catches a bad cold at just the wrong time
• A hair ribbon flying with the wind
• a nearly-empty jar of peanut butter
• No two snowflakes are alike
• the lifetime of a $5 bill
• A toad under a rock
• a fake potted plant
• a vast array of staples
• an umbrella left in the park on a sunny day
• a strange light in the sky
• a sudden burst of laughter
• a knife with a dull, nicked blade
• Mug shot, toe tag and broken bridge
• blowing up an air mattress with a hair dryer
• a car stuck in mud
• A cat lying in the sunlight
• Odd eyes
• An unpainted dollhouse
• The last book in a series
• A dusty globe of Saturn
• The sound of thinking
• a consistent beeping noise
• a nightmare about a horse
• an earthquake
• celebration of a feast
• performing a ritual
• MC must taste chocolate, cacao, or similar substance
• a music box that won’t open
• glass figurines
• a plastic lizard
• purple nail polish

Like the Fantasy Novelists Exam and Grand list of overused science fiction clichés and The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches here is:

The Not-So-Grand List of Overused Fantasy Clichés
by Teresa Dietzinger (and contributors)

“Inspired by John Van Sickle’s Grand list of Overused Science Fiction Clichés, which is a writer’s guide to ideas and plot devices in Science Fiction which might have been a good idea at one point but, to quote Van Sickle, “have become hackneyed from overuse by the unimaginative,” unquote. I have sought to create a similar list for ideas and plot devices pertaining specifically to the Fantasy genre, (although I have decided I will not rate the cliches or try to categorize them. Suffice to say, this is simply a list of characterizations, ideas, and plot elements which have a tendency to crop up in Fantasy Fiction on a continual basis.)”

Overused Settings and Storylines

1. THE Fantasy Cliché - Hero starts off as a farm boy/servant/shepherd etc., has his family killed (which turns out not to be his actual family), and, through a process of self-realization and learning, becomes the all-powerful prophesied hero.
2. A brave hero steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
3. A brave hero steals from the rich and keeps it for himself.
4. A brave hero incites a slave revolt just by defeating an opponent or opponents in a feat of gladiatorial combat.
5. A brave hero incites a revolution by foiling a single well-attended public execution.
6. The old sage helping the hero develop his skills so he can defeat the bad guys:
   • is killed by the bad guys before the hero’s eyes, thus inciting the hero to try even harder to defeat them.
     OR
   • turns out to be an an even worse bad guy who is only using the hero as a pawn against his rivals (and who plans to get rid of the hero once he’s served his purpose of defeating said rivals.)
7. A band of heroes travels to various and sundry distant lands searching for the pieces to a key or to a device which will help them defeat the bad guys. After months of continuous trials and tribulations, they finally succeed in finding it and assembling it together, only to have it stolen from them by the bad guys who were smart enough to sit on their arses and wait for the heroes to do all the hard work for them. (Suckers!)
8. A hero/heroine is called upon to take the place of a recently kidnapped member of royalty to whom they bear a conveniently uncanny resemblance.
   (Corollary: No matter how different the impostor might be in terms of background and personality, he/she will have no trouble impersonating the member of royalty. For some reason, their resemblance will be even MORE uncanny if the person they’re impersonating is of the opposite gender. (This is known as The Makoto Effect).
9. A pantheon of gods gets together and decides to play “chess” (or Risk, or Monopoly or whatever) with human beings as tokens.
10. It has been prophesied that a certain baby born with a certain birthmark is destined to destroy the villain when it grows up. Said baby is then whisked away to the forest to safety where it is raised to strapping young adulthood by:
    • wolves
    • little folk
    • fairies
    • a curmudgeonly, yet endearing old hermit.
      OR
    • the baby is placed in a basket and sent floating down a river where it’s found and raised to strapping young adulthood by:
    • a female member of the villain’s family
    • a kindly, old, childless peasant couple
11. The hero’s best friend is a member of the alien/magical race currently oppressing humanity, thereby making him and his friend the target of racism and prejudice.
12. An immortal being falls in love with a mortal and elects to give up his/her immortality so the two of them can live together.
13. The story takes place in an advanced society where spaceships and high technology reign, but where people inexplicably dress in costume from ancient eras (Roman togas, medieval gowns and armor, 18th century coats and cravats, etc.)
14. A fortuneteller:
    • tells the hero that something awful will happen, and sometimes, even how to prevent it, but the hero disregards the advice,
    • a decision he later comes to regret.
    • tells the hero that something awful will happen and despite the elaborate steps the hero takes to prevent this awful thing from happening, it happens anyway.
    • will give the hero a prophecy that’s deliberately vague and convoluted, knowing full well that it will cause him to follow a certain course of action (which the fortuneteller secretly wants him to pursue.)
15. A marriage is arranged between a prince and a princess, for political purposes. Both the prince and princess refuse the match but are later sent on a journey/adventure together, during the course of which they fall in love and eventually come to wonder how they could ever have refused the marriage in the first place.
16. The plot revolves around the fact that the villain is after a certain piece of jewelry that the hero owns. (Usually some kind of pendant that possesses some magical power.)
17. An individual from the 20th century, (a Connecticut Yankee, an Astronaut, an Annoyingly Cute Kid from the Cosby Show) travels back in time to King Arthur’s Court where he/she finds everyone able to speak perfectly intelligible English and where he/she is able to wow the locals by:
    • performing music that is contemporary to the date the movie/TV show was made
      OR
    • by showing off high-tech 20th century doodads like safety pins, firearms, skateboards, and snacks.
18. A hero/heroine visits a museum or an archeological dig where they get bonked on the head and find themselves waking up in the past. While there, the hero/heroine experiences a grand adventure, at the end of which, they get bonked on the head again. When they wake up this time, they find themselves back home in the future, with the impression in their mind that their grand adventure was all a dream. HOWEVER (in a farm-fresh, Rod Serling-esque plot twist), they soon stumble upon something at the museum/archeological dig (a scene from an ancient cave painting featuring their portrait, or a suit of armor with a bullet hole in it), which convinces them that maybe they weren’t dreaming after all.
19. Poor/low social class Hero falls madly in love with princess/high social class girl. Princess/high social class girl’s overly protective father finds out and attempts to kill hero but is:
    • swayed by the girl at the last possible moment
    • robbed of killing the hero by sheer chance
    • the girl gets in the way and he accidentally stabs her instead. (Oops!)
20. Girl is held captive by evil dragon who finds her entertaining, thus saving her from becoming crispy fried.
21. Hero finally gets a chance to beat arch-rival senseless, only to find that arch-rival has become insane/impoverished/lonely/dejected and generally not worth beating…
22. Evil Dragon turns good and befriends heroes, just in time for the “savior” of the heroes to come and kill it dead bug.
23. Talking magical object utterly bamboozles hero, in a world where talking magical objects are completely the norm.
24. Hero finds magical weapon, and is told never to use it, ever. Hero accidentally uses weapon when hero, trusty sidekick (probably either the tone deaf bard or the honorable thief), or lover is in mortal peril.
25. Hero sets off on a quest to find something or someone, only to find at the end he had it/them with him the whole time. (D’oh!)
26. Heroine falls in love with guy A, then out of love with guy A and into love with guy B. Guy B dies, Distraught Heroine marries guy A. Theme of unrequited/thwarted love.
27. Evil Emperor’s beautiful daughter falls in love with the hero.
28. Evil Emperor’s homely daughter feels compassion for his captives and sets them all free.
29. Hero/Heroine is trying to learn a new move/spell/secret at the beginning of film/episode, but has failed at every attempt. Somehow (be it the power of love, truth or the ol’ chestnut- faith in ones abilities) said Hero/Heroine manages to pull it off and defeat the creature/villain who could only be killed by that one move/spell/secret.
30. Evil doers with multi uber awesome powers always come unstuck when a newbie hero/heroine turns up with one super lame attack all powered by (you guessed it) LOVE! (Known as the Pretty Sammy effect.)

Overused Characterizations

1. The princess in the story is:
   • a damsel in distress who constantly needs rescuing.
   • a selfish snob who sees the error of her ways after mingling with the hero and the “common people” for a while.
   • a tomboy who prefers trousers to skirts and who constantly has to tell the hero she can take care of herself (even if it’s bloody well obvious she can’t).
2. A friar or clergyman is lecherous, has a potty mouth, or is in any other way notoriously worldly.
3. A bounty hunter/mercenary hired by the villains to dispatch the hero, turns out to be more interested in honor and/or the thrill of the fight than in the money.
4. A plucky street urchin who befriends the good guys is eventually discovered to be an agent (albeit perhaps, a reluctant one) for the bad guys.
5. The heroes encounter an all-female race which:
   • are Amazons or warriors, with no evidence of any agricultural activity within the community, means of commerce, construction, or craftspeople.
   • are young, big-hootered and beautiful. And, with the exception perhaps of a council of elders, there isn’t a single old, fat, or ugly amazon in the bunch.
   • are led by a queen or ruler who is in the prime of her life, strikingly beautiful, and who invariably falls head over heels in love with the hero.
6. A lute-toting bard who tags along with the heroes:
   • is useless as a fighter or as much of anything else.
   • promises to “sing great songs” about the heroes after their adventures have ended.
   • is almost completely lacking in any real musical talent whatsoever.
     AND
   • in rare cases, gets himself into trouble with a lady or with her family (”You spoony bard!”)
7. Creatures that are half-man/half-animal always look more animal than man. Creatures that are half-woman/half animal, always look more woman than animal and almost always wear little (or no) clothing and have extremely large breasts.
8. The evil wizard is played by either Jack Palance or Christopher Lee.
9. The hero has an American accent. The rest of the cast have English accents.
10. Blonde princesses are good, brunette/dark-haired princesses are evil.
11. Evil emperors:
    • crave wealth, money and power
    • dress in robes or armor, or a combination of both and tend to cover up every inch of their bodies even if the temperature is 98 degrees outside.
    • sometimes have an attraction to the heroine or to the hero’s girlfriend.
12. Evil empresses:
    • crave wealth, money and power
    • dress in leather, bikinis, or a combination of both, and tend to dress scantily even if the temperature is 20 degrees below zero outside.
    • ALWAYS have an attraction to the hero (and sometimes to the heroine or to the hero’s girlfriend.)
13. The best fighters are always men. The best healers/white magic users are always women. (I’ve seen many a console RPG guilty of this one.) #14
14. The sword the hero is carrying has a blade made of pure light energy which goes VOOOM! whenever he swings it.
15. A villain who is particularly vain or pretty receives a scar or burn on his/her face, courtesy of the hero. Said villain then dons a mask (usually) and spends a good chunk of the rest of the story sulking in a dark place, plotting his/her revenge.
16. As a child, the hero:
    • trains hard to be a great warrior/mage/etc., though no one believes he/she can do it.
    • is destined to be a great warrior/mage/etc., and refuses to train because he/she finds it a waste of time.
17. The hero of the story is:
    • incredibly arrogant and cocky, but can never back it up.
    • a coward who does nothing until the very end, when he gets over his fear to do one thing that accomplishes his mission, eventually being declared a hero for that one deed.
    • a great warrior, except when he is drunk, (and he is almost always drunk).
18. A member of the group who is a child will be ignored and/or mistreated by the others, even if he/she is smarter than all the other group members combined.
19. The hero is always either a really gorgeous guy (enabling him to capture the hearts of all the girls) or an atrociously ugly guy (enabling him to capture the hearts of all the girls, albeit through pity, his inferiority complex, and the lack of love he’s received from everyone.)
20. Clergymen who are affiliated with any kind of established church appear noble and serene, but inside are actually pompous, hypocritical, or secretly in league with the forces of evil. (Japanese RPGs are ESPECIALLY guilty of this one.)
21. Clergymen who are NOT affiliated with any kind of established church and who are instead wandering monks and friars appear to be rude, hard-drinking, and worldly, but inside secretly have a heart of gold and are disposed to give help to the hero whenever he needs it (as well as be on hand to marry the hero to his sweetheart at the end of the movie/story.) #22
22. The larger and more titanic the size of the heroine’s breasts, the less likely they are to impede her ability to fight, run, flip backwards several times, etc.
23. The cool, anti-hero type vampire hunter with superhuman strength turns out to be (in another brilliantly original, Serling-esque plot twist) a vampire (or half-vampire) themselves.
24. A hero is boastful, claiming nobody is better than him. As a result more people who are able to defeat him show up in the story/series. (That’s what you get for tempting the fates).
25. If the character in the original book is female, a warrior, detests men with a passion, and a cold-hearted villainess, in the movie she’ll be a bratty little plot device who falls in love with every male she comes in contact with.
26. A Barbarian appears in the story.
    • If it’s female, it will dress in a skimpy, bust-enhancing, leather costume, carry around a big sword, and will frequently insist that the only man she’ll marry is one who can defeat her in a fair contest. Despite how tough she might be, she’ll scream like a schoolgirl every time she encounters a rat in a dungeon.
    • If it’s a male, it will dress in a leather thong and a headband (and not much else), carry around a big sword, and will, in most cases, sport a thick Austrian accent. Will have a tendency, when surprised or when rushing into battle, to shout epithets involving the names of extremely masculine-sounding gods. (”By CROM, I will defeat you!!!!”)
27. The comic relief is:
    • A cowardly yet amiable thief/pickpocket.
    • A cute (sometimes wise-cracking) animal who seems pretty annoying and useless except during those rare times when a situation calls for filching dungeon keys or for heroically sacrificing oneself in an attempt to distract the villain.
    • A tone-deaf bard. (see aforementioned comments concerning bards above).
    • A pair of lovable droids with clashing, Odd Couple-esque personalities.
    • Any animated character whose VA is Robin Williams, Dom DeLuise or Gilbert Gottfried.
    • An inept, out-of-shape, out-of-his-league, self-declared “hero” who tags along with the real heroes in the hopes of experiencing a grand adventure, (and who usually winds up instead being a pain in the ass, being eventually compromised by the villain, or just plain mucking up everyone’s plans.) In rare cases, his/her ineptitude will result in his/her performing an action which, through sheer luck, will result in causing a setback for the villain (oftentimes by causing his accidental destruction).
    • Usually completely unnecessary.
28. A dragon appears in the story. Said dragon is possessed of a sentient mind and the ability to converse in human languages fluently, (a seemingly meaningless talent for it to have, considering all the dragon wants to do with his life is to find an enormous hoard of treasure, plop his big, scaly ass down on top of it and sleep for all eternity, waking only to shoo away/eat the occasional armored knight, hobbit, or callow teen-aged hero which might come round to try and claim it).
29. Fairies (the 6 inch tall kind) are usually:
    • scantily dressed and female
    • cute beyond all reason,
    • extremely hot-tempered
    • jealously attracted to the Hero. (The fact that he’s 300 times bigger than she is and that the two of them have no hope of engaging in normal intimate relations does not appear to shake her resolve to love him one bit.)
30. Villains dress in dark or sinister colors such as black and blood red.
31. Wizards wear tall pointed hats and robes embroidered with moons and stars.
32. Any character you see within the story that has a western name either has it spelt differently or is a secondary character who bears no importance whatsoever. All other proper nouns (names and places) will be completely foreign and hard to pronounce.
33. Evil people always sound more evil and deadly with a British accent (unless it’s Dick Van Dyke)
34. Orphans become heroes.
35. Stepmothers are evil.
36. Villainous or dark characters are the way they are because of a tragic occurrence in their pasts.
37. The heroine/hero is always so beautiful that everyone falls in love with him/her.

Story Events and Plot Devices

1. A wedding takes place where the phrase “And if there’s anyone present who can see why these two shouldn’t be joined in marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace,” is followed by a scene in which nobody holds their peace. (Corollary: It is a Universal Rule of Fantasy that the hero and his buddies, when attempting to stop a wedding between the hero’s love interest and the villain, MUST choose the particular moment after that phrase is uttered, to launch their attack, even if waiting to do so puts them at a strategic disadvantage.)
2. The all-powerful wizard/seemingly unbeatable enemy turns out to be a mischievous child or a dinky old man behind a curtain.
3. The villain’s fortress starts to crumble around our heroes the moment he is defeated, leaving our heroes just barely enough time to escape before it collapses.
4. The overly friendly (or, in some cases, vaguely menacing) bishop or church official turns out to actually be at the head of the evil cult.
5. The hero runs into a competent swordswoman:
   • whose great skill with the sword is matched only by the great size of her hooters
     AND WHO
   • engages him in battle (at first)
   • sleeps with him (later on)
   • sacrifices her life for him (at the end)
6. Secondary characters who are killed in the first season of the TV series or movie are brought back to life in the sequel/next season for the flimsiest of reasons, because they were popular OR because the writers/producers of the show are too gutless to risk offending soccer moms by killing off sympathetic characters (and showing kids that, yes, sometimes evil actually wins.)
7. The hero and his girlfriend who, although looked like they were headed down the aisle at the end of the first movie or season of the TV series are inexplicably separated or estranged at the beginning of the sequel/next season.
8. One of the good guys falls in love with and becomes engaged to a character with no background and no previous presence in the storyline. Said character will invariably:
   • (if it’s a female) get kidnapped by the bad guys, forcing the good guys to rally around the groom and help him go save her.
   • turn out to be a spy or operative for the Bad Guys.
   • turn out to be a criminal or con-artist who wants to scam the heroes out of an important item or out of their pocket change.
     In any event, the mysterious fiance turns out to be a one-shot character who, at the end of the book/episode:
   • dies
   • gets thrown in prison
   • is discovered to be already married to somebody else.
   • decides they want to get to hitched to an old flame instead of to the good guy/gal she/he’s engaged to.
   • just plain up and leaves for no damn good reason.
9. A virgin, slated for sacrifice, is rendered unsuitable for sacrificial purposes thanks to a plot contrivance which conveniently places her and the hero alone in the same area just long enough for them to have an intimate encounter.
10. The villain turns out to be the hero’s long-lost father/ brother/ uncle’s cousin’s sister’s best friend’s former roommate, etc.
11. The hero inexplicably chooses to ride off into the sunset alone or with his buddies rather than stay behind with the hot princess he just rescued and help her rule her kingdom.
12. The hero(es) extricate themselves from a hopelessly tricky situation by simply cutting a rope holding a chandelier. (Making sure it’s the right rope first, of course, ala Robin Hood: Men in Tights.)
13. All it takes to defeat the villain is a good dousing with a bucket of cold water. (The Sci-Fi equivalent to this Fantasy plot device would be the all-powerful superweapon that’s about to destroy the world being disabled by simply pulling a plug from a wall outlet.)
14. The villain charges towards the hero, intending to strike him down while his back in turned, but is prevented from doing do by a weapon shot/thrown by the hero’s friend or ally, who just happened to conveniently arrive at that very moment.
15. A princess rescues the hero from jail by:
    • drugging the guard(s) drinks.
    • pretending to trip and exposing her shapely legs, thereby distracting the guard(s) long enough for the hero to reach out from between the bars of his cell and klonk him/them unconscious.
16. An executioner or a priest performing a human sacrifice is stopped from doing his job at the last second by a hero who manages to pull off a one-in-a-million, defies-all-known-laws-of-reason-and-physics shot with a ranged weapon.
17. A catapult successfully shoots a hero over the castle battlements where he lands safely on the other side in a pile of straw, instead of ending up as a stain on the wall or with his insides spilled on the cobblestones of the courtyard pavement.
18. The hero from the future goes back in time and uses the old “Hey, what’s that over there?” trick to elude the villains, and it works because said villains come from an era in history when men were less-media savvy and more prone to believe in the sincerity of everything told to them by other people.
19. The hero from the future goes back in time and uses the old “Hey, what’s that over there?” trick to elude the villains, and it DOESN’T work because, let’s face it, that old trick has been around since the days the first cavemen walked the earth. (Only then it was known as “Lookout ! There’s a velociraptor headed straight for us!” Needless to say, it didn’t work very well THEN, either…)
20. An obnoxiously cute little creature that’s following the heroes around sacrifices it’s life for them, and at the end of the story, gets resurrected somehow. (This is usually much to the chagrin of the viewers/readers, most of whom had hated that annoying little turd from the moment it first appeared in the story and had cheered loudly when they thought it had been dispatched.)
21. Modern (sometimes painfully modern) jokes/clichés/conventions of society, etc. are used for comedic effect.
22. Archaic weapons are used improperly. (Or misused because it looks cool.) i.e.: A hero blocks his enemy’s downstroke while crouched on the ground with his back to him, a ninja catches an arrow or stops a swinging sword with his bare hands, etc.
23. Weapons are used which could never really work in reality the way they do in the story/series. (Not without slicing the user’s fingers off. CHAKRAM *Cough!*)
24. The most powerful member of the group (usually a wizard) refuses to use his powers unless absolutely necessary, even when doing so would have saved the group a month’s journey or prevented the death of one or more of its members.
25. The most powerful member of the group leaves at the most crucial moment and comes back to find that the group completely screwed everything up because he/she was gone.
26. When two members of sparring kingdoms travel together, they:
    • (if they’re of the same sex) become best of friends and decide to work together to unite their kingdoms.
    • (if they’re of the opposite sex) become lovers and decide to marry and have children to unite their kingdoms.
27. When a hero has a dark past/secret, it is known by:
    • the hero’s parent(s)/sibling(s)/guardian(s) who took care of him since he was a child. This person reveals the secret to the hero just before he dies, leaving the hero with no one to answer the many questions this revelation brought up.
      AND
    • the villain, who is connected to the past/secret in some way.
28. The heroes seek the help of a legendary warrior. Upon finding him, they discover him to be a washed-up, aged, curmudgeon-y old drunk who can barely stand up much less save the day.
29. When dealing with the heroes, the villain will always forgo the simple, straightforward option of crushing them utterly and instead, inexplicably choose to deploy his weakest weapons/minions against them first, thus allowing the heroes ample opportunity to build up their strength to the point where they become a bona fide threat.
30. (Corollary from Rule #2 above) If the villain looks monstrous, ferocious or intimidating, it’s true form will turn out to be weak, almost comical. If the villain is normal, puny-looking, or handsome, it’s true form will turn out to be towering and monstrous.
31. Comrades-in-arms who fall in battle are mourned by the heroes for a grand total of about three seconds and then callously forgotten about for the rest of the story.
32. Characters are able to perform or witness acts of tremendous violence, (mutilations, explosions, decapitations, massacres, etc.,) without ever suffering any negative mental repercussions in the form of nightmares, neuroses, psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, or anything else of that nature.
33. The hero shoots an arrow, the tip of which the camera follows right until it enters the forehead of its victim. (a’la Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, LOTR, etc.)
34. All it takes to make a miraculous recovery from a mortal injury is having an extreme will to live. (Or by having a soulmate/wise old friend/mysterious person with magical healing powers who will play a large role in the up-coming plotline to destroy the villain help you.)
35. The villain commits a cruel act that’s over-the-top in it’s senselessness (i.e. killing a messenger who brings bad news, crushing a canary or killing a cherished pet) for no other reason than to show just how evil he truly is.
36. The Evil Emperor imprisons the hero’s girlfriend, dresses her like a skank, offers her all the power and possessions her heart desires, and then is genuinely mystified when she fails to fall for him.
37. The Evil Empress imprisons the hero, dresses like a skank, offers him her beautiful, voluptuous body to do with as he pleases, and then is genuinely mystified when he fails to fall for her. (As are all the men reading/watching the story…)
38. Even though all the odds are stacked against him, the (average-minded) hero somehow manages to outwit the (brilliant) villain, simply because the hero is a) on the side of good or b) has someone else doing all the thinking for him or c) when about to die, uses the power of love and life to lift himself up one final time, which is just enough to kill the villain.
39. Scantily-clad and hatless heroes and heroines are able to walk for miles outdoors under a blazing sun without even the slightest hint of a sunburn or skin damage afterwards.
40. A story or episode features characters from competing and wildly differing religious belief systems (i.e. biblical figures, figures from Greek and Roman myths) interacting with each other seamlessly and apparently without any theological conflicts.
41. The story features a character employing some kind of a love potion. This usually turns out to be a Really Bad Idea because:
    • Love potions being used by people with good intentions (who wish to have certain members of the heroes’ party fall in love with certain other members, ) invariably wind up being drunk by people they were not intended for,
      AND
    • Love potions being used by the villain/villainess (to win over one of the hero characters) are annoyingly susceptible to being broken by that pesky ol’ Power of True Love Thing.
42. The heroes fight their way to the villain’s inner sanctum to find the villain, dressed in somber colors, playing creepy music on a pipe organ.
43. A character who is killed off is brought back in the lamest way possible by having the same actor who portrayed them play the deceased character’s twin, secret love child, alternate persona from another universe, etc.
44. Have I mentioned either the “Villain employs the hero’s evil twin or lookalike impostor against the hero” or the “Hero and Villain switch bodies and the hero’s companions don’t find out until it’s almost too late” clichés yet?
45. The last day of the year when the magical keyhole to the magical secret passage is able to appear in the side of the mountain, is, by sheer coincidence, the very same day the heroes arrive with the key.
46. Male characters who are kept in dungeons for several days exhibit no signs of beard growth, even though they may have been chained to a wall and thus, unable to shave themselves. (Same goes for scantily-clad female characters and leg and armpit hair growth.)
47. Characters absolutely cannot change their clothes or get them dirty unless, of course, it is story related. Addendum: No matter how many times the hero’s clothes are
    burned, bloodied, stained, torn, slashed, or otherwise mutilated, by the end of the episode/chapter, the clothes will be as good as new.
48. Right before the villain is about to be killed by the hero, he pleads for his life. Naturally, the hero takes pity on the villain and spares him, provided he vows to give up his evil ways. (Which he almost never DOES)
49. The hero will arrive at the last possible second to defeat the dark lord and save everybody.
50. Grand viziers are ALWAYS evil. Same goes for high priests. Something in the job description probably.
51. If the storyline features a joust or martial arts tournament, the heroes will wind up entering it (and winning it, in spite of it having been fixed by the villains.)
52. When the hero wins a contest set up by the villain, he will be denied his prize and/or thrown into jail. (Example: Japanese Final Fantasy 2)
53. Gunpowder hasn’t been invented. (Have you ever noticed how many fantasy stories are set in worlds where nobody has developed gunpowder?)
54. Magic and technology advance unequally. Magical worlds usually possess ancient and medieval technology. Likewise, in technological worlds, magic tends to play a secondary role at best.
55. The Dark Lord inspires such terror that no one dares to speak of him by name (at least aloud.)
56. Any person a main character marries (if they’re not a main character themselves) is toast. You can count the time they have left to live in seconds. (Corollary: If two people have sex in a non-hentai anime, one or both of them will be dead by the final frame.)
57. The forces of good reside in beautiful lands, while lands belonging to the forces of evil are unattractive. (The science-fictional equivalent of this cliché is that benevolent civilizations dwell on beautiful planets, while the planets of malevolent cultures are unattractive.)
58. The existence of magicians who can easily raze or bypass castle walls doesn’t render traditional castles obsolete.
59. Societies are traditional monarchies and traditional aristocracies.
60. Royal families include evil relatives who scheme to steal or who have stolen the throne from the rightful rulers, their heirs, or both.
61. The hero/heroine will find the code to something or other and spend a long time trying to break it, only to find out it was a simple password that didn’t deserve the time it took to break, but bears significant importance to the plot.
62. The story is actually an allegory of some real period which occurred in history (ie: Nazi Germany, Renaissance-Era Venice, Communist Russia, etc.) with characters who are thinly disguised versions of real historical figures.
63. The villain of a “barbarian fantasy”/sword-and-sorcery story/movie maintains a harem of scantily-clad slave girls.
64. A villain raping a female hero = a tragic, criminal act which inspires vengeance. A hero raping a female villain = the female villain falls head over heels in love with the hero and spends the rest of the story trying to win him over.
65. Our world is connected to other dimensions through portals and linking rooms. (Corollary: In fantasy worlds, teleportation is usually based on magical not scientific principles and is used [mostly] as a cheap device to quickly get characters to the next plot point.)
66. Heroes from our world visit other dimensions and thwart the schemes of resident Evil Overlords. (Corollary to above: Heroes from our world who find themselves in other dimensions usually have at least one member of their party who’s seen or read a lot of fantasy stories and who believes themselves savvy as to how their new world actually works.)
67. Heroes and villains from other dimensions visit our world and decide to turn it into a battlefield for their final conflict (which usually results in the near destruction of our world. Fortunately, the otherworldly visitors usually have the ability to undo the damage they’ve caused by turning back time or by casting a clean-up spell.)
68. People who travel into dimensions which are vastly different from their own suffer very little in the way of culture shock, even if the place they came from was a small medieval dirt-hut village and the world they traveled to is an advanced, futuristic, neon-sign and machine-filled cityscape.
69. In contrast to villains, who often dress in dark or sinister colors, heroes frequently dress in bright but sensible colors.
70. Monarchies are hereditary. With the possible exception of religious hierarchies, elective monarchies do not exist.
71. Popular monarchies do not exist. The titles of monarchs are linked to their states instead of their peoples. Likewise, monarchs are regarded as governing well-defined states rather than peoples.
72. Survivors of a postmodern apocalypse (or people from a futuristic society who crash-land on a primitive world) will revert to a primitive way of life and start speaking like cavemen. (Alternatively, they’ll speak normally but selectively mangle the pronunciation of common terms and place names for no good reason other than to prove how “changed” they are.) Items and inventions from the ancient (modern) past will often be treated like sacred relics. (Nuclear missiles will be held in especially high regard and worshipped as sacred totems. At least until they blow up.)
73. On a post-holocaust Earth, the inhabitants adopt magic instead of science and technology. (Corollary: Commonly on post-holocaust Earths, magic is rationalized as being based on psionics.)
74. Magic is actually a form of science that has never been systematized in our world.
75. Fantasy cultures are frequently derived from northern Europe.
76. Fantasy cultures in Japanese RPG’s are also frequently derived from northern Europe (but will have at least one village filled with Asian architecture where everyone looks and dresses Japanese. This village is where all the ninjas, martial arts training monks, and cool ronin samurai warriors live.)
77. Magic is passed through bloodlines. (This can create castes within magic-user communities where “purebloods” think themselves better than “half-breeds” or “mixed-bloods”.)
78. If a hero has an identical twin or clone, it will invariably turn out to be evil.
79. If a villain has an identical twin or clone, it will usually also turn out to be evil. (This is especially true if the villain is killed off at the end of one season, and the producers of the show don’t want to hire a brand new actor to fill up the “villain” slot in the cast for the next season.)
80. In the rare event that a character’s identical twin or clone isn’t evil, they’ll usually turn out to be a polar opposite of that character in terms of personality. (This is often done for comedic effect, with the result sometimes being that the character’s friends and cohorts come to like the twin even more than they like the character, and are sad to see the twin go…)
81. It is not unusual for all members of a hero’s family to look exactly like the hero. (Even female members will do so it’s not unusual for the hero’s grandmother to look just like the hero himself wearing a bad granny wig.) Identical cousins are really common, as are identical ancestors or descendants, who look like the hero even down to the way they style their hair!
82. During the final, climactic fight of the first book/season of a series, a hero will inadvertently discover a power they have that is very scary and that no one else has.
83. The lands of the hero are suffering a horrible drought that ends the moment the villain is killed.
84. Somehow or another, no matter how many dangerous fights the heroes get themselves into, they are never hurt or scarred. If they are hurt and scarred they will quickly heal it themselves or it (amazingly) will disappear in the next chapter/episode.
85. Somehow or another the villain ALWAYS comes back, even if the heroes witness him being killed with their own eyes.
86. A villain who starts working along with the hero/heroine will always earn their trust, even after all the times the villain almost killed them.
87. There seems to always be a mysterious tavern…

Van Helsing Rules
Here’s a special subset of clichés I like to call the Van Helsing Rules, named after the infamous vampire movie which employed nearly every hackneyed monster movie cliché in the book and which shattered nearly every law of physics and reason…

• Van Helsing Rule #1: All anti-hero types must dress in black, have mysterious pasts, a gruff demeanor, and the ability to crack witty remarks during the heat of battle. No matter how competent they are, or how many people they manage to save, they’ll always find themselves hated by the public and mistrusted by their superiors.
• Van Helsing Rule #2: If the cool anti-hero gets paired with a sidekick, it’ll most likely be a kooky comic-relief gadgeteer who, inexplicably, winds up getting laid more often than he does. Corollary : It is NEVER right when the kooky comic relief gadgeteer winds up getting laid more often than the cool anti-hero. Especially if the cool anti-hero happens to be played by Hugh Jackman.
• Van Helsing Rule #3: Lower-ranking clergy NEVER take the whole “obeying the ten commandments” and “celibacy” thing very seriously. (In spite of this, they are almost always more trustworthy and compassionate than the Vatican higher-ups…)
• Van Helsing Rule #4: Cool anti-heroes love their hats and will do anything to keep from losing them.
• Van Helsing Rule #5: The cooler-looking and “seemingly-more-likely-to-go-out-of-control-and-kill-the-person-wielding-it-than-the-person-it’s-aimed-at” a weapon is, the better it works.
• Van Helsing Rule #6: All crossbows basically behave like machine guns with arrows.
• Van Helsing Rule #7: High heels and a tight corset are considered acceptable vampire-hunting garb.
• Van Helsing Rule #8: Powerful supervillains like to keep their friends close, their enemies closer and the one object which is capable of saving the hero and contributing to their own demise in a lightly guarded room located within their own fortress.
• Van Helsing Rule #9: All unknown viscous fluids are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.
• Van Helsing Rule #10: In Eastern Europe, the full moon occurs approximately once every four days.
• Van Helsing Rule #11: You need never keep track of where you’re going in a desperate pitched battle, because ALL you need to do is swing on a rope and/or crash through a window and you’ll automatically find yourself at the one place you needed to go to next.
• Van Helsing Rule #12: The stroke of midnight can, if the plot calls for it, go on for twenty minutes or more.
• Van Helsing Rule #13: Female characters who fall in love with the cool anti-hero are invariably doomed. (The fact that they were able to kick ass and survive high falls, beatings and monster attacks for the first 98% of the movie is irrelevant. All it will take to dispatch them at the end is a simple stab wound.)
• Van Helsing Rule #14: Cool, creepy art direction and millions of dollars of special effects cannot make up for a script conceived and written by a severely impaired tube worm…

At Kate Monk’s Onomastikon (Dictionary of Names) she has compiled and organized an extensive resource for naming foreign characters: first names, surnames and naming practices from around the world, past and present. Where else will you find 156 Mongolian first names? And 293 Anglo-Saxon names? And a list of not only Russian first names but also nicknames?

While baby name sites will eagerly provide you with a list of foreign names, often nicknames and English versions of the names are mixed in. Kate Monk has provided some well researched lists, originally intended for gamers: America, Ancient World, Africa, Celtic, England (divided into historical periods), Europe, Former Soviet Union, Inida, Middle East, Orient, Pacific.

The Native American and Pacific Islander names are a bit sketchy. And the lists are divided up a little too much (to find all the Russian male names you need to view six different pages: Greek, Latin, Biblical, Slavic, Germanic and Various. The lists were compiled 10 years ago so I suspect page load time was her concern at the time but all in all very useful.

(A few of the links are broken and you’ll be directed to a page with some choices. The choices work just fine.)

Here’s a few women’s names pulled together in a few minutes:

Nyanath Kayra (Sudan)
Ethne Dinneen (Celtic)
Grazia Salutari (Italian)
Tereza Lucescu (Romanian)
Kolbrun “Kolly” Sigurbjornsson (Iceland)
Kifayat Chorakchi (Azerbaijan)
Kavika Revathi (India)
Damla Kazaz (Turkey)
Qori Dashyondon (Mongolia)
Natsuko Shizuma (Japan)
Nyree Rupuma (Maori)
Xetsa Donkor (Ghana)
Fientje Barberie (Netherlands)

Here’s an extensive list of character traits. You can pick a couple or three to form the basis of a character. Then create a character with the opposite traits to form a friend, enemy, sibling, mentor … ?

While there’s a great deal to be said about nature forming our characters, it’s a lot more interesting for a story if there’s a background reason! :-) So ask yourself why the character developed those traits. What happened in the past, recent or childhood, that moved them in that direction. And perhaps they display the trait only in limited contexts. A low energy character could be forceful when the one thing he cares about is threatened. A frugal character could have a massive collection of manga. Someone could dole out their compassion just to those who are trying hard and have little sympathy for those who are letting themselves be weighed down.

Pick all from one list or all from different lists or mix them up and choose completely randomly. There are plenty of positive traits that aren’t normally paired together and could make for interesting characters, for example, cultured and easy going, or inept and cocky, or feisty and dainty so it isn’t necessary to mix them up.

If you love lists, there’s another list: Raymond Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors. Again, feel free to pick all “Low Range” or all “High Range” factors since shy and practical, or sensitive and lively, or competitive and solitary aren’t usual combinations but could make for some nicely complex characters when you dig into their lives and figure out why they’ve become who they are.

Positive traits

Accommodating
Accomplished
Adaptable
Adventurous
Affectionate
Agreeable
Amusing
Appreciative
Approachable
Articulate
Artistic
Audacious
Authoritative
Bewitching
Brave
Calming
Carefree
Careful
Caring
Charismatic
Charming
Chaste
Cheerful
Classy
Compassionate
Composed
Confident
Congenial
Conscientious
Considerate
Consistent
Content
Cooperative
Courageous
Creative
Cultured
Curious
Dainty
Debonair
Decent
Determined
Dignified
Disciplined
Easy-going
Educated
Empathetic
Energetic
Enthusiastic
Exuberant
Faithful
Feisty
Flexible
Focused
Forgiving
Frank
Friendly
Frugal
Fun-loving
Funny
Gentle
Glamorous
Good-natured
Graceful
Gracious
Gregarious
Hard-working
Helpful
Honest
Honorable
Hopeful
Hospitable
Imaginative
Impeccable
Informed
Inquisitive
Insightful
Insouciant
Intellectual
Intelligent
Introspective
Intuitive
Inventive
Joyful
Kind
Knowledgeable
Logical
Lovable
Loving
Loyal
Mature
Merciful
Modest
Noble
Observant
Open-minded
Optimistic
Organized
Outgoing
Outspoken
Passionate
Patient
Perceptive
Persistent
Pert
Philanthropic
Polite
Practical
Prosaic
Quirky
Rational
Reliable
Resilient
Respectful
Responsible
Romantic
Saintly
Savvy
Selfless
Sensual
Serene
Serious
Sincere
Smart
Spiritual
Supportive
Sweet
Sympathetic
Tactful
Thoughtful
Thrifty
Tireless
Tolerant
Trusting
Unassuming
Virtuous
Vivacious
Well-groomed
Wholesome

Depends on the context whether they’re positive or negative

Aggressive
Ambitious
Aristocratic
Assertive
Boisterous
Brazen
Busy
Conservative
Conventional
Daring
Delicate
Direct
Dramatic
Eccentric
Elusive
Enigmatic
Exotic
Fearless
Flamboyant
Flirtatious
Gullible
Holy
Humble
Idiosyncratic
Impulsive
Independent
Innocent
Irreverent
Liberal
Loner
Macho
Mannerly
Meticulous
Nonchalant
Nostalgic
Obedient
Obsessive
Opportunistic
Patriotic
Persuasive
Pious
Private
Proud
Quiet
Religious
Sensitive
Sentimental
Soft-spoken
Subtle
Talkative
Tough
Unconventional
Uninhibited
Unselfish
Wild
Worldly
Zany
Zealous

Generally negative descriptors, but not aspects that make you want to keep your distance

Absent-minded
Accident-prone
Aloof
Anxious
Apathetic
Apologetic
Apprehensive
Bewildered
Clumsy
Cocky
Compliant
Compulsive
Confused
Crafty
Cranky
Cunning
Cynical
Daffy
Defiant
Demanding
Detached
Disorganized
Distant
Distraught
Disagreeable
Dowdy
Downtrodden
Dull
Dumb
Emotional
Excessive
Excitable
Extravagant
Fanatical
Fatalistic
Finicky
Flippant
Flustered
Fragile
Frigid
Frustrated
Gaudy
Gloomy
Grandiose
Haggard
Hesitant
Hysterical
Ignorant
Immature
Immodest
Impatient
Impudent
Incoherent
Incompetent
Inconsiderate
Indecisive
Indifferent
Indiscreet
Inept
Infantile
Inhibited
Insecure
Insensitive
Insulting
Intimidating
Introverted
Irresponsible
Irritable
Jealous
Lazy
Lethargic
Materialistic
Melodramatic
Messy
Miserly
Moody
Naive
Neurotic
Non-committing
Opinionated
Ornery
Paranoid
Passive
Pessimistic
Petty
Presumptuous
Pretentious
Prim
Pushy
Rebellious
Reclusive
Remote
Resentful
Reserved
Righteous
Rowdy
Rude
Sarcastic
Sassy
Self-absorbed
Self-conscious
Self-effacing
Self-righteous
Senile
Shallow
Sheepish
Shy
Silent
Silly
Simple
Sloppy
Sluggish
Snobby
Spiteful
Squeamish
Stern
Stingy
Stoical
Straight-laced
Strict
Stubborn
Submissive
Surly
Suspicious
Temperamental
Tense
Tentative
Timid
Trivial
Unclean
Uncommunicative
Uneasy
Unmotivated
Unreasonable
Verbose
Vulnerable
Withdrawn

Quite negative, people you want to have as little contact with as possible

Abrasive
Angry
Annoying
Antisocial
Argumentative
Arrogant
Belligerent
Bossy
Calculating
Callous
Conceited
Condescending
Controlling
Cowardly
Critical
Crude
Deceitful
Despicable
Disgusting
Dogmatic
Domineering
Egocentric
Egotistic
Embittered
Greedy
Grotesque
Hypocritical
Intolerant
Judgmental
Lascivious
Lewd
Maniacal
Manipulative
Mean
Nasty
Obnoxious
Obscene
Overbearing
Perverted
Pompous
Profane
Promiscuous
Selfish
Sleazy
Sneaky
Unapproachable
Unscrupulous
Vain
Vindictive
Vulgar

Pretty darn evil

Abusive
Cruel
Dishonest
Hateful
Inhumane
Masochistic
Psychopathic
Psychotic
Ruthless
Sadistic
Traitorous
Tyrannical
Vengeful
Wicked

Like the Fantasy Novelists Exam and Grand list of overused science fiction clichés here’s The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches. While it’s not as closely tied to writing as those, they’re funny and many of them are relevant to fantasy writing.

1. Sleepyhead Rule
   The teenaged male lead will begin the first day of the game by oversleeping, being woken up by his mother, and being reminded that he’s slept in so late he missed meeting his girlfriend.
2. “No! My beloved peasant village!”
   The hero’s home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.
3. Thinking With The Wrong Head (Hiro Rule)
   No matter what she’s accused of doing or how mysterious her origins are, the hero will always be ready to fight to the death for any girl he met three seconds ago.
4. Cubic Zirconium Corollary
   The aforementioned mysterious girl will be wearing a pendant that will ultimately prove to be the key to either saving the world or destroying it.
5. Logan’s Run Rule
   RPG characters are young. Very young. The average age seems to be 15, unless the character is a decorated and battle-hardened soldier, in which case he might even be as old as 18. Such teenagers often have skills with multiple weapons and magic, years of experience, and never ever worry about their parents telling them to come home from adventuring before bedtime. By contrast, characters more than twenty-two years old will cheerfully refer to themselves as washed-up old fogies and be eager to make room for the younger generation.
6. Single Parent Rule
   RPG characters with two living parents are almost unheard of. As a general rule, male characters will only have a mother, and female characters will only have a father. The missing parent either vanished mysteriously and traumatically several years ago or is never referred to at all. Frequently the main character’s surviving parent will also meet an awkward end just after the story begins, thus freeing him of inconvenient filial obligations.
7. Some Call Me… Tim?
   Good guys will only have first names, and bad guys will only have last names. Any bad guy who only has a first name will become a good guy at some point in the game. Good guys’ last names may be mentioned in the manual but they will never be referred to in the story.
8. Nominal Rule
   Any character who actually has a name is important in some way and must be sought out. However, if you are referred to as a part of a posessive noun (”Crono’s Mom”) then you are superfluous.
9. The Compulsories
   There’s always a fire dungeon, an ice dungeon, a sewer maze, a misty forest, a derelict ghost ship, a mine, a glowing crystal maze, an ancient temple full of traps, a magic floating castle, and a technological dungeon.
10. Luddite Rule (or, George Lucas Rule)
    Speaking of which, technology is inherently evil and is the exclusive province of the Bad Guys. They’re the ones with the robots, factories, cyberpunk megalopolises and floating battle stations, while the Good Guys live in small villages in peaceful harmony with nature. (Although somehow your guns and/or heavily armed airships are exempted from this.)
11. Let’s Start From The Very Beginning (Yuna Rule)
    Whenever there is a sequel to an RPG that features the same main character as the previous game, that character will always start with beginner skills. Everything that they learned in the previous game will be gone, as will all their ultra-powerful weapons and equipment.
12. Poor Little Rich Hero (Meis Rule)
    If the hero comes from a rich and powerful family, it will have fallen on hard times and be broke and destitute by the time the game actually starts.
13. The Higher The Hair, The Closer To God (Cloud Rule)
    The more outrageous his hairstyle, the more important a male character is to the story.
14. Garrett’s Principle
    Let’s not mince words: you’re a thief. You can walk into just about anybody’s house like the door wasn’t even locked. You just barge right in and start looking for stuff. Anything you can find that’s not nailed down is yours to keep. You will often walk into perfect strangers’ houses, lift their precious artifacts, and then chat with them like you were old neighbors as you head back out with their family heirlooms under your arm. Unfortunately, this never works in stores.
15. Hey, I Know You!
    You will accumulate at least three of these obligatory party members:
    • The spunky princess who is rebelling against her royal parent and is in love with the hero.
    • The demure, soft-spoken female mage and healing magic specialist who is not only in love with the hero, but is also the last survivor of an ancient race.
    • The tough-as-nails female warrior who is not in love with the hero (note that this is the only female character in the game who is not in love with the hero and will therefore be indicated as such by having a spectacular scar, a missing eye, cyborg limbs or some other physical deformity — see The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Rule.)
    • The achingly beautiful gothy swordsman who is riven by inner tragedy.
    • The big, tough, angry guy who, deep down, is a total softy.
    • The hero’s best friend, who is actually much cooler than the hero.
    • The grim, selfish mercenary who over the course of the game learns what it means to really care about other people.
    • The character who is actually a spy for the bad guys but will instantly switch to your side when you find out about it.
    • The weird bonus character who requires a bizarre series of side quests to make them effective (with the ultimate result that no player ever uses this character if it can be avoided.)
    • The nauseatingly cute mascot who is useless in all battles.
16. Hey, I Know You, Too!
    You will also confront/be confronted by at least three of these obligatory antagonists:
    • The amazingly good-looking and amazingly evil long-haired prettyboy who may or may not be the ultimate villain.
    • The villain’s loyal right-hand man, who comes in two versions: humorously incompetent or annoyingly persistent.
    • The villain’s attractive female henchman, who is the strongest and most competent soldier in the army but always lets the party escape because she’s, yes, fallen in love with the hero.
    • Your former ally who supposedly “died” and was forgotten about, until much later in the game when he/she shows up again on the villain’s side and full of bitterness.
    • The irritatingly honorable foe whom you never get to kill because, upon discovering the true nature of his superiors, he either nobly sacrifices himself or joins your party.
    • The insane clown or jester who will turn out to be surprisingly difficult to subdue.
    • The mad scientist who likes creating mutated creatures and powerful weapons ‘cause it’s fun (and also handy if uninvited adventurers show up.)
    • The adorably cute li’l creature or six year old child who fights you and, inexplicably, kicks your butt time after time.
17. Hey, I Know You, Three!
    Furthermore, expect to encounter most of the following obligatory non-player chararcters (NPCs):
    • The townsperson or crewmember who wanders aimlessly in circles and never quite gets where he is going.
    • Hilariously incompetent or cowardly soldiers.
    • The NPC who has a crush on another NPC and can’t quite work up the nerve to tell him or her, so instead tells every other person who wanders by about it at great length.
    • A group of small children playing hide-and-seek.
    • The wise and noble captain/king/high priest.
    • The wise and noble captain/king/high priest’s splutteringly evil second-in-command. Nobody, including the hero, will notice the second’s constant, crazed scheming until the moment when he betrays everyone to the forces of badness.
    • The NPC who is obsessed with his completely mundane job and witters on endlessly about how great it is. He’s so thrilled by it that he wants to share it with everyone he sees, so given a quarter of a chance he’ll make you do his job for him.
    • The (adult) NPC who has nothing better to do than play kids’ games with passersby.
    • The group of young women who have formed a scarily obsessive fan club for one of your female party members.
18. Crono’s Complaint
    The less the main character talks, the more words are put into his mouth, and therefore the more trouble he gets into through no fault of his own.
19. “Silly Squall, bringing a sword to a gunfight…”
    No matter what timeframe the game is set in — past, present, or future — the main hero and his antagonist will both use a sword for a weapon. (Therefore, you can identify your antagonist pretty easily right from the start of the game just by looking for the other guy who uses a sword.) These swords will be far more powerful than any gun and often capable of distance attacks.
20. Just Nod Your Head And Smile
    And no matter how big that big-ass sword is, you won’t stand out in a crowd. Nobody ever crosses the street to avoid you or seems to be especially shocked or alarmed when a heavily armed gang bursts into their house during dinner, rummages through their posessions, and demands to know if they’ve seen a black-caped man. People can get used to anything, apparently.
21. Aeris’s Corollary
    Just as the main male character will always use a sword or a variant of a sword, the main female character will always use a rod or a staff of some sort.
22. MacGyver Rule
    Other than for the protagonists, your choice of weapons is not limited to the prosaic guns, clubs, or swords. Given appropriate skills, you can cut a bloody swath across the continent using gloves, combs, umbrellas, megaphones, dictionaries, sketching tablets — you name it, you can kill with it. Even better, no matter how surreal your choice of armament, every store you pass will just happen to stock an even better model of it for a very reasonable price. Who else is running around the world killing people with an umbrella?
23. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Melfice Rule)
    If the male hero has an older sibling, the sibling will also be male and will turn out to be one of the major villains. If the hero has a younger sibling, the sibling will be female and will be kidnapped and held hostage by the villains.
24. Capitalism Is A Harsh Mistress
    Once you sell something to a shopkeeper, he instantly sells it to somebody else and you will never see the item again no matter what.
25. Dimensional Transcendence Principle
    Buildings are much, much larger on the inside than on the outside, and that doesn’t even count the secret maze of tunnels behind the clock in the basement.
26. Local Control Rule
    Although the boss monster terrorizing the first city in the game is less powerful than the non-boss monsters that are only casual nuisances to cities later in the game, nobody from the first city ever thinks of hiring a few mercenaries from the later cities to kill the monster.
27. Nostradamus Rule
    All legends are 100% accurate. All rumors are entirely factual. All prophecies will come true, and not just someday but almost immediately.
28. IDKFA
    The basic ammunition for any firearms your characters have is either unlimited or very, very easy to obtain. This will apply even if firearms are extremely rare.
29. Indestructible Weapon Rule
    No matter how many times you use that sword to strike armored targets or fire that gun on full auto mode it will never break, jam or need any form of maintenance unless it is critical to the story that the weapon breaks, jams or needs maintenance.
30. Selective Paralysis
    Your characters must always keep both feet on the ground and will be unable to climb over low rock ledges, railings, chairs, cats, slightly differently-colored ground, or any other trivial objects which may happen to be in their way. Note that this condition will not prevent your characters from jumping from railroad car to railroad car later in the game.
31. Bed Bed Bed
    A good night’s sleep will cure all wounds, diseases, and disabilities, up to and including death in battle.
32. You Can’t Kill Me, I Quit (Seifer Rule)
    The good guys never seem to get the hang of actually arresting or killing the bad guys. Minor villains are always permitted to go free so they can rest up and menace you again later — sometimes five minutes later. Knowing this rule, you can deduce that if you do manage to kill (or force the surrender of) a bad guy, you must be getting near the end of the game.
33. And Now You Die, Mr. Bond! (Beatrix Rule)
    Fortunately for you, the previous rule also applies in reverse. Rather than kill you when they have you at their mercy, the villains will settle for merely blasting you down to 1 hit point and leaving you in a crumpled heap while they stroll off, laughing. (This is, of course, because they’re already planning ahead how they’ll manipulate you into doing their bidding later in the game — see Way To Go, Serge.)
34. Zap!
    Most villains in RPGs possess some form of teleportation. They generally use it to materialize in front of the adventurers when they reach the Obligatory Legendary Relic Room and seize the goodies just before you can. The question “if the bad guy can teleport anywhere at any time, then why doesn’t (s)he just zip in, grab the artifact, and leave before the adventurers have even finished the nerve-wracking puzzle on the third floor?” is never answered.
35. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Grahf Rule)
    It doesn’t matter that you won the fight with the boss monster; the evil task he was trying to carry out will still get accomplished somehow. Really, you might as well not have bothered.
36. Clockwork Universe Rule
    No matter how hard you try to stop it, that comet or meteor will always hit the earth.
37. Fake Ending
    There will be a sequence which pretends to be the end of the game but obviously isn’t — if for no other reason than because you’re still on Disk 1 of 4.
38. You Die, And We All Move Up In Rank
    During that fake ending, the true villain of the story will kill the guy you’d thought was the villain, just to demonstrate what a badass he (the true villain) really is. You never get to kill the fake villain yourself.
39. “What are we going to do tonight, Vinsfeld?”
    The goal of every game (as revealed during the Fake Ending) is to Save the World from an evil figure who’s trying to take it over or destroy it. There is no way to escape from this formidable task. No matter whether the protagonist’s goal in life is to pay off a debt, to explore distant lands, or just to make time with that cute girl in the blue dress, it will be necessary for him to Save the World in order to accomplish it. Take heart, though — once the world gets sorted out, everything else will fall into place almost immediately.
40. Zelda’s Axiom
    Whenever somebody tells you about “the five ancient talismans” or “the nine legendary crystals” or whatever, you can be quite confident that Saving the World will require you to go out and find every last one of them.
41. George W. Bush Geography Simplification Initiative
    Every country in the world will have exactly one town in it, except for the country you start out in, which will have three.
42. Fodor’s Guide Rule
    In the course of your adventure you will visit one desert city, one port town, one mining town, one casino city, one magic city (usually flying), one medieval castle kingdom, one clockwork city, one martial arts-based community, one thieves’ slum, one lost city and one sci-fi utopia. On the way you’ll also get a chance to see the cave with rocks that glow from a natural energy source, the village populated with nonhuman characters, the peaceful village where everyone knows the latest news about the hero’s quest (see Guy in the Street Rule), the snow village, the magical forest/lake/mountain, the shop in the middle of nowhere, the fantastic-looking place with lots of FMVs just showing your entrance, the subtropical jungle island populated by friendly natives, the annoying cavern maze, and a place — any place — that was destroyed in some past disaster.
43. Midgar Principle
    The capital of the evil empire is always divided into two sections: a lower city slum filled with slaves and supporters of the rebellion, and an upper city filled with loyal fanatics and corrupt aristocrats.
44. Not Invented Here
    Trade of technology will not exist. One place in the world will have all the techno-gadgets while all the others will be harvesting dirt.
45. Law of Cartographical Elegance
    The world map always cleanly fits into a rectangular shape with no land masses that cross an edge.
46. ¿Quien Es Mas Macho? (Fargo Rule)
    Every powerful character you attempt to seek aid from will first insist upon “testing your strength” in a battle to the death.
47. We Had To Destroy The Village In Order To, Well, You Know The Rest (Selene Rule)
    No matter what happens, never call on the government, the church, or any other massive controlling authority for help. They’ll just send a brigade of soldiers to burn your entire village to the ground.
48. Zidane’s Curse (or, Dirty Pair Rule)
    An unlucky condition in which every major city in the game will coincidentally wind up being destroyed just after the hero arrives.
49. Maginot Line Rule
    It is easy to tell which city/nation is the next conquest of the Evil Empire: its streets are filled with citizens who brag that the Empire would never dare attack them, and would be easily defeated if it tried. (This smug nationalism always fails to take into account the Empire’s new superweapon.)
50. Short Attention Span Principle
    All bookshelves contain exactly one book, which only has enough text on it to fill up half a page.
51. Planet of the Apes Rule
    All cities and countries have ancestors that were wiped out by their technological advances.
52. Insomnia Rule
    A “free stay at the inn” is never really free. Expect to be woken up in the middle of the night for a mandatory plot event.
53. The Bling-Bling Thing (Lemina Rule)
    No matter how much money and treasure you acquire, the greedy member of your party will never be satisfied and won’t stop griping about the sorry state of the party’s finances.
54. I Don’t Like Gears Or Fighting
    There are always giant robots. Always.
55. Houdini’s Postulate
    Anyone, whether they are in the player’s party or not, who is placed in any kind of prison, fortress, cell, or detention block will escape immediately. Party members will be freed either by a small child they just happened to befriend earlier in the day or by an unexpected disaster that overcomes the enemy base, NPCs will be freed by the released party members, and villains will break out all by themselves because they’re such badasses. Once a person has escaped from jail, no attempt will be made by the police to recapture them in the future.
56. Zeigfried’s Contradiction
    Just because someone is weird doesn’t mean they’re important.
57. Natural Monopoly Rule
    No city will have more than two shops, unless it is crucial to the story that there be a hundred vendors which you must visit in order (see You Always Travel In The Right Circles.) All of these shops will sell the same goods for the same price.
58. But They Don’t Take American Express
    Every merchant in the world — even those living in far-off villages or hidden floating cities cut off from the outside world for centuries, even those who speak different languages or are of an entirely different species — accepts the same currency.
59. Apathy Principle
    Your group is the only bunch of people trying to save the world. All other would-be heroes will either join your party or else turn out to be cowards and/or con men.
60. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Rule
    a. Any male character who is ugly, malformed, or misshapen is either evil or so moral, spiritual, and/or wise that it’s a wonder no one’s proposed him for sainthood yet.
    b. Any male character who has a physical disfiguration that doesn’t seem to impede him (i.e. a prominent scar across the face or a bad eye) is evil, unless he is the male lead, since scars are cool and no other good guy can be as cool as the hero. An exception is made for characters who are clearly ancient, and therefore automatically not as cool as the young hero.
    c. Any female character who is ugly, malformed, mishapen, or physically disfigured is evil, since all good female characters are there to be potentially seduced by the male lead — see Know Your Audience.
61. Henchman Quota (Nana, Saki, and Mio Rule)
    One of your antagonists will have three lovably incompetent stooges whom you fight over and over again. Although they’re trusted with their boss’s most important plans and equipment, they will screw up repeatedly, argue incessantly among themselves, blab secret information, and generally only come out victorious when their job was to be a diversion or a delaying tactic. A high point of the game will come when the True Villain reveals himself and you’re able to convince the stooges you’re all on the same side. They won’t help you out any more successfully than they helped the antagonist, but at least you won’t have to fight them any more.
62. Thousand Year Rule
    The Ancient Evil returns to savage the land every thousand years on the dot, and the last time it showed up was just about 999.9875 years ago. Despite their best efforts, heroes of the past were never able to do more than seal the Evil away again for the future to deal with (which brings up the question of just how exactly does this “sealing away” work anyway, but never mind.) The good news is that this time, the Evil will get destroyed permanently. The bad news is that you’re the one who’s going to have to do it.
63. Principle of Narrative Efficiency
    If the main villain (or the enemy you’ve been trying to kill for most of the game before he summons the real final villain) was ever defeated in the past by another group of adventurers, one of them will secretly be in your party and one of them will be the hero’s father.
64. Ayn Rand’s Revenge
    Outside the major cities, there is no government whatsoever. Of course, perhaps that explains why it’s so difficult and dangerous to get anywhere outside the major cities.
65. First Law of Travel
    Anything can become a vehicle — castles, cities, military academies, you name it — so do not be alarmed when the stones of the ancient fortress you are visiting shake underfoot and the whole thing lifts off into the sky. As a corollary, anything is capable of flight if it would be cool, aeronautics or even basic physics be damned.
66. Second Law of Travel
    There will be only one of any non-trivial type of vehicle in the entire world. Thus, only one ocean-capable steamboat, only one airship, and so forth. Massive facilities will have been constructed all over the world to service this one vehicle.
67. Third Law of Travel
    The only way to travel by land between different areas of a continent will always be through a single narrow pass in a range of otherwise impenetrable mountains. Usually a palace or monastery will have been constructed in the pass, entirely filling it, so that all intracontinental traffic is apparently required to abandon their vehicles and go on foot up stairs and through the barracks, library and throne room to get to the other side. This may explain why most people just stay home. (In some cases a cave or underground tunnel may be substituted for the palace or monastery, but it will still be just as inconvenient with the added bonuses of cave-ins and nonsensical elevator puzzles.)
68. Fourth Law of Travel
    Three out of every four vehicles you ride on will eventually sink, derail or crash in some spectacular manner.
69. Fifth Law of Travel
    All vehicles can be driven or piloted by anyone. The main character just needs to find out where the bridge or steering wheel is, as he already knows all of the controls.
70. Sixth Law of Travel
    Nobody gets to own a cooler ride than you. If you ever do see a cooler vehicle than the one you’ve got now, at some point before the end of the game you will either take over this vehicle, get something even bigger and better, or else see it destroyed in a glorious blaze.
71. Seventh Law of Travel
    When on a voyage to another continent, the journey will last only as long as it takes you to talk to all the other passengers and the captain.
72. Eighth Law of Travel
    There are no shortcuts, ever — unless you are forced to take them, in which case they will be much longer and more dangerous than your original route.
73. Last Law of Travel (Big Joe Rule)
    As has been described, you must endure great trials just to get from town to town: locating different vehicles, operating ancient transport mechanisms, evading military blockades, the list goes on. But that’s just you. Every other character in the game seems to have no trouble getting to any place in the world on a moment’s notice.
74. If You Meet The Buddha In A Random Encounter, Kill Him!
    When you’re out wandering around the world, you must kill everything you meet. People, animals, plants, insects, fire hydrants, small cottages, anything and everything is just plain out to get you. It may be because of your rampant kleptomania (see Garrett’s Principle.)
75. Law of Numbers
    There will be several items or effects which depend on the numerical value of your hit points, level, etc., which makes no sense unless the characters can see all the numbers in their world and find it perfectly normal that a spell only works on a monster whose level is a multiple of 5.
76. Magical Inequality Theorem
    In the course of your travels you may find useful-sounding spells such as Petrify, Silence, and Instant Death. However, you will end up never using these spells in combat because a) all ordinary enemies can be killed with a few normal attacks, making fancy attacks unneccessary, b) all bosses and other stronger-than-average monsters are immune to those effects so there’s no point in using them for long fights where they’d actually come in handy, and c) the spells usually don’t work anyway.
77. Magical Inequality Corollary
    When the enemy uses Petrify, Silence, Instant Death, et cetera spells on you, they will be effective 100% of the time.
78. Pretty Line Syndrome (or, Crash Bandicoot: The RPG)
    Seen in most modern RPGs. The key to completing your quest is to walk forward in a straight line for fifty hours, stopping along the way to look at, kill, and/or have meaningful conversations with various pretty things.
79. Xenobiology Rule
    The predatory species of the world will include representatives of all of the following: giant spiders, giant scorpions, giant snakes, giant beetles, wolves, squid, fish that float in midair, gargoyles, golems, carnivorous plants, chimeras, griffons, cockatrices, hydras, minotaurs, burrowing things with big claws, things that can paralyse you, things that can put you to sleep, things that can petrify you, at least twenty different creatures with poisonous tentacles, and dragons. Always dragons.
80. Friendly Fire Principle (or, Final Fantasy Tactics Rule)
    Any attack that can target both allies and enemies will hit half of your allies and none of your enemies.
81. Dungeon Design 101
    There’s always goodies hidden behind the waterfall.
82. Dungeon Design 102
    When you are confronted by two doors, the closer one will be locked and its key will be hidden behind the farther-away one.
83. Dungeon Design 103 (or, Wallpaper Warning)
    Your progress through a dungeon will be indicated by a sudden change in decor: different wall
    color, different torches on the wall, et cetera.
84. Dungeon Design 201 (or, The Interior Decorators Anticipated Your Out-Of-Body Experience)
    Most dungeons will include “hidden” passages which are nearly impossible to see from a bird’s-eye view, yet would be blaringly obvious from the party’s perspective.
85. Dungeon Design 301
    All “puzzles” in RPG dungeons can be sorted into one of the following types:
    • finding some small item and sticking it into a slot;
    • pushing blocks (rocks, statues) onto switches;
    • pulling switches or levers to open and close doors;
    • learning the correct order/position of a group of objects;
    • entering a certain combination of doors;
    • something involving a clock or elevator;
    • something that is unsolvable because a vital clue in the dialogue was mistranslated out of Japanese.
86. Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss!
    Defeating a dungeon’s boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes.
87. Supply and Demand Axiom
    Killing a powerful enemy will usually yield an item or weapon that would’ve been extremely useful if you had gotten it before killing that enemy.
88. Edison’s Lament
    No switch is ever in the right position.
89. Well, That About Wraps It Up For God
    All major deities, assuming they actually exist and weren’t just made up by the Church to delude its followers, are in reality malevolent and will have to be destroyed. The only exception to this rule is the four nature spirits who have preserved the land since time immemorial, but now due to the folly of mankind have lost virtually all of their power and need you to accomplish some ludicrous task to save them.
90. Guy in the Street Rule
    No matter how fast you travel, rumors of world events always travel faster. When you get to anywhere, the people on the street are already talking about where you’ve been. The stories of your past experiences will spread even if no witnesses were around to see them.
91. Wherever You Go, There They Are
    Wherever the characters go, the villains can always find them. Chances are they’re asking the guy in the street (see above). But don’t worry — despite being able to find the characters with ease anytime they want to, the bad guys never get rid of them by simply blowing up the tent or hotel they’re spending the night in. (Just think of it: the screen dims, the peaceful going-to-sleep-now music plays, then BOOM! Game Over!)
92. Figurehead Rule
    Whenever someone asks you a question to decide what to do, it’s just to be polite. He or she will ask the question again and again until you answer “correctly.”
93. Puddin’ Tame Rule
    The average passer-by will always say the same thing no matter how many times you talk to them, and they certainly won’t clarify any of the vaguely worded warnings or cryptic half-sentences they threw at you the previous time.
94. Franklin Covey Was Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
    Sticking to the task at hand and going directly from place to place and goal to goal is always a bad idea, and may even prevent you from being able to finish the game. It’s by dawdling around, completing side quests and giving money to derelicts that you come into your real power.
95. Selective Invulnerability Principle
    RPG characters are immune from such mundane hazards as intense heat, freezing cold, or poison gas… except when they’re suddenly not. Surprise!
96. I’m the NRA (Billy Lee Black Rule)
    Opposition to gun control is probably the only thing you could get all RPG characters to agree upon. Even deep religious faith and heartfelt pacifism can’t compete with the allure of guns.
97. Three Females Rule
    There will always be either one or three female characters in the hero’s party, no matter how many male characters there are.
98. Experience Not Required
    When the main character is forced to do some complex or dangerous task for the first time, even though he has never done it before he will still always be better than the oldest veteran.
99. Law of Reverse Evolution (Zeboim Principle)
    Any ancient civilizations are inexplicably much more advanced than the current one.
100. Science-Magic Equivalence (Citan Rule)
     Although mages’ specialty is magic and scientists’ specialty is technology, these skills are completely interchangeable.
101. Law of Productive Gullibility (Ruby Rule)
     Whenever anybody comes up to you with a patently ludicrous claim (such as, “I’m not a cat, I’m really an ancient Red Dragon”) there’s an at least two-thirds chance they’re telling the truth. Therefore, it pays to humor everyone you meet; odds are you’ll be glad you did later on.
102. Perversity Principle
     If you’re unsure about what to do next, ask all the townspeople nearby. They will either all strongly urge you to do something, in which case you must immediately go out and do that thing, or else they will all strongly warn you against doing something, in which case you must immediately go out and do that thing.
103. Near-Death Epiphany (Fei Rule)
     If the party is not dealing damage to a boss character, then there’s a better-than-even chance that someone in the party will suddenly become enlightened and instantly acquire the offensive skill that can blow the creature away in a matter of seconds.
104. Wutai Rule
     Most RPGs, no matter what their mythology, include a land based on ancient Japan. Full of pagodas, shrines, shoguns, kitsune, and sushi, this completely anachronistic place is the source of the entire world’s supply of ninja and samurai characters.
105. Law of Mooks
     Soldiers and guards working for the Evil Empire are, as a rule, sloppy, cowardly and incompetent. Members of the heroic Resistance Faction are, as a rule, dreadfully weak and undertrained and will be wiped out to the last man the moment they come in contact with the enemy.
106. Law of Traps
     No matter how obvious the trap, you can’t complete the game unless you fall into it.
107. Arbor Day Rule
     At some point, you’re going to have to talk to a tree and do what it says.
108. You Do Not Talk About Fight Club
     Any fighting tournament or contest of skill you hear about, you will eventually be forced to enter and win.
109. Invisible Bureaucracy Rule
     Other than the royal family, its shifty advisor, and the odd mad scientist, the only government employees you will ever encounter in the course of your adventure are either guards or kitchen staff.
110. The Miracle of Automation
     Similarily, any factory, power plant, or other facility that you visit during the course of the game will be devoid of any human life except for the occasional guards. There will not be a single line worker or maintenance person in sight.
111. Principle of Archaeological Convenience
     Every ancient machine you find will work perfectly the first time you try to use it and every time thereafter. Even if its city got blasted into ruins and the machine was then sunk to the bottom of the sea and buried in mud for ten thousand years, it’ll still work fine. The unfortunate corollary to this rule is that ancient guardian creatures will also turn out to be working perfectly when you try to filch their stuff.
112. They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To (Cid Rule)
     Modern-day machinery, by contrast, will always break down at the worst possible moment (for example, when you only need one more shot from the giant cannon to defeat the final boss.)
113. Place Transvestite Joke Here (Miss Cloud Rule)
     If the male lead is required to dress up like a girl for any reason, he will be regarded by everyone as much more attractive than any “real” girl. If the female lead cross-dresses as a man, she will be immediately recognized as who she is by everyone except the male lead and the main villain.
114. Make Room! Make Room!
     There are always more people in a town or village than there are houses for them to live in. Most of the village is made up of shops, temples, bars, secret passages, inns, and the mansion that belongs to the richest man in town.
115. Law of Scientific Gratification
     If the hero needs a new invention to progress, he will find out that somewhere in the world someone has spent his or her entire life perfecting this invention, and usually just needs one more key item located in a monster-infested dungeon before it is completed.
116. You Always Travel In The Right Circles
     Whenever you meet a villager or other such incidental character who promises to give you some great piece of needed knowledge or a required object in exchange for a seemingly simple item, such as a bar of soap or a nice straw mat, be prepared to spend at least an hour chasing around the world exchanging useless innocuous item after item with bizarre strangers until you can get that elusive first item you were asked for.
117. Talk Is Cheap Rule
     Nothing is ever solved by diplomacy or politics in the world of RPGs. Any declarations of peace, summits and treaty negotiations are traps to fool the ever so gullible Good Guys into thinking the war is over, or to brainwash the remaining leaders of the world.
118. Stop Your Life (Setzer Rule)
     No matter what kind of exciting, dynamic life a character was leading before joining your party, once there they will be perfectly content to sit and wait on the airship until you choose to use them.
119. Don’t Stand Out
     Any townsperson who is dressed oddly or otherwise doesn’t fit in with the rest of the townsfolk will either:
     1. Join your party after you complete some task,
     2. Be in the employ of your enemy, or
     3. Befriend any female member of the party, and then be immediately captured and held hostage by the villains.
120. Little Nemo Law
     If any sleeping character has a dream, that dream will be either a 100% accurate memory of the past, a 100% accurate psychic sending from the present, a 100% accurate prophetic vision of the future, or a combination of two or all three of these.
121. Child Protection Act (Rydia Rule)
     Children 12 and under are exempt from death. They will emerge alive from cataclysms that slaughter hundreds of sturdily-built adults, often with barely a scratch. Further protection is afforded if the catastrophe will orphan the child.
122. Missing Master Hypothesis
     Almost every strong physical fighter learned everything he/she knows from some old master or friend. Invariably, the master or friend has since turned evil, been killed, or disappeared without a trace.
123. Missing Master Corollary (Sabin Rule)
     If a fighter’s master merely disappeared, you will undoubtedly find him/her at some point in your travels. The master will challenge the student to a duel, after which the student will be taught one final skill that the master had been holding back for years.
124. Gojira Axiom
     Giant monsters capable of leveling cities all have the following traits:
     • Low intelligence
     • Enormous strength
     • Projectile attacks
     • Gigantic teeth and claws, designed, presumably, to eat other giant monsters
     • Vulnerable to weapons 1/10,000th its size
     • Ecologically sensitive
125. “You Couldn’t Get To Sleep Either, Huh?”
     If any character in the game ever meets any other character standing alone at night looking at the moon, those two will eventually fall in love.
126. Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely (Althena Rule)
     If a good guy is manipulated to the side of evil, they will suddenly find a new inner strength that will enable them to wipe out your whole party with a wave of their hand.
127. All Is Forgiven (Nash Rule)
     However, when the trusted member of your party turns against you, do not give it a second thought. They will return to your side after they’re done with their amnesia/mind control/hidden noble goal that caused them to give away all your omnipotent mystical artifacts.
128. First Law of Fashion
     All characters wear a single costume which does not change over the course of the game. The only exception is when characters dress up in enemy uniforms to infiltrate their base.
129. Second Law of Fashion
     Any character’s costume, no matter how skimpy, complicated, or simply outlandish, is always completely suitable to wear when climbing around in caves, hiking across the desert, and slogging through the sewers. It will continue to be completely suitable right afterwards when said character goes to meet the King.
130. Third Law of Fashion
     In any futuristic setting, the standard uniform for female soldiers and special agents will include a miniskirt and thigh-high stockings. The standard uniform for all male characters, military or not, will include an extraordinarily silly and enormous hat.
131. First Rule of Politics (Chancellor’s Axiom)
     Any advisor of a major ruler has been scheming after his throne for quite a while. Thanks to the miracle of timing, you will arrive at the king’s inner sanctum just in time for the coup.
132. Second Rule of Politics (Scapegoat’s Axiom)
     If the advisor works for an evil ruler, the advisor is as bad or even worse, and there’s a good chance he’s the final villain. (See Fake Ending Rule.) If the advisor works for a good ruler, he usually has the good of the kingdom at heart; not that that helps, because your party will invariably be made the scapegoat for all that’s wrong with the nation and immediately thrown in the dungeon.
133. Last Rule of Politics
     Kingdoms are good. Empires are evil.
134. Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics (Ramus Rule)
     Twenty-three generations may pass, but any person’s direct descendant will still look and act just like him.
135. Pinch Hitter Rule
     Whenever a member of the hero’s team is killed or retires, no matter how unique or special he or she was there is a good chance someone will show up to replace them that has exactly the same abilities and can use the same weapons with the same proficiency.
136. Dealing With Beautiful Women, Part 1 (Yuffie Rule)
     All good-looking young females are there to help you. This rule holds even when the girl in question is annoying, useless, or clearly evil.
137. Dealing With Beautiful Women, Part 2 (Rouge Rule)
     All good-looking middle-aged females are out to kill you. This rule holds even when the woman in question has attained your unwavering trust and respect.
138. Well, So Much For That
     After you have completed your mighty quest to find the object that will save the known universe, it will either a) get lost, b) get stolen, or c) not work.
139. The Ominous Ring of Land
     The classic Ominous Ring of Land is a popular terrain feature that frequently doesn’t show up on your world map. Just when you think things are going really well and you’ve got the Forces of Evil on the run, monsters, demons and mad gods will pour out of the center of the ring and the situation will get ten times worse. The main villain also usually hangs out in one of these after attaining godhood. If there are several Ominous Rings of Land or the entire world map is one big ring, you are just screwed.
140. Law of NPC Relativity (Magus Rule)
     Characters can accomplish superhuman physical feats, defeat enemies
     with one hand tied behind their back and use incredible abilities — until they join your party and you can control them. Then these wonderful powers all vanish, along with most of their hit points.
141. Guards! Guards! (or, Lindblum Full Employment Act)
     Everything will be guarded and gated (elevators, docks, old rickety bridges, random stretches of roadway deep in the forest) except for the stuff that actually needs to be.
142. Thank You For Pressing The Self-Destruct Button
     All enemy installations and city-sized military vehicles will be equipped with a conveniently located, easy-to-operate self-destruct mechanism.
143. Falling Rule
     An RPG character can fall any distance onto anything without suffering anything worse than brief unconsciousness. In fact, falling a huge distance is an excellent cure for otherwise fatal wounds — anyone who you see shot, stabbed, or mangled and then tossed off a cliff is guaranteed to return later in the game with barely a scratch.
144. Materials Science 101
     Gold, silver, and other precious metals make excellent weapons and armor even though in the real world they are too soft and heavy to use for that purpose. In fact, they work so well that nobody ever melts their solid gold suit of armor down into bullion, sells it, and retires to a tropical isle on the proceeds.
145. Materials Science 201
     Everyone you meet will talk enthusiastically about how some fantastically rare metal (iron, say) would make the best possible armor and weapons. Oh, if only you could get your hands on some! However, once you actually obtain iron — at great personal risk, of course — everyone will dismiss it as yesterday’s news and instead start talking about some even more fantastically rare metal, such as gold. Repeat until you get to the metal after “mythril” (see The Ultimate Rule.)
146. Seventh Inning Stretch (Elc Rule)
     At some point in the game the main hero will receive a deadly story-driven injury and will be put in a hospital instead of having a mage heal him. This will leave him out of commission for at least the length of two sidequests; the female lead will also be temporarily out of commission as she steadfastly refuses to leave the hero’s side. Ultimately a simple vision quest is all that will be required to bring the hero back to normal.
147. Vivi’s Spellbook Principle
     Over the course of the game, you will spend countless hours learning between twenty and one hundred skills and/or spells, approximately three of which will still be useful by the end of the game.
148. Gender Equality, Part 1 (Feena Rule)
     Your average female RPG character carries a variety of deadly weapons and can effortlessly hack or magic her way through armies of monsters, killer cyborgs, and mutated boss creatures without breaking a sweat. She may be an accomplished ninja, a superpowered secret agent, or the world’s greatest adventurer. However, if one of the game’s villains manages to sneak up and grab her by the Standard Female Character Grab Area (her upper arm) she will be rendered utterly helpless until rescued by the hero.
149. Gender Equality, Part 2 (Tifa Rule)
     If any female character, in a burst of anger or enthusiasm, decides to go off and accomplish something on her own without the hero, she will fail miserably and again have to be rescued.
150. Gender Equality, Part 3 (Luna Rule)
     All of the effort you put into maxing out the female lead’s statistics and special abilities will turn out to be for naught when she spends the final confrontation with the villain dead, ensorcelled, or held hostage.
151. Gender Equality Addendum (Rynn Rule)
     In the unlikely event that the main character of the game is female, she will not be involved in any romantic subplot whatsoever beyond getting hit on by shopkeepers.
152. Stealing The Spotlight (Edea Rule)
     The characters who join your party only briefly tend to be much cooler than your regular party members.
153. “Mommy, why didn’t they just use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?”
     Don’t expect battle mechanics to carry over into the “real world.”
154. Gold Saucer Rule
     The strongest weapons/items/spells in the entire game can only be found by doing things like racing birds.
155. Evil May Live Forever, But It Doesn’t Age Well
     Even though it took the greatest armies in the world and all of the world’s greatest magicians to seal away an ancient evil in an apocalyptic war, once said ancient evil breaks free three fairly inexperienced warriors can destroy it.
156. Sephiroth Memorial Escape Clause
     Any misdeed up to and including multiple genocide is forgiveable if you’re cool enough.
157. Doomed Utopia Theorem (Law of Zeal)
     All seemingly ideal, utopian societies are powered by some dark force and are therefore doomed to swift, flashy destruction.
158. Party Guidance Rule
     Somewhere in the last third of the story, the hero will make a stupid decision and the rest of the party must remind him of all that they have learned from being with him in order to return the hero to normal.
159. Bad Is Good, Baby!
     The heroes can always count on the support of good-hearted vampires, dragons, thieves, demons, and chainsaw murderers in their quest to save the world from evil. And on the other hand…
160. Good Is Bad, Baby!
     Watch out for generous priests, loyal military officers, and basically anyone in a position of authority who agrees to help you out, especially if they save your life and prove their sincerity innumerable times — they’re usually plotting your demise in secret (at least when they can fit it into their busy schedule of betraying their country, sponsoring international terrorism, and stealing candy from small children) and will stab you in the back at the most inconvenient moment, unless they fall under…
161. General Leo’s Exception
     Honorable and sympathetic people who work for the Other Side are always the genuine article. Of course they’ll be busily stabbing you in the front, so either way you lose. Eventually though, they’ll fall prey to…
162. The Ineffectual Ex-Villain Theorem (Col. Mullen Rule)
     No matter how tough and bad-ass one of the Other Side’s henchmen is, if he bails to the side of Good he’ll turn out to be not quite tough and bad-ass enough. The main villain will defeat him easily. But don’t weep — usually he’ll manage to escape just in time, leaving you to deal with the fate that was meant for him.
163. All The Time In The World (Rinoa Rule)
     Unless there’s a running countdown clock right there on the screen, you have as long as you want to complete any task — such as, say, rescuing a friend who’s hanging by one hand from a slippery cliff edge thousands of feet in the air — no matter how incredibly urgent it is. Dawdle or hurry as you will, you’ll always make it just in the nick of time.
164. Ladies First (Belleza Rule)
     When things really start falling apart, the villain’s attractive female henchman will be the first to jump ship and switch to the side of Good. Sadly, she still won’t survive until the end credits, because later she will sacrifice her life out of unrequited love for the villain.
165. Trial By Fire (Cecil Rule)
     Any dark and brooding main characters will ultimately be redeemed by a long, ardous, quasi-spiritual quest that seems difficult at the time, but in the great scheme of things just wasn’t that big of a deal after all.
166. Key Item Rule
     Never discard, sell, or otherwise remove permamently from your possession any items you begin the game with or acquire within the first town. This is especially true for items that seem to have no practical use, because of…
167. The Law of Inverse Practicality (Key Item Corollary)
     Any item that you can acquire will have some sort of purpose. Those that seem to be useless and have no practical value at all, always tend to have great power later on. The earlier you get the item, the later in the game it will be used. The longer the span of time between acquisition and use, the more powerful the item is.
168. Way To Go, Serge
     It will eventually turn out that, for a minimum of the first sixty percent of the game, you were actually being manipulated by the forces of evil into doing their sinister bidding for them. In extreme cases this may go as high as 90%. The clear implication is that it would have been better to not get involved in the first place.
169. Gilligan’s Prescription
     Any character who has amnesia will be cured before the end of the game. They usually won’t like what they find out about themselves, though.
170. Luke, I Am Your Tedious, Overused Plot Device (Lynx Rule)
     If there is any chance whatsoever that major villain X could be the male lead’s father, then it will turn out that major villain X is the male lead’s father.
171. World of Mild Inconvenience
     The devastating plague, noxious gas, planet-obliterating meteor or other large-scale disaster that led to the death of millions will affect your party (and your party’s friends and family members) in no way whatsoever, save that a few party members may become lost and you can find them later.
172. Golden Chocobo Principle
     There will be at least one supremely ultimate improvement for your weapon or some way to make your trusted steed capable of going anywhere and doing anything, requiring hours and hours of hard work to acquire. Once you do achieve this, you will use it once, and it will be completely useless for the rest of the game.
173. Golden Chocobo Corollary
     The magic formula for acquiring this supreme upgrade will be only vaguely alluded to in the game itself. Ideally, you’re supposed to shell out $19.95 for the strategy guide instead.
174. Flow of Goods Rule
     The quality of goods in the world is dependent upon the shop’s distance from the final dungeon.
     It doesn’t matter if the town you start in has a huge thriving economy and is the center of world trade, it will always have the game’s worst equipment; and even if that village near the end is isolated and has only three people in it, it will have the game’s best equipment.
175. Master Key Rule
     Any and all locked doors that the characters encounter will be unlocked by the end of the game.
176. “Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb!”
     If the villain needs all ten legendary medallions to attain world domination and you have nine of them, everybody in your party still thinks it is neccessary to bring the nine to the villain’s castle and get the final one, instead of hiding the ones they’ve already got and spoiling his plans that way. After you foolishly bring the legendary medallions to the villain’s hideout, he will kidnap one of your companions (usually the main love interest) and you will trade the world away to rescue your friend.
177. Dark Helmet’s Corollary
     After you give up the medallions to save your friend/parent/lover/other miscellaneous party member, don’t expect to actually get that person back. Sucker!
178. It’s Not My Department, Says Wernher Von Braun
     All space stations, flying cities, floating continents and so forth will without exception either be blown up or crash violently to earth before the end of the game.
179. The Best-Laid Schemes
     The final villain’s grand scheme will have involved the deaths of thousands or even millions of innocent people, the clever manipulation of governments, armies, and entire populations, and will have taken anywhere from five to five thousand years to come to fruition. The hero will come up with a method of undoing this plan forever in less than five minutes.
180. Pyrrhic Victory
     By the time you’ve gotten it in gear, dealt with your miscellaneous personal crises and are finally ready to go Save the World once and for all, nine-tenths of it will already have been destroyed. Still, you’ve got to give your all to save the remaining one-tenth.
181. Poetic Villain Principle (Kefka Rule)
     All villains will suddenly become poets, philisophers, and/or dramatic actors when a) they first meet the hero, b) they are about to win or their evil plan is finally ready, c) some major event in the game is about to begin, d) right before the final battle, and e) right before they die, when they will frequently be feeling generous enough to reward you with some homespun wisdom about making the most of life while you have it.
182. Compression of Time
     As you approach the final confrontation with the villain, events will become increasingly awkward, contrived and disconnected from one another — almost as if some cosmic Author was running up against a deadline and had to slap together the ending at the last minute.
183. Adam Smith’s Revenge
     By the end of the game you are renowned everywhere as the Legendary Heroes, every surviving government and authority figure has rallied behind you, the fate of the world is obviously hanging in the balance, and out of nowhere random passers-by give you a pat on the back and heartfelt good luck wishes. However, shopkeepers won’t even give you a discount, much less free supplies for the final battle with evil.
184. Adam Smith’s Corollary
     No matter how thoroughly devastated the continent/planet/universe is, there’s always some shopkeeper who survived the end of the world and sits outside the gates of the villain’s castle, selling the most powerful equipment in the game, like nothing ever happened.
185. The Long Arm of the Plot
     Any bad guys, no matter how far they run, will always end up in one of two ways by the end of the game: obviously dead, or on your side. There is no in-between.
186. Apocalypse Any Time Now
     The best time to do side quests is while the huge meteor hovers in the sky above the planet, waiting to fall and destroy the world.
187. “So, Andross, you reveal your true form!”
     You will have to kill the evil villain at least twice at the end of the game. First the villain will look like a person or some creature and be rather easy to kill. Then he will grow to about 50 times the hero’s size and be much harder to kill.
188. In Your Face, Jesus!
     Even if you manage to deal with him that time, you’re not done — the villain will then transform into his final form, which is always an angelic winged figure with background music remixed for ecstatic chorus and pipe organ.
189. The Moral Of The Story (Ghaleon Rule)
     Every problem in the universe can be solved by finding the right long-haired prettyboy and beating the crap out of him.
190. Weapon Rule
     There’s always a hidden creature who is much harder to defeat than even the ultimate bad guy’s final, world-annihilating form. It’s lucky for all concerned that this hidden creature prefers to stay hidden rather than trying to take over the world himself, because he’d probably win. As a corollary, whatever reward you get for killing the hidden creature is basically worthless because by the time you’re powerful enough to defeat him, you don’t need it any more.
191. The Ultimate Rule
     Anything called “Ultima (whatever)” or “Ultimate (whatever)” isn’t. There’s always at least one thing somewhere in the world which is even more.
192. Know Your Audience (Vyse Rule)
     Every woman in the game will find the male lead incredibly attractive.

When your novel gets to the saggy middle, that’s the time to drop in some random colorful characters! This was posted by Fenix on the National Novel Writing Month forums for 2005.

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Found some stuff online…

I [Fenix] found a list of possible side stories online, many different sites, decided to put them into categories that I thought would work best:

Outcast:

• Is on a personal quest for vengeance.
• Is paranoid and over-protective of the town that cast him out.
• Cannot stop complaining, and will complain to anyone near them but knows key information hidden among the complaints.
• Is an outcast in the community for no good reason.
• has a valuable treasure but does not know who to turn to and trust for the sale
• Fears being alone because of a recent incident.
• Is heavily in debt and is fleeing/hiding from creditors.
• Is a fan (to the point of fanaticism) of a spectator sport of the time (jousting, cockfighting, bearbaiting, whatever) and has gotten into gambling/stalking trouble.
• Fears he’s being watched and is looking for someone who he can trust to recover a valuable object buried nearby

Trader:

• NPC has invented a new piece of equipment and is looking for a test subject.
• Wants PCs to ‘lend’ him the main plot item after they retrieve it, before they hand it over to the main plot instigator. The motivation could be pure (i.e. item needed to lift a deadly curse) or nefarious (i.e. item used to raise an army of undead).
• Sells rare and unusual spells.
• Sells magical equipment that looks fake or non-magical.
• Has a craving for rare herbs and spices that unknown to the PCs are used to create a powerful narcotic.
• NPC is a merchant looking to open trade with other races and spot a non-human PC.
• Is looking for a business partner.
• Is a pacifist who tries to convert the party to the ways of non-violence.
• Wants the PCs to promote her business by wearing or using her product prominently whenever possible (fashionable cloaks, very tasty trail rations, a specific musical instrument, etc.).
• Is an artist trying to sell his works.
• Is collecting parlor games from across the lands.
• Acts as a local guide to the PCs.
• Desperately needs an item only available through the Black Market.
• Acts as a representative for the Black Market.
• Sells rice cakes with magic rings inside.
• Is a wandering amateur chef looking for new recipes and ingredients.
• Is a pacifist who tries to convert the party to the ways of non-violence.
• Is a writer trying to sell his works.
• Tries to pass off lousy equipment as magical.

Wanted man:

• Is in disguise (for reasons real or imaginary).
• Has had an operation to change his/her race, but still manifests cultural mannerisms of his/her original race.
• Is an outcast for forgotten crimes
• A ‘wanted man’ sought by a particular non-human good race (i.e. Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, etc.) for some past misdeed or misunderstanding.
• Has a racial enemy or is banned from racially dominant areas.
• Is deadly terrified of shadows. He’ll only meet with the PCs in places completely devoid of shadows.
• Was recently injured in a random attack and seeks his attackers for revenge.
• Is a vigilante who kills in cold blood convinced that the ends (i.e. eliminating a criminal element) justify the means (using excessive force, killing hostages, etc.).
• Has been falsely accused and has just posted bail and is now looking for proof of his innocence.
• Is trying to ditch the city guards, who are chasing him for a minor crime.
• Is a skilled amateur gambler looking to break into the pros or find the ‘big game’.
• Greedy — always demands first dibs and/or larger shares when dividing treasure troves based on exaggerated contributions to the party’s success.

Secretive guy:

• Has been given a task by his boss and his boss would punish him if it was known he was ‘wasting time’ with the PCs.
• Wants the PCs to ‘accidentally retrieve’ an item while they are investigating clues.
• Is searching for a lost family heirloom — the heirloom may not have any value other than sentiment.
• Is on a secret military mission.
• Is a worshipper of a death god(dess) or a necromancer who wishes to serve as a mortician of the city but needs documents proving his/her good intentions/standing.
• Is secretly recruiting for the military or a special guild.
• Knows of ‘lots of great adventures’ that are, unfortunately, all dead ends.
• Is quiet, brooding, and short tempered due to medical problems.
• Is an informant for the local thieves’ guild with nothing to report and is ready to make something up.
• Is tainted in some way and tries at all costs to keep the taint a secret.
• Is a failed adventurer with much emotional baggage who seeks to sabotage other adventurers.
• Is a binge drinker who tends to get in trouble due to violent, drunken bouts.
• Is trying to find out how to join a certain secret cult.Is a failed adventurer with much emotional baggage who seeks to sabotage other adventurers.

To complement the Fantasy Novelist’s Exam, here’s a similar list for Science Fiction.

The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés

by John VanSickle
(the list at the linked site has the items categorized which you can see by clicking on the link above.)

Section I: Overused Plots and Storylines

1. Post-cataclysmic rag-tag armies struggle to kick the Rooskies out of the good ol’ US of A.
2. Post-cataclysmic rag-tag armies struggle to survive against gangs of bandits, mutants, cyberpunks, bikers, etc.
3. The rag-tag rebel army/fleet struggles valiantly to overthrow the Evil Empire.
4. The Good Guys travel through time to stop a historical Bad Guy, usually Hitler.
5. The Bad Guy travels through time to kill the Hero in his childhood, or to prevent him from ever being born.
6. The Chronocops travel in time to catch a Bad Guy who escaped into some other era.
7. Scientists work feverishly to develop a cure for the Supervirus or a weapon to stop the Invincible Bad Guys.
8. An alien:
   1. Is stranded on earth;
   2. Befriends a human child or falls in love with an earth gal;
   3. Is pursued by shadowy malevolent Pentagon officials under the pretense of national security;
   4. Uses his/her/its alien powers to defeat the shadowy malevolent Pentagon officials, making them look foolish without really harming them;
   5. Makes teary farewell and returns to its home planet.
9. A virtual reality program is activated, and the distinction between reality and the program becomes confused or indistinguishable.
10. People connect their brains directly to computers and get dependent on them.
11. Aliens travel a zillion miles to loot the earth of resources which exist in far greater and much more easily exploitable quantities on the many uninhabited bodies they pass on the way to earth.
12. A complex computer system spontaneously becomes self-aware.
13. A couple files an application to the government for permission to conceive a baby.
14. A human falls in love with a robot.
15. A robot falls in love with a human.
16. UFO abductions.
17. Brain-controlling parasites attempt to wrest control of human race.
18. Aliens put someone on trial for the sins of humanity.
19. A high-tech amusement park goes lethally berserk.
20. Death from old age turns out to be due to some simple, single cause, leading to an easy immortality treatment, with consequent catastrophic social implications.
21. A great hunter decides that humans are the most entertaining prey of all, and visits Earth to bag a few.
22. Psychedelic drugs give somebody magical power over space, time and reality.
23. Aliens with completely incomprehensible motivations make war on the human race/invade earth.
24. The bureaucratic/reactionary mindset stands in the way of scientific progress. A researcher overcomes it through ability, purity of heart, and use of the scientific method. Or not.
25. Two hostile factions colonize a planet within walking distance of each other.
26. The government ships criminals off to other planets.
27. A human male becomes pregnant.
28. An android discovers emotions and loses control.
29. A young researcher:
    1. Gets a job at a Mega-huge Corporation or Ultra-secret Government Agency;
    2. Learns that the employer’s latest discovery has a Nasty Side Effect or involves some obvious human rights abuses;
    3. Confronts the employer, who casually dismisses the researcher’s concerns and chides her/him for not being a “team player”;
    4. Tries to blow the whistle to avert disaster;
    5. Gets hounded by Shadowy Malevolent Goons;
    6. Attempts to meet with inside sources, and finds them either dead or with just enough life left to utter a cryptic clue;
    7. Watches the disaster overtake the CEO;
    8. Testifies before Congress;
    9. Enters the Witness Protection Program;
    in roughly the order given above.
30. Aliens invade earth in order to eat humans.
31. An AI turns on its creators.
32. A person from the past goes into suspended animation and wakes up in modern times, or a person from modern times goes into suspended animation and wakes up in the future.
33. A person travels back in time to meet a major historical personage and winds up either becoming that person or taking that person’s place at a critical juncture.
34. The rightful monarch or long-lost heir is restored to the throne.
35. A sexually selective plague kills off or sterilizes almost all of the men, or almost all of the women.
36. A human discovers that the human race is being controlled by aliens.
37. The alien invasion that flounders because their technological advantage is perfectly neutralized by their lack of resources, compared to the humans.
38. Earth is threatened by an asteroid, and a space mission is mounted to save the planet.
39. Humans are seen as a menace to galactic society, having developed technology over a few short centuries compared with the thousands it took the other races.
40. The government bans music, painting, dancing, or some other art form; only the hero seems to care enough to do anything about it.
41. A technological innovation prompts a large portion of society to violently suppress it.
42. “Single female monster ISO single human male. Object: Mating.”
43. An entire society is run by a computer. Maybe it goes beserk.
44. An being is sent to earth on a mission of assassination or genocide; it changes its mind after getting to know (and perhaps fall in love with) one or more humans.
45. The crew’s memories are wiped. As they recover, they discover that they are helping the guy who did it to them.
46. A man escapes a VR simulation, and later discovers that he has escaped into another VR simulation.
47. An alien that is substantially like us doesn’t understand love, and visits humans in order to learn. The lesson is completed after the alien gets a Dose of Good Luvin’.

Section II: Overused Settings and Characterizations

1. Aliens whose thinking is so different from ours that no communication is possible.
2. Alien races that find our women attractive, while we find theirs to be repulsive.
3. Alien races who differ from us only in skin color and/or facial features.
4. Extra breasts on the alien women.
5. Aliens that are incomprehensible to humans but understand humans perfectly.
6. Alien species depicted as having no ethnic, religious, cultural, philosophical or political variance, especially:
   1. Wise mystics
   2. Stoic warriors
   3. Pastoral innocents
   4. Cowardly sneaks
   5. Amazon babes
7. Alien species with personality traits or cultural mores that are treated as invariable laws of nature.
8. Alien races whose names all have lots of hard consonants.
9. Lots of apostrophes are packed into alien words and phrases for no apparent reason.
10. Humans of future have no ethnic, religious, cultural, philosophical or political variance.
11. Cities of future are depicted as though sanitation workers have been on strike from now until then.
12. The entire story setting is dominated by huge impersonal business conglomerates.
13. Planets with the same exact climate planet-wide (planets without atmosphere excepted).
14. Super-intelligent AI’s that speak, behave, and act in a manner indistinguishable from the human characters.
15. The incredibly competent man-of-action with more skills/degrees than you can shake a blaster at.
16. The incredibly competent woman-of-action with large breasts, no sexual inhibitions, and more skills/degrees than you can shake a blaster at.
17. Shadowy malevolent Pentagon officials.
18. Each and every character has a tainted history.
19. A society consists of:
    1. A handful of ultra-powerful ultra-rich;
    2. Criminal lords who control everything not controlled by the ultra-rich;
    3. Police whose only principle of operation is maintenance of the status quo;
    4. Hordes of poor people starving in the streets;
    5. Absolutely no middle class whatsoever.
    Nonetheless, the society manages to remain at a high technological level.
20. Societies where all technology has been destroyed except automobiles and their equivalents, which are still running yet there are no mechanics, workshops, or gas stations.
21. Heroes who are so emotionally stunted that they don’t care about close friends/relatives that die as long as they complete some mission.
22. Any character with a perpetual two-day growth of beard.
23. Futuristic societies where only the ultra-rich can afford quality health care, and everyone else is reduced to selling their bodily organs.
24. Beings of pure energy.
25. A society in which everyone is required to die on his or her Nth birthday.
26. Creatures from our mythology (e.g., centaurs, dragons) occur among the wildlife native to an alien planet.
27. Aliens whose sociology, values and beliefs are indistinguishable from those of an Oriental culture, e.g., feudal Japan..
28. Eccentric scientists.
29. The assistant to the scientist who is either deformed or dating the scientist’s daughter.
30. Future societies that have relapsed into feudalism.
31. Alternative Earths where society is just like some society of the past, with some technodoodads added.
32. Palace guards who are ineffectual due to ineptitude or inattentiveness.
33. Fantastic but non-viable creatures (men with tortoiseshell backs, gigantic insects) made possible by high levels of radiation, and which don’t suffer any ill effects from it.
34. Aliens that speak human languages without error, having taken no pains to learn how.
35. An alien tongue is translated into perfect English, except for gratuitious use of alien units of time and distance.
36. Aliens whose vocal apparatus is just like ours, so that they can speak human languages with only a slight accent.
37. Omnipotent pacifist aliens who impose their philosophy on us without bothering to protect us from the races they have left alone.
38. Men and women live in separate societies (and I’m not talking Mars and Venus, either).
39. Clones are inexplicably different from regular people in a particular manner (mentally unstable, don’t mind being used as cannon fodder, etc.).
40. The vast majority of alien races consider 20ºC to be room temperature.
41. Societies that are utopian in every regard except for one serious drawback that completely outweighs the utopian aspects, such as having the death penalty for some really minor offense.
42. Disembodied live brains living in tanks.
43. Eyes that glow (sometimes accompanied by minor-key chords in TV and film).
44. Sentient artificial intelligences that wish to eliminate the human race.
45. Sentient artificial intelligences that select a human figure to holographically represent themselves.
46. Computers with voice synthesizers either use a sensuous female contralto, a threatening male baritone, or a nasally tinny neutral voice.
47. Bad guys who miss everything they shoot at.
48. Beginning warriors who hit everything they shoot at.
49. Characters who are always ready for intimate relations.
50. All genetically superior humans have an innate drive to rule, conquer, or kill everyone else.
51. Alien vampires that feed on brainwaves/life-force/exotic biochemicals/psychic energies that can only be obtained from sentient life forms.
52. Post-cataclysmic societies that treat items of the lost technology as holy relics.
53. Alien monsters that find humans edible, tasty, and non-toxic.
54. The evil duplicate of the hero, sidekick, universe, etc.
55. The grammatical differences between the languages used by humans and aliens are cited as conclusive proof of radically different ways of thinking.
56. Sentient AIs that communicate with other sentient AIs via their voice synthesizer.
57. The intelligent and confident woman who can be bribed with a dress.
58. Androids with intelligence equal to an IQ of around 1000 who can’t seem to figure out human emotions, humor, or verbal contractions.
59. Everyone in the post-catastrophic future dresses like heavy metal musicians.
60. A common proverb gets “translated” into more generic terms, resulting in obfuscation of the meaning.
61. An alien race has a trait that greatly complicates interacting with them, but even after centuries of contact with humans they still manage to keep it secret.
62. The ancient spacefairing alien race that:
    1. Has existed for zillions of years;
    2. Went into hiding, left this universe/dimension, or went extinct so long ago that no current spacefaring race has ever met them;
    3. Is known solely through legends, ancient artifacts of amazing technological advancement, and/or evidence that they created one or more (sometimes all) currently living races.
63. Aliens whose language is not pronounceable by humans, but who can still speak human langauges with relative ease.
64. The villain who can infallibly predict how the protagonists will react to a given turn of events.
65. All religious figures are:
    1. Intolerant hatemongers who make Hitler look like Jesus;
    2. All-tolerant lovemongers who make Jesus look like Hitler;
    3. Ignorant, unwashed rabble.
66. A society of aliens and/or villains that are amazingly similar to an Infamous Human Political Movement.
67. Societies wherein gender roles and attitudes are completely reversed.
68. Whiz kids.
69. Most aliens breathe oxygen, just like humans do.
70. Bored, omnipotent, immortal beings.
71. An immortal being that wants to die.
72. People with cyborg implants will needlessly exhibit the benefits of this hardware just to relieve boredom or show off.
73. Children with access to the highest levels of military planning, scientific research, and governmental decision-making.
74. A smart, courageous, gorgeously attractive woman who is rarely if ever asked out.
75. Every planet seems to have a surface gravity of 9.8 meters per second squared and rotates around its axis in about 24 hours, just like Earth.
76. All of the spacefaring races have roughly the same level of technology.
77. Aliens that transform into a colorful puddle when they die.
78. The Free Love Utopia, populated only by fabulously good-looking people, that somehow remains free of sexually transmitted diseases, has no relationship turmoil, and is not inundated with hordes of people looking for easy sex.
79. The untrained, average Joe who can take on and defeat highly trained and well-equipped operatives.
80. The Wise Race of Ancients who do nothing for the protagonists except offer advice.
81. The Wise Race of Ancients that secretly supports the protagonists.
82. The former Great Man of Action who is now just a washed-up drunk.
83. An interstellar realm is ruled by a handful of powerful families, each scheming to eliminate the rest, instead of forming alliances.
84. Except for the distinguishing marks on aliens and bad guys, everyone has perfect skin.
85. Upon arrival in a distant epoch, the time travellers can speak the local language without accent.
86. The city’s main computer can be accessed from any of a number of public-access terminals located conveniently throughout the city.
87. The less technologically advanced a culture is, the more spritually advanced it is.
88. The modification of one custom, law, or common belief would transform Western society into Utopia.
89. All female scientists are good-looking; male scientists are average-looking.
90. Except for full-blown dictatorships, government officials of the future never abuse their powers.
91. Not even the soldiers or marines make vulgar jokes.
92. In the future, everyone’s taste in music and literature extends solely to the classics.
93. Immortals who assume many identities over the course of human history.
94. Everyone’s counterpart in the parallel universe has, as his/her associates, the counterparts of the same people that the primary knows in this universe.
95. Whenever the captain walks onto the bridge, the same people are always on duty.
96. Superheroes wear primary colors (red, blue, and yellow).
97. Supervillains wear secondary colors (green, purple, and orange).
98. Only bad guys have goatees.
99. In the future, everyone is good in bed.
100. Entire cities whose buildings use the same architectural design.
101. World governments are enlightened and efficient; nation-states are backward and primitive.
102. In the future, everyone either supports their government fully, or is engaged in a terrorist campaign to overthrow it.
103. In the future, government corruption has been eradicated.
104. The tribal chieftain’s eldest child is a defiant free-spirited youth, and if female is the sexiest member of the tribe.
105. The alien’s superpowers become manifest when he/she/it is expose to Terran conditions.
106. All alien females, galaxy-wide, use cosmetics the same way that Western women do.
107. Although humans still have multiple languages, each alien race has only one langauge.
108. Kindly enlightened races are native to beautiful planets with congenial climate; cruel, benighted races arise on ugly planets with brutal weather.
109. Ths ship’s computer is programmed to track the location of each and every person aboard, but is never programmed to report personnel in unauthorized areas, or those who suddenly disappear.
110. Among the intelligent creatures, man-sized beings predominate.
111. The token black guy is the muscular scion of a Noble Warrior culture.
112. The entire population of the planet lives in one city.
113. The energy being takes the form of a mass of flickering lights.

Section III: Overused story events and plot devices

1. Discussions, ending with a joke, about how bureaucracies are the same everywhere in the galaxy.
2. The most intelligent course of action is precluded by orders from high-ranking ignoramus, on the basis of a transparently flawed rationale.
3. Technological malfunction as a plot device.
4. The timer count-down on the Bad Guy Device being stopped by the hero with bare seconds left.
5. Alien contact perceived or regarded as a spiritual/quasi-religious experience.
6. Aliens who are vastly more intelligent and advanced than we are, but we beat them anyway by “ingenuity,” plain guts, or exploiting an Achilles Heel.
7. A teenage genius discovers an entire new field of science, and builds practical devices that use it, in his bedroom.
8. The psychological trauma/attitude problem of female character is cured (or at least temporarily relieved) by a Dose of Good Luvin’ from the hero.
9. Persons of different species interbreed without difficulty.
10. The author lectures the viewer/reader; the lecture takes the form of a Platonic Dialogue between two characters, or of the Cosmic Message from the Ultra-enlightened Aliens to the Great Unwashed Human Masses.
11. A conspiracy develops, involving lots of people, and remains secret for an extended period of time.
12. The author attempts to wittily euphemize the phrase go screw yourself by referring to it as “a physiologically impossible act”.
13. The availability of firearms notwithstanding, swordfighting returns as a significant method of combat.
14. A Big Surprise awaits the reader/viewer at the end of the tale:
    1. The Barbaric Society is really post-cataclysmic Western civilization.
    2. The man and woman who flee from a doomed civilization and start rebuilding on the third planet of a medium-sized yellow star are named Adam and Eve
    3. The alien children, slaves, or pets are really the parents, masters, or owners
    4. The head of Terran government is a disguised Bad Guy or is under direct control of the Bad Guys.
    5. A major figure in the conflict is really another major figure in disguise.
    6. The Kindly Benevolent Aliens are neither.
    7. The reputedly inhospitable Outdoors is not only inhabitable, but markedly better.
    8. It was all just a dream/game/simulation.
    9. The alien threat was just a hoax to unite humanity.
    10. An ancient civilization was actually founded by space aliens.
    11. A major historical figure (Jesus, Einstein, Lincoln, Elvis) was really a space alien.
    12. The apparently-human leader of the robot/cyborg army is also a robot or cyborg, and this becomes appartent when his/her/its “skin” falls off.
15. Telepaths use their power to achieve a heightened sexual experience.
16. Telepaths are regarded as witches or lunatics, and are dealt with accordingly.
17. Inherited supernatural power (telepathy, lycanthropy, etc.) becomes pronounced at the onset of puberty.
18. Humans leave for the stars, forget all about Earth, and rediscover it later.
19. No matter how slowly the monster shambles along, or how quickly the victim runs, the monster is always right behind the victim when he/she trips or encounters an obstacle.
20. When fleeing danger, females trip over their own shadows while men can sprint without caution.
21. An alien artifact imbues human(s) with incredible abilities.
22. A fighter pilot, upon destroying an alien vessel, yells “yeeeeeeee-haaaaaaa!”
23. The time traveller helps the future society mellow out by introducing music from his period.
24. Time travellers go back in time to prevent some Bad Thing from happening and in the process actually cause the Bad Thing to happen.
25. Time travellers go back in time to prevent some Bad Thing from happening; they succeed, but cause something worse to happen.
26. When a player gets “killed” in a virtual reality simulation, they also die in real life.
27. A war gets started over a stupid misunderstanding between two sides that otherwise have no reason to fight, and no effort is made to resolve the crisis diplomatically.
28. The two opponents in a war have been fighting for so long that they’ve forgotten how the war got started in the first place, but no effort is made to resolve the crisis diplomatically.
29. The two opponents in a war have been fighting for decades/centuries/millenia; the main characters end the war peacefully in a matter of days or hours.
30. Humans have a special quality that makes us unique, so that even superbeings can learn something from us.
31. A pet survives the disaster, and is discovered at the end of the story.
32. So-called elite forces get their butts kicked by a smaller, less well-armed force.
33. A scientist develops an artificially intelligent computer system that can understand natural language and draw inductive conclusions from incomplete data, and uses it on projects far less practical and/or profitable than such a computer would be.
34. Someone gets healed by contact with aliens (often by a laying on of hands).
35. The greedy businessman refuses to recognize that his dangerous product/service will screw him over long before he can hope to make a profit.
36. The monster kills/eats the token black guy first.
37. Explorers are greeted as gods by the natives, who cling to this belief in spite of everything the explorers do and say.
38. An alien custom throws humans into confusion, even though one or more human cultures share the custom and have followed it for centuries.
39. Low-brow white male human bar patron of the future spouts bigoted remarks that wouldn’t be tolerated today, while protagonists look on in silent dismay at the “dark side” of the human race.
40. A person’s physical impairments vanish when they are possessed by the Alien Entity.
41. A technologically advanced race conquers a technologically inferior race, and puts them to work doing things that the conqueror’s machines can do far more efficiently.
42. The gang of cute and/or misfit kids rescue the universe, where a large group of competent, organized and well-armed adults failed.
43. The aliens’ plan to exterminate the human race is stopped at the last moment when they notice a human exhibiting some virtue , such as love, humor, etc.
44. A fellow has Super Powers, but can only use them when he is emotionally agitated.
45. The protagonists destroy the entire social structure and governmental system of the society they encounter, and only a few old fuddy-duddies complain.
46. A problem involving an alien is resolved in a manner dependent on the unusual and heretofore-unknown location of the alien’s reproductive organs.
47. The human abdomen is an ideal incubator for Alien Eggs/Spawn, and this has no apparent effect on the host until the Alien Spawn erupts from their stomach in a messy fashion.
48. No matter how large a ship is, any monster let loose on board will learn its way around in an hour’s time, enabling it to sneak up behind its victims without fail.
49. A female antagonist changes sides after receiving a Dose of Good Luvin’ from the hero.
50. The crewmember who is brainwashed or otherwise subverted into sabotaging/betraying the ship is allowed to return to duty, with no concerns that they remain a security risk.
51. Resolving the imminent threat to mankind requires that the drunken has-been get sober.
52. A high-ranking matriarch, in a society that oppresses men, falls for the Hero’s rugged charms.
53. A crewmember has a radical change of personality, but the few people who notice don’t seem particularily bothered by it.
54. Human spies are sent to inflitrate an alien society in order to better understand it.
55. When the Evil Overlord dies, none of his surviving henchmen move into the power vacuum; instead, his empire collapses.
56. The Good Guys, after a setback, launch their counterattack with the help of members of a rastafarian-like culture.
57. The death of the Bad Guy involves a long fall.
58. At some point the protagonists must enter a hostile region called The Forbidden Zone.
59. When the Heroes destroy the computer that runs an entire society, it’s considered a good thing for the members of that society.
60. When an ordinary crewmember transforms into the Enlightened Being of Cosmic Power, he departs the scene instead of staying around to help out his still-human buddies.
61. A society of humans adopts an artifical means of reproduction (such as cloning), forgets about sex and intimacy, and has to learn about it at some later point.
62. Any weapon can be picked up and used by anyone, no matter how lacking they are in training and/or upper-body strength.
63. When defeat is imminent, it is avoided by a strategem, tactic, or weapon that could just as easily been used at the start of the fight.
64. Away teams going on dangerous missions are comprised of irreplaceable members of the ship’s crew, such as the captain, medical chief, chief engineer, etc. Expendible flunkies are left behind to mind the store.
65. Time travel from the future into modern times winds up in the year of the show’s production.
66. Any class of people having super powers will be persecuted by normal humanity.
67. The lowest-ranking members of any mission team are doomed.
68. A starship captain disobeys a direct order from a superior. When the dust settles, he’s still a starship captain.
69. The episode ends with the two arch-enemies playing a game of chess.
70. Malignant aliens land in densely-populated regions, are instantly targetted by a criminal (who is fatally defeated). Benevolent aliens land in the boondocks.
71. After a remonstration from the Good Guys, the Great Dictator confesses that he was merely trying to keep order, and reforms.
72. The possessed human exhibits superhuman strength.
73. The crewman in the leaky spacesuit is rescued with seconds of air to spare.
74. The stranded heroes come across a crashed space vessel. The ship is returned to a serviceable condition after only a little bit of repair work.

Section IV: Silly Science

1. Super-intelligent computers blow up when the hero confuses them.
2. Super-intelligent computers get confused when the hero says to them “everything I say is a lie” or some other paradoxical statement.
3. Space vessels lack fuses, circuit breakers, and surge supressors, so that the control panels explode when some distant portion of the ship is damaged.
4. Computers get reprogrammed by someone who has no knowledge of the computer’s operating system.
5. Computer terminals display the current operation (e.g., “UPLOADING VIRUS”) in huge, flashing letters.
6. The patently obvious design flaws in a vehicle or weapon system go uncorrected during the entire life cycle of the system in question.
7. A vehicles and/or weapon systems is deployed in an entirely impractical environment.
8. Spacecraft features have been pointlessly carried over from water-borne designs.
9. An untested medical treatment is used. It’s 100% effective and has no side effects.
10. Some acquires a medical condition that will be fatal in an amount of time expressed to the tenth significant digit; the cure is found and applied in the nick of time, enabling a 100% recovery.
11. A robot is shot and bleeds oil.
12. Spacecraft, when shot, blow up as if they had been packed with gasoline and liquid oxygen.
13. Computers, when shot, explode as if they had been stuffed full of Roman candles.
14. An item of technology is quickly reverse-engineered by a far less advanced group of researchers.
15. A group of aliens is smart enough to steal someone else’s technology, but too stupid to make any improvements on it.
16. A technological development progresses from half-baked theory to useful implementation in fifteen minutes instead of fifteen months.
17. After twenty years of crew members being tossed around like the balls in a bingo cage, the spacecraft still has no seatbelts.
18. Nuclear weapons have an effect well out of proportion for reasonable yields.
19. Computer security protocols are overridden merely by saying “override” to the computer.
20. A clone grows to match the cloned person’s state of physiological development in a small fraction of the time.
21. Clones think, act, and speak in a manner indistinguishable from that of the cloned person.
22. Clones come out of the cloning vat with the same haircut as the individual cloned.
23. AI software has unique properties that prevent it from being copied or transmitted like any other data.
24. AI software is able to bypass the security protocols of the operating system in which it runs.
25. On-board computers always know exactly how long it will take for the malfunction to blow up the ship.
26. Computers that exist in the far future or are alleged to be ‘cutting edge,’ will demonstrate less functionality than a Commodore 64.
27. Two races have never contacted each other, cannot speak each other’s language, and cannot possibly have worked out compatible protocols for transmission of data; nonetheless, their computers enable them to communicate over their ships’ viewscreens upon first contact.
28. Twentieth century firearms are abandoned, even though the high-tech replacement is significantly more complex to engineer, more costly to build, and is not appreciably deadlier, longer-ranged, or more accurate.
29. When an extra or a minor character is shot, they fall over immediately dead; when a major character is shot, they either survive with a nasty-looking wound, or they linger long enough to utter some parting words.
30. Lasers are visible when travelling through the vacuum of outer space.
31. A robot that can’t climb stairs is deployed in an area where stairs are common.
32. A tactical system that can only deal with targets visible to the naked eye is still considered worthwhile.
33. A tactical system of the future that has no targetting capabilities is still considered satisfactory.
34. “Reversing the polarity” is the solution to virtually every engineering problem.
35. Laser beams travel about as quickly as an arrow.
36. Heroes/ships can dodge laser beams because the beams travel about as quickly as an arrow.
37. Alien artifacts still work after being abandoned for a million years.
38. Spaceships make a whoosh as they go by.
39. Huge, expensive spacecraft are used to transport inexpensive goods in tiny quantities.
40. Stars go shooting past the spaceship as it flies through space.
41. A large dose of radiation results in super powers instead of super tumors.
42. A large dose of radiation causes an individual creature to “evolve” into a more advanced form.
43. The solution for a problem solved four weeks ago is thrown away and never seen again.
44. When a character is aged prematurely, or cured of premature aging, hair that has already grown changes color to match.
45. A space vessel is sent out on missions before its systems are fully operational.
46. The Hero knows how to defuse the bomb, but can’t remember which of two wires to cut.
47. When a computer is working on a difficult problem, the increased power requirements cause the room lights to dim or flicker.
48. Robots that despite their size and function are designed with exactly the same features as a human (two arms and legs, ten fingers, two eyes, same joint system, etc.)
49. Somebody lifts a car (or some other heavy object) with his bionic arm, even though the rest of his body is normal flesh and bone and couldn’t possibly support the load.
50. The plans for a complicated device can be downloaded onto a 1.44 Meg floppy.
51. Increasing a computer beyond a certain level of speed, memory capacity, or complexity causes it to become self-aware.
52. Creatures capable of changing their shapes can also alter their mass while they’re at it.
53. A hole the size of a barn is made in the hull of a space ship; decompression of the ship’s atmosphere takes a half minute or so.
54. A hole the size of a dime is made in the hull of a space ship; decompression of the ship’s atmosphere takes a half minute or so.
55. A large nuclear explosion can be obtained by putting several smaller devices together.
56. The same energy beam which causes rocks, buildings and robots to violently explode produces only a puff of smoke and a bit of burnt flesh and clothing when used on a living being.
57. The sewers/ventilation ducts provide easy access throughout the city/ship/castle.
58. All computers have madly whirling tape drives.
59. When something explodes in space, the shock wave is ring-shaped.
60. When an orbiting space vessel is crippled or otherwise put out of action, it immediately starts falling out of orbit.
61. A shape-shifter whose natural form is homogenous can be knocked out with a blow to the head when in humanoid form.
62. The narrow energy beam disintegrates the entire person it hits, and his clothing and possessions, but doesn’t leave so much as a stain on the chair he is sitting in or the ground he is standing on.
63. Instead of a solid physical door, jail cells of the future are secured with force fields, turning every power failure into a jailbreak.
64. Space vessels bank in order to make turns.
65. When the ship goes to red alert, the lights dim and turn red.
66. In spite of the tremendous safety hazard presented, glassware is permitted in large quantities on ships that make use of artificial gravity.
67. Colored irregular crystals are the power source of the future.
68. The artificial gravity is the last system of all to fail.
69. Ion storms.
70. Alien life forms that increase their mass without ingesting anything.
71. When two ships meet, they are both oriented with ‘up’ in the same direction, unless one is disabled, in which case it always lists.
72. Computer security passwords are entered by saying them out loud. The possibility of bugs or spies never hinders this practice.
73. The matter transmission device cannot duplicate live organisms, except by accident. Duplicating the circumstances of the accident never succeeds.
74. Data processing devices emit a quasi-random series of innocuous sounds when processing information. Every character that is printed on the computer screen is accompanied by a sound.
75. Although computer keyboards of the future will still have the space bar, nobody will use it anymore.
76. The spaceship that is really a living creature with a significant amount of intelligence.
77. Laser guns have recoil.
78. The stolen alien technology is already compatible with our power systems and can be installed and used immediately.
79. Beam weapons can only be fired in a narrow beam in a continuous direction, and can never be swept across a target or fired at a wide angle.
80. The alien forces are dependent on the mothership, such that destroying the mothership disables them.
81. Every inhabited planet rotates around its axis about as quickly as Earth does, give or take a couple hours.
82. The chemicals in the lab are mostly colorful. The poisonous ones are always bright green.
83. Computer displays project their contents onto the face of the viewer.
84. Dimming the lights on the bridge conserves enough power to enable a significant increase in the speed of a multi-ton spacecraft.
85. You can get from the common areas of a ship to the most sensitive areas via the ventilation and maintenance ducts. There are never any security precautions in place to prevent this.
86. A computer can be destroyed by shooting its display screen.

Section V: Rejected suggestions

1. The ship is crewed by a bunch of white guys.
   Reason for rejection: Every SF production reflects the society that produced it. For instance, in Japanese SF flicks, most of the characters are Japanese.

© 2004 by John VanSickle. Permission to quote for non-commerical use is granted, provided that this copyright notice is included. Permission to link from non-commericial Web pages is granted. Permission to translate for non-commericial use is granted, provided that the resulting page credits the authors. All other rights reserved.

My fantasy characters often resort to saying “Gods” instead of “God” when they’re frustrated. Yeah, it’s lame. ;-) It’s just substituting one word for another (and not a particularly clever word!) I always intend to find something better.

Here are a few sources of expletives to give you some ideas on how other writers and cultures handle expletives.

1. The first is a List of fictional expletives from Wikipedia. (Has some R entries.) Mostly it’s a list of words substituted for swears, so professional writers have the same problem!

   (If that one isn’t there, try the page at Answers.com or the Feb 2007 version I stored here at the blog. Apparently that page has a history of being deleted. Surprisingly not because it’s full of swears but because it doesn’t cite sources and other Wikipedia reasons. If you’re curious there’s a log of the page’s deletes and reasons given.)

   Here’s a sample:

   Bastard’s Demons - from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Chalion universe. General expletive referring to the one of five gods who runs hell.

   canner - from the movie I, Robot, a racial epithet used against robots, particularly by the protagonist.

   fahrbot - from Farscape; meaning insane or mentally deficient.

   Hab SoSlI’ Quch! - Klingon for “Your Mother has a smooth forehead.” The worst curse/insult in the Klingon language… especially in reference about one’s mother.

   hippikaloric - from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum - a word uttered by the Nome King, “which must be a dreadful word because we don’t know what it means”.

   mudblood - from Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling, used by “pure-blood” people to slander those whose ancestors who are non-magical (e.g. Hermione Granger).

   puckernuts - from Elfquest; similar meaning to “damn” or “damn it”

   rassin-frassin - from Hanna-Barbera’s Jetsons & Flintstones a derogatory adjective of some kind. Possible corruption of the German curse “Ratten-Fressen” or “Rat Eating/Eater.” Also uttered by Yosemite Sam in Warner Bros cartoons. Also similar/the same as the quiet muttering used by Muttley in Wacky Races. Also spelled/pronounced “ratchafratchin”.

   zoinks - from Scooby Doo, a common expletive uttered by Shaggy Rogers.

   There are a couple more shorter lists of fictional expletives at:

   Swearwords of Science Fiction and Fantasy (archive)

   FICTIONAL EXPLETIVES & EXCLAMATIONS (archived at Wayback Machine) (archive)

   (Also check the comments to see if readers have added any.)

2. With the authority of actual paper there is Curse and Berate in 69+ Languages by R. V. Branham. Where else can you find how to say dumbass in Croatian (glup) or Mongolian (teneg)? The format is a bit odd — the definitions of words are footnotes at the end of each entry — but it’s an even greater wealth of information than the Alternative Dictionaries (below). The footnotes can often be more interesting since there are several creative ways of expressing something straightforward, such as an uncircumcised penis is referred to as “Farmer’s cock”, “Cock with a turtleneck”, and “Skin flute.” The book is unabashedly NC-17.

   A sample (of the non-NC-17 entries):

   balls - Afrikaans: goons, Serb: jaja, Tagalog: yagbols, French: les couilles, and also joyeuses (bringers of joy).

   fat ass -Afrikaans: gwabba, Bosnian: debela kravo, Dutch: dikzak, French: gros lard. Swedish: tjockis. Also expressed as “Fat jerk”, “Your fat ass has its own union steward”, “fat bag”, “unnecessary weight on the Earth”.

   A sampling of entries, besides the expected ones: Adulterer, Anarchist, Balls for Brains, Bully, Chauvinist, Conceited, Crazy, Drunkard, Motor Mouth, Stool Pigeon.

   And, finally, under Blasphemy in the phrases section are exclamations that will make you choke if your mouth was ever washed out for saying “God!”

3. And The Alternative Dictionaries. (The level is mostly NC-17 so it took some digging to find some PG examples ;-) Looking through the entries, there seems to be a universal agreement that body parts, bodily functions, sex and, to a lesser extent, religion all arouse strong feelings. People pretty much say the same things to each other regardless of language which may be why writers have a hard time coming up with much that’s original ;-)

   It’s 131 pages of how to swear and insult someone in languages from Acadian to Zulu. Lots of stuff you won’t learn in any language course because it would get you beaten up ;-)

   The dictionaries are online and can also be downloaded as a PDF file.

   The quality is inconsistent — entries were written by contributors — and it can be a bit confusing to interpret, but it’s certainly a wealth of information that’s hard to get anywhere else. Following the word is its type (noun, verb, exclamation, etc.), then in italics *either* its meaning or its English equivalent. So, for instance, a listing might define the word as “My God!” when it doesn’t literally mean that but is used as English speakers would “My God!” Following the italics are sometimes the literal translation and often a sentence showing its usage.

   Some examples:

   Dutch
   mafketel weirdo NOTE Also “Mafkees” where “Kees” is a traditional Dutch male name. Mafketel literally means “Weird pot”.

   German
   verdammter Schweinhund (neut. noun) idiot, absolute moron; dodo NOTE Pronounced fair-DAHM-tir SHVINE-hoont; means, literally, “Damned pigdog.” Can be used as an expletive: “Ach! Verdammter Schweinhund!” or as an insult: “Du bist ein verdammter Schweinhund.” Means stupid in a sloppy, revolting, or ridiculous way. Uncommon.

   Italian
   Porco due (excl.) “By Gosh!” (literally “Pig two!”) NOTE Used to avoid saying “Porcoddio!” a blasphemous expression that means “God-pig”. It sounds very similar to it. Very popular in Italy between 10-15 years people.

   (Similar to Zio cantante, literally “Uncle singer!” as a euphemism for “Dio Cane!” which literally means “God-dog!”)

   Swedish
   rannskita (noun) diarrhea NOTE Literal translation: Running butt.

   Tibetan
   phai.sha.za.mkhan. {noun phrase} eater of father’s flesh NOTE A strong insult in Tibetan.

   Yiddish
   shlemiel (noun) clumsy oaf. Klutz NOTE The sort of person who, when at a fancy restaurant, invariably spills his soup.

4. Similar to the Alternative Dictionaries (including the NC-17 rating) are the lists of swears from various languages at Insults.net. As far as I can see, they haven’t been cribbed from the Alternative Dictionaries.

   Japanese
   kisama - lord of the donkeys.

   Morrocan
   malik maloof - Your king is a pig.

   Norwegian
   Morra di svetter lite til å være så feit - Your mom doesn’t really sweat much for being so fat.

   Persian
   khange khodah - screw-up of god.

   Russian
   zaebal - you have bored me a lot.

   Serbian
   Crko dabogda stoko seljacka! - May you drop dead, you redneck ox.

   Tagalog
   inutil - worthless moron.

5. And certainly the award for most colorful language should go to Cockney rhyming slang which is colorful beyond just expletives. For hundreds (?) of years the people of the East End of London have replaced words with words that rhyme. And then often shortened them to make them even more obscure! ;-) There’s a history (and some more slang) at A Dictionary of Slang: Cockney Rhyming Slang. The Best of British has an extensive list of slang including Cockney.

   There’s a huge list at Cockney Rhyming Slang. Here’s a sampling from Wikipedia:

   Apples = apples and pears = stairs (”Get up them apples!”)
   Bread = bread and honey = money
   China = china plate = mate (”Alright, me old china!”)
   Frog = frog and toad = road
   Rosie = Rosie Lee = tea (”Fancy a cup of Rosie?”)
   Butcher’s = butcher’s hook = look (”Let’s have a butcher’s!”)
   Dog and Bone =Telephone
   Septic = Septic Tank = Yank (American) (”He’s a septic!” This usage has also given rise to a non-rhyming slang term, ‘Listerine’ meaning one who is not enthralled with Americans — because Listerine is “anti-septic”!)
   Rub-a-dub-dub = Pub
   Wife = trouble and strife

Only one plot exists: conflict. “Foster-Harris describes this in terms of what the main character feels: ‘I have an inner conflict of emotions, feelings…. What, in any case, can I do to resolve the inner problems?’” Which sums it up nicely but isn’t very helpful! So here are three ways people have come up with to categorize plot (with explanations and examples for the last and longest set.)

7 Plots
7 basic plots as remembered by IPL volunteer librarian Jessamyn West and a similar list from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and perhaps the inspiration for the school list:

[wo]man vs. man [wo]man vs. nature [wo]man vs. self [wo]man vs. god/religion [wo]man vs. machines/technology [wo]man vs. the supernatural [wo]man vs. the environment

Man vs. Man Man vs. Nature Man vs. Himself Man vs. God Man vs. Society Man caught in the Middle Man & Woman

7 (Other) Plots
From The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker

1. Overcoming the Monster
2. Rags to Riches
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

20 Plots
From 20 Master Plots: And how to build them by Ronald B. Tobias

1. QUEST - the plot involves the Protagonist’s search for a person, place or thing, tangible or intangible (but must be quantifiable, so think of this as a noun; i.e., immortality).

2. ADVENTURE - this plot involves the Protagonist going in search of their fortune, and since fortune is never found at home, the Protagonist goes to search for it somewhere over the rainbow.
3. PURSUIT - this plot literally involves hide-and-seek, one person chasing another.
4. RESCUE - this plot involves the Protagonist searching for someone or something, usually consisting of three main characters
5. ESCAPE - plot involves a Protagonist confined against their will who wants to escape (does not include some one trying to escape their personal demons).
6. REVENGE - retaliation by Protagonist or Antagonist against the other for real or imagined injury.
7. THE RIDDLE - plot involves the Protagonist’s search for clues to find the hidden meaning of something in question that is deliberately enigmatic or ambiguous.
8. RIVALRY - plot involves Protagonist competing for same object or goal as another person (their rival).
9. UNDERDOG - plot involves a Protagonist competing for an object or goal that is at a great disadvantage and is faced with overwhelming odds.
10. TEMPTATION - plot involves a Protagonist that for one reason or another is induced or persuaded to do something that is unwise, wrong or immoral.
11. METAMORPHOSIS - this plot involves the physical characteristics of the Protagonist actually changing from one form to another (reflecting their inner psychological identity).
12. TRANSFORMATION - plot involves the process of change in the Protagonist as they journey through a stage of life that moves them from one significant character state to another.
13. MATURATION - plot involves the Protagonist facing a problem that is part of growing up, and from dealing with it, emerging into a state of adulthood (going from innocence to experience).
14. LOVE - plot involves the Protagonist overcoming the obstacles to love that keeps them from consummating (engaging in) true love.
15. FORBIDDEN LOVE - plot involves Protagonist(s) overcoming obstacles created by social mores and taboos to consummate their relationship (and sometimes finding it at too high a price to live with).
16. SACRIFICE - plot involves the Protagonist taking action(s) that is motivated by a higher purpose (concept) such as love, honor, charity or for the sake of humanity.
17. DISCOVERY - plot that is the most character-centered of all, involves the Protagonist having to overcome an upheavel(s) in their life, and thereby discovering something important (and buried) within them a better understanding of life (i.e., better appreciation of th
18. WRETCHED EXCESS - plot involves a Protagonist who, either by choice or by accident, pushes the limits of acceptable behavior to the extreme and is forced to deal with the consequences (generally deals with the psychological decline of the character).
19. ASCENSION - rags-to-riches plot deals with the rise (success) of Protagonist due to a dominating character trait that helps them to succeed.
20. DESCENSION - riches-to-rags plot deals with the fall (destruction) of Protagonist due to dominating character trait that eventually destroys their success.

36 Plots
The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti (trans. Lucille Ray)

Polti claims to be trying to reconstruct the 36 plots that Goethe alleges someone named [Carlo] Gozzi came up with. (In the following list, the words in parentheses are the IPL annotations to try to explain some of the less helpful titles.):

1. Supplication (in which the Supplicant must beg something from Power in authority)
   (The dynamic elements technically necessary are: a Persecutor; a Suppliant; and a Power in authority, whose decision is doubtful)
   A.
   1. Fugitives Imploring the Powerful for Help Against Their Enemies
   2. Assistance Implored for the Performance of a Pious Duty Which Has Been Forbidden
   3. Appeals for a Refuge in Which to Die
   B.
   1. Hospitality Besought by the Shipwrecked
   2. Charity Entreated by Those Cast Off by Their Own People, Whom They Have Disgraced
   3. Expiation: The Seeking of Pardon, Healing or Deliverance
   4. The Surrender of a Corpse, or of a Relic, Solicited
   C.
   1. Supplication of the Powerful for Those Dear to the Suppliant
   2. Supplication to a Relative in Behalf of Another Relative
   3. Supplication to a Mother’s Lover, in Her Behalf
2. Deliverance
   (Elements: an Unfortunate, a Threatener, a Rescuer)
   A.
   1. Appearance of a Rescuer to the Condemned
   B.
   1. A Parent Replaced Upon a Throne by His Children
   2. Rescue by Friends, or by Strangers Grateful for Benefits Or Hospitality
3. Crime Pursued By Vengeance
   (Elements: an Avenger and a Criminal)
   A.
   1. The Avenging of a Slain Parent or Ancestor
   2. The Avenging of a Slain Child or Descendant
   3. Vengeance for a Child Dishonored
   4. The Avenging of a Slain Wife or Husband
   5. Vengeance for the Dishonor, or Attempted Dishonoring, of a Wife
   6. Vengeance for a Mistress Slain
   7. Vengeance for a Slain or Injured Friend
   8. Vengeance for a Sister Seduced
   B.
   1. Vengeance for Intentional Injury or Spoliation
   2. Vengeance for Having Been Despoiled During Absence
   3. Revenge for an Attempted Slaying
   4. Revenge for a False Accusation
   5. Vengeance for Violation
   6. Vengeance for Having Been Robbed of One’s Own
   7. Revenge Upon a Whole Sex for a Deception by One
   C.
   1. Professional Pursuit of Criminals
4. Vengeance Taken For Kindred Upon Kindred
   (Elements: Avenging Kinsman; Guilty Kinsman; Remembrance of the Victim, a Relative of Both)
   A.
   1. A Father’s Death Avenged Upon a Mother
   2. A Mother’s Death Avenged Upon a Father
   B.
   1. A Brother’s Death Avenged Upon a Son
   C.
   1. A Father’s Death Avenged Upon a Husband
   D.
   1. A Husband’s Death Avenged Upon a Father
5. Pursuit
   (Elements: Punishment and Fugitive)
   A.
   1. Fugitives from Justice Pursued for Brigandage, Political Offenses, Etc.
   B.
   1. Pursued for a Fault of Love
   C.
   1. A Hero Struggling Against a Power
   D.
   1. A Pseudo-Madman Struggling Against an Iago-Like Alienist
6. Disaster
   (Elements: a Vanquished Power; a Victorious Enemy or a Messenger)
   A.
   1. Defeat Suffered
   2. A Fatherland Destroyed
   3. The Fall of Humanity
   4. A Natural Catastrophe
   B.
   1. A Monarch Overthrown
   C.
   1. Ingratitude Suffered
   2. The Suffering of Unjust Punishment or Enmity
   3. An Outrage Suffered
   D.
   1. Abandonment by a Lover or a Husband
   2. Children Lost by Their Parents
7. Falling Prey To Cruelty Or Misfortune
   (Elements: an Unfortunate; a Master or a Misfortune)
   A.
   1. The Innocent Made the Victim of Ambitious Intrigue
   B.
   1. The Innocent Despoiled by Those Who Should Protect
   C.
   1. The Powerful Dispossessed and Wretched
   2. A Favorite or an Intimate Finds Himself Forgotten
   D.
   1. The Unfortunate Robbed of Their Only Hope
8. Revolt
   (Elements: Tyrant and Conspirator)
   A.
   1. A Conspiracy Chiefly of One Individual
   2. A Conspiracy of Several
   B.
   1. Revolt of One Individual, Who Influences and Involves Others
   2. A Revolt of Many
9. Daring Enterprise
   (Elements: a Bold Leader; an Object; an Adversary)
   A.
   1. Preparations For War
   B.
   1. War
   2. A Combat
   C.
   1. Carrying Off a Desired Person or Object
   2. Recapture of a Desired Object
   D.
   1. Adventurous Expeditions
   2. Adventure Undertaken for the Purpose of Obtaining a Beloved Woman
10. Abduction
    (Elements: the Abductor; the Abducted; the Guardian)
    A.
    1. Abduction of an Unwilling Woman
    B.
    1. Abduction of a Consenting Woman
    C.
    1. Recapture of the Woman Without the Slaying of the Abductor
    2. The Same Case, with the Slaying of the Ravisher
    D.
    1. Rescue of a Captive Friend
    2. Of a Child
    3. Of a Soul in Captivity to Error
11. The Enigma (temptation or a riddle)
    (Elements: Interrogator, Seeker and Problem)
    A.
    1. Search for a Person Who Must Be Found on Pain of Death
    B.
    1. A Riddle To Be Solved on Pain of Death
    2. The Same Case, in Which the Riddle is Proposed by the Coveted Woman
    C.
    1. Temptations Offered With the Object of Discovering His Name
    2. Temptations Offered With the Object of Ascertaining the Sex
    3. Tests for the Purpose of Ascertaining the Mental Condition
12. Obtaining
    (Elements: a Solicitor and an Adversary Who is Refusing, or an Arbitrator and Opposing Parties)
    A.
    1. Efforts to Obtain an Object by Ruse or Force
    B.
    1. Endeavor by Means of Persuasive Eloquence Alone
    C.
    1. Eloquence With an Arbitrator
13. Enmity Of Kinsmen
    (Elements: a Malevolent Kinsman; a Hatred or Reciprocally Hating Kinsman)
    A.
    1. Hatred of Brothers — One Brother Hated by Several
    2. Reciprocal Hatred
    3. Hatred Between Relatives for Reasons of Self-Interest
    B.
    1. Hatred of Father and Son — Of the Son for the Father
    2. Mutual Hatred
    3. Hatred of Daughter for Father
    C.
    1. Hatred of Grandfather for Grandson
    D.
    1. Hatred of Father-in-law for Son-in-law
    E.
    1. Hatred of Mother-in-law for Daughter-in-law
    F.
    1. Infanticide
14. Rivalry Of Kinsmen
    (Elements: the Preferred Kinsman; the Rejected Kinsman; the Object)
    A.
    1. Malicious Rivalry of a Brother
    2. Malicious Rivalry of Two Brothers
    3. Rivalry of Two Brothers, With Adultery on the Part of One
    4. Rivalry of Sisters
    B.
    1. Rivalry of Father and Son, for an Unmarried Woman
    2. Rivalry of Father and Son, for a Married Woman
    3. Case Similar to the Two Foregoing, But in Which the Object is Already the Wife of the Father
    4. Rivalry of Mother and Daughter
    C.
    1. Rivalry of Cousins
    D.
    1. Rivalry of Friends
15. Murderous Adultery
    (Elements: Two Adulterers; a Betrayed Husband or Wife)
    A.
    1. The Slaying of a Husband by, or for, a Paramour
    2. The Slaying of a Trusting Lover
    B.
    1. Slaying of a Wife for a Paramour, and in Self-Interest
16. Madness
    (Elements: Madman and Victim)
    A.
    1. Kinsmen Slain in Madness
    2. Lover Slain in Madness
    3. Slaying or Injuring of a Person not Hated
    B.
    1. Disgrace Brought Upon Oneself Through Madness
    C.
    1. Loss of Loved Ones Brought About by Madness
    D.
    1. Madness Brought on by Fear of Hereditary Insanity
17. Fatal Imprudence
    (Elements: The Imprudent; the Victim or the Object Lost)
    A.
    1. Imprudence the Cause of One’s Own Misfortune
    2. Imprudence the Cause of One’s Own Dishonor
    B.
    1. Curiosity the Cause of One’s Own Misfortune
    2. Loss of the Possession of a Loved One, Through Curiosity
    C.
    1. Curiosity the Cause of Death or Misfortune to Others
    2. Imprudence the Cause of a Relative’s Death
    3. Imprudence the Cause of a Lover’s Death
    4. Credulity the Cause of Kinsmen’s Deaths
18. Involuntary Crimes Of Love
    (Elements: the Lover, the Beloved; the Revealer)
    A.
    1. Discovery that One Has Married One’s Mother
    2. Discovery that One Has Had a Sister as Mistress
    B.
    1. Discovery that One Has Married One’s Sister
    2. The Same Case, in Which the Crime Has Been Villainously Planned by a Third Person
    3. Being Upon the Point of Taking a Sister, Unknowingly, as Mistress
    C.
    1. Being Upon the Point of Violating, Unknowingly, a Daughter
    D.
    1. Being Upon the Point of Committing an Adultery Unknowingly
    2. Adultery Committed Unknowingly
19. Slaying Of a Kinsman Unrecognized
    (Elements: the Slayer, the Unrecognized Victim)
    A.
    1. Being Upon the Point of Slaying a Daughter Unknowingly, by Command of a Divinity or an Oracle
    2. Through Political Necessity
    3. Through a Rivalry in Love
    4. Through Hatred of the Lover of the Unrecognized Daughter
    B.
    1. Being Upon the Point of Killing a Son Unknowingly
    2. The Same Case, Strengthened by Machiavellian Instigations
    C.
    1. Being Upon the Point of Slaying a Brother Unknowingly
    D.
    1. Slaying of a Mother Unrecognized
    E.
    1. A Father Slain Unknowingly, Through Machiavellian Advice
    F.
    1. A Grandfather Slain Unknowingly, in Vengeance and Through Instigation
    G.
    1. Involuntary Killing of a Loved Woman
    2. Being Upon the Point of Killing a Lover Unrecognized
    3. Failure to Rescue an Unrecognized Son
20. Self-Sacrificing For an Ideal
    (Elements: the Hero; the Ideal; the ‘Creditor’ or the Person or Thing Sacrificed)
    A.
    1. Sacrifice of Life for the Sake of One’s Word
    2. Life Sacrifice for the Success of One’s People
    3. Life Sacrificed in Filial Piety
    4. Life Sacrificed for the Sake of One’s Faith
    B.
    1. Both Love and Life Sacrificed for One’s Faith, or a Cause
    2. Love Sacrificed to the Interests of State
    C.
    1. Sacrifice of Well-Being to Duty
    D.
    1. The Ideal of ‘Honor’ Sacrificed to the Ideal of ‘Faith’
21. Self-Sacrifice For Kindred
    (Elements: the Hero; the Kinsman; the ‘Creditor’ or the Person or Thing Sacrificed)
    A.
    1. Life Sacrificed for that of a Relative or a Loved One
    2. Life Sacrificed for the Happiness of a Relative or a Loved One
    B.
    1. Ambition Sacrificed for the Happiness of a Parent
    2. Ambition Sacrificed for the Life of a Parent
    C.
    1. Love Sacrificed for the Sake of a Parent’s Life
    2. For the Happiness of One’s Child
    3. The Same Sacrifice as 2, But Caused by Unjust Laws
    D.
    1. Life and Honor Sacrificed for the Life of a Parent or Loved One
    2. Modesty Sacrificed for the Life of a Relative or a Loved One
22. All Sacrificed For a Passion
    (Elements: the Lover, the Object of the Fatal Passion; the Person or Thing Sacrificed)
    A.
    1. Religious Vows of Chastity Broken for a Passion
    2. Respect for a Priest Destroyed
    3. A Future Ruined by Passion
    4. Power Ruined by Passion
    5. Ruin of Mind, Health, and Life
    6. Ruin of Fortunes, Lives, and Honors
    B.
    1. Temptations Destroying the Sense of Duty, of Piety, etc.
    C.
    1. Destruction of Honor, Fortune, and Life by Erotic Vice
    2. The Same Effect Produced by Any Other Vice
23. Necessity Of Sacrificing Love Ones
    (Elements: the Hero; the Beloved Victim; the Necessity for the Sacrifice)
    A.
    1. Necessity for Sacrificing a Daughter in the Public Interest
    2. Duty of Sacrificing Her in Fulfillment of a Vow to God
    3. Duty of Sacrificing Benefactors or Loved Ones to One’s Faith
    B.
    1. Duty of Sacrificing One’s Child, Unknown to Others, Under the Pressure of Necessity
    2. Duty of Sacrificing, Under the Same Circumstances, One’s Father or Husband
    3. Duty of Sacrificing a Son-in-law for the Public Good
    4. Duty of Contending with a Brother-in-Law for the Public Good
    5. Duty of Contending with a Friend
24. Rivalry Of Superior and Inferior
    (Elements: the Superior Rival; the Inferior Rival; the Object)
    A.
    1. Masculine Rivalries; of a Mortal and an Immortal
    2. Of a Magician and an Ordinary Man
    3. Of Conqueror and Conquered
    4. Of a King and a Noble
    5. Of a Powerful Person and an Upstart
    6. Of Rich and Poor
    7. Of an Honored Man and a Suspected One
    8. Rivalry of Two Who are Almost Equal
    9. Of the Two Successive Husbands of a Divorcee
    B.
    1. Feminine Rivalries; Of a Sorceress and an Ordinary Woman
    2. Of Victor and Prisoner
    3. Of Queen and Subject
    4. Of Lady and Servant
    5. Rivalry Between Memory or an Ideal (That of a Superior Woman) and a Vassal of Her Own
    C.
    1. Double Rivalry (A loves B, who loves C, who loves D)
25. Adultery
    (Elements: a Deceived Husband or Wife; Two Adulterers)
    A.
    1. A Mistress Betrayed, For a Young Woman
    2. For a Young Wife
    B.
    1. A Wife Betrayed, For a Slave Who Does Not Love in Return
    2. For Debauchery
    3. For a Married Woman
    4. With the Intention of Bigamy
    5. For a Young Girl, who Does Not Love in Return
    6. A Wife Envied by a Young Girl Who is in Love With Her Husband
    7. By a Courtesan
    C.
    1. An Antagonistic Husband Sacrificed for a Congenial Lover
    2. A Husband, Believed to be Lost, Forgotten for a Rival
    3. A Commonplace Husband Sacrificed for a Sympathetic Lover
    4. A Good Husband Betrayed for an Inferior Rival
    5. For a Grotesque Rival
    6. For a Commonplace Rival, By a Perverse Wife
    7. For a Rival Less Handsome, But Useful
    D.
    1. Vengeance of a Deceived Husband
    2. Jealousy Sacrificed for the Sake of a Cause
    3. Husband Persecuted by a Rejected Rival
26. Crimes Of Love
    (Elements: The Lover, the Beloved)
    A.
    1. A Mother in Love with Her Son
    2. A Daughter in Love with her Father
    3. Violation of a Daughter by a Father
    B.
    1. A Woman Enamored of Her Stepson
    2. A Woman and Her Stepson Enamored of Each Other
    3. A Woman Being the Mistress, at the Same Time, of a Father and Son, Both of Whom Accept the Situation
    C.
    1. A Man Becomes the Lover of his Sister-in-Law
    2. A Brother and Sister in Love with Each Other
    D.
    1. A Man Enamored of Another Man, Who Yields
    E.
    1. A Woman Enamored of a Beast
27. Discovery Of The Dishonor Of a Loved One
    (Elements: the Discoverer; the Guilty One)
    A.
    1. Discovery of a Mother’s Shame
    2. Discovery of a Father’s Shame
    3. Discovery of a Daughter’s Dishonor
    B.
    1. Discovery of Dishonor in the Family of One’s Fiancee
    2. Discovery than One’s Wife Has Been Violated Before Marriage, Or Since the Marriage
    3. That She Has Previously Committed a Fault
    4. Discovery that One’s Wife Has Formerly Been a Prostitute
    5. Discovery that One’s Mistress, Formerly a Prostitute, Has Returned to Her Old Life
    6. Discovery that One’s Lover is a Scoundrel, or that One’s Mistress is a Woman of Bad Character
    7. The Same Discovery Concerning One’s Wife
    C.
    1. Duty of Punishing a Son Who is a Traitor to Country
    2. Duty of Punishing a Son Condemned Under a Law Which the Father Has Made
    3. Duty of Punishing One’s Mother to Avenge One’s Father
28. Obstacles To Love
    (Elements: Two Lovers, an Obstacle)
    A.
    1. Marriage Prevented by Inequality of Rank
    2. Inequality of Fortune an Impediment to Marriage
    B.
    1. Marriage Prevented by Enemies and Contingent Obstacles
    C.
    1. Marriage Forbidden on Account of the Young Woman’s Previous Betrothal to Another
    D.
    1. A Free Union Impeded by the Opposition of Relatives
    E.
    1. By the Incompatibility of Temper of the Lovers
29. An Enemy Loved
    (Elements: The Beloved Enemy; the Lover; the Hater)
    A.
    1. The Loved One Hated by Kinsmen of the Lover
    2. The Lover Pursued by the Brothers of His Beloved
    3. The Lover Hated by the Family of His Beloved
    4. The Beloved is an Enemy of the Party of the Woman Who Loves Him
    B.
    1. The Beloved is the Slayer of a Kinsman of the Woman Who Loves Him
30. Ambition
    (Elements: an Ambitious Person; a Thing Coveted; an Adversary)
    A.
    1. Ambition Watched and Guarded Against by a Kinsman, or By a Person Under Obligation
    B.
    1. Rebellious Ambition
    C.
    1. Ambition and Covetousness Heaping Crime Upon Crime
31. Conflict With a God
    (Elements: a Mortal, an Immortal)
    A.
    1. Struggle Against a Deity
    2. Strife with the Believers in a God
    B.
    1. Controversy with a Deity
    2. Punishment for Contempt of a God
    3. Punishment for Pride Before a God
32. Mistaken Jealousy
    (Elements: the Jealous One; the Object of Whose Possession He is Jealous; the Supposed Accomplice; the Cause or the Author of the Mistake)
    A.
    1. The Mistake Originates in the Suspicious Mind of the Jealous One
    2. Mistaken Jealousy Aroused by Fatal Chance
    3. Mistaken Jealousy of a Love Which is Purely Platonic
    4. Baseless Jealousy Aroused by Malicious Rumors
    B.
    1. Jealousy Suggested by a Traitor Who is Moved by Hatred, or Self-Interest
    C.
    1. Reciprocal Jealousy Suggested to Husband and Wife by a Rival
33. Erroneous Judgment
    (Elements: The Mistaken One; the Victim of the Mistake; the Cause or Author of the Mistake; the Guilty Person)
    A.
    1. False Suspicion Where Faith is Necessary
    2. False Suspicion of a Mistress
    3. False Suspicion Aroused by a Misunderstood Attitude of a Loved One
    B.
    1. False Suspicions Drawn Upon Oneself to Save a Friend
    2. They Fall Upon the Innocent
    3. The Same Case as 2, but in Which the Innocent had a Guilty Intention, or Believes Himself Guilty
    4. A Witness to the Crime, in the Interest of a Loved One, Lets Accusation Fall Upon the Innocent
    C.
    1. The Accusation is Allowed to Fall Upon an Enemy
    2. The Error is Provoked by an Enemy
    D.
    1. False Suspicion Thrown by the Real Culprit Upon One of His Enemies
    2. Thrown by the Real Culprit Upon the Second Victim Against Whom He Has Plotted From the Beginning
34. Remorse
    (Elements: the Culprit; the Victim or the Sin; the Interrogator)
    A.
    1. Remorse for an Unknown Crime
    2. Remorse for a Parricide
    3. Remorse for an Assassination
    B.
    1. Remorse for a Fault of Love
    2. Remorse for an Adultery
35. Recovery Of a Lost One
    (The Seeker; the One Found)
    A.
    1. A Child Stolen
    B.
    1. Unjust Imprisonment
    C.
    1. A Child Searches to Discover His Father
36. Loss Of Loved Ones
    (A Kinsman Slain; a Kinsman Spectator; an Executioner)
    A.
    1. Witnessing the Slaying of Kinsmen While Powerless to Prevent It
    2. Helping to Bring Misfortune Upon One’s People Through Professional Secrecy
    B.
    1. Divining the Death of a Loved One
    C.
    1. Learning of the Death of a Kinsman or Ally, and Lapsing into Despair

Compiled from:
The “Basic” Plots in Literature
TSA Writing Tips - Twenty Basic Plots
The Thirty-six Dramatic Situations

Every fantasy cliche that you include at your own peril.

(Comments? Direct them to the author at Rinkworks.)

The Fantasy Novelist’s Exam

By David J. Parker
Additional Material By Samuel Stoddard

Ever since J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis created the worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia, it seems like every windbag off the street thinks he can write great, original fantasy, too. The problem is that most of this “great, original fantasy” is actually poor, derivative fantasy. Frankly, we’re sick of it, so we’ve compiled a list of rip-off tip-offs in the form of an exam. We think anybody considering writing a fantasy novel should be required to take this exam first. Answering “yes” to any one question results in failure and means that the prospective novel should be abandoned at once.

The Exam

1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages?
2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage?
3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn’t know it?
4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy?
5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?
6. How about one that will destroy it?
7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about “The One” who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?
8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?
9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?
10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?
11. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician?
12. Does “a forgetful wizard” describe any of the characters in your novel?
13. How about “a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior”?
14. How about “a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons”?
15. Do the female characters in your novel spend a lot of time worrying about how they look, especially when the male main character is around?
16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?
17. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals?
18. Would “a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword” aptly describe any of your female characters?
19. Would “a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan” aptly describe any of your female characters?
20. Is any character in your novel best described as “a dour dwarf”?
21. How about “a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage”?
22. Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different?
23. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?
24. Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy?
25. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?
26. Did you draw a map for your novel which includes places named things like “The Blasted Lands” or “The Forest of Fear” or “The Desert of Desolation” or absolutely anything “of Doom”?
27. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you’ve read the entire book, if even then?
28. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?
29. How about a quintet or a decalogue?
30. Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?
31. Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you’re still many sequels away from finishing your “story”?
32. Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books?
33. Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far?
34. Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group?
35. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?
36. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?
37. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?
38. Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named “Tim Umber” and “Belthusalanthalus al’Grinsok”?
39. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?
40. How about “orken” or “dwerrows”?
41. Do you have a race prefixed by “half-”?
42. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?
43. Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG?
44. Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG?
45. Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast?
46. Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls?
47. Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don’t?
48. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?
49. Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won’t break the plot?
50. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as “fireball” or “lightning bolt”?
51. Do you ever use the term “mana” in your novel?
52. Do you ever use the term “plate mail” in your novel?
53. Heaven help you, do you ever use the term “hit points” in your novel?
54. Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs?
55. Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest?
56. Does anybody in your novel fight for two hours straight in full plate armor, then ride a horse for four hours, then delicately make love to a willing barmaid all in the same day?
57. Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it?
58. Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar?
59. Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor?
60. Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more? [info]
61. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?
62. Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns?
63. Is your hero able to withstand multiple blows from the fantasy equivalent of a ten pound sledge but is still threatened by a small woman with a dagger?
64. Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man?
65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an “on the road” meal?
66. Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead?
67. Do you think that “mead” is just a fancy name for “beer”?
68. Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?
69. Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves’ guild?
70. Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death?
71. Is your story about a crack team of warriors that take along a bard who is useless in a fight, though he plays a mean lute?
72. Is “common” the official language of your world?
73. Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before?
74. Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings?
75. Read that question again and answer truthfully.

Comments about the list? Go here and you can write to the author :-) — who is not me.

This expands on the idea from last Saturday to help you get to know a character you’ve created better or flesh out one that seems a bit wishy-washy.

What would your character’s list of 7 Virtues be? They don’t have to be virtues he or she possesses, but ones he or she thinks are most admirable — in others perhaps! While he goes off and does the total opposite ;-)

Then do a free write on a different one for 15 minutes each day about your character’s thoughts and feelings on and experiences with the virtue. People he’s known who’ve had it and the good and bad he’s seen of it. Times he’s seen it put into action. Just let the words flow nonstop for 15 minutes.

Try making up your own list of virtues first. Then, if you want, you can look through this list compiled from various places around the internet to see if there are any your character might move to the top of his or her list.

acceptance
acknowledgment
assertiveness
beauty
bravery
caring
charity
cheerfulness
clarity
cleanliness
commitment
compassion
competence
confidence
consideration
contentment
cooperation
courage
courtesy
craft
creativity
curiosity
detachment
determination
devotion
diligence
discernment
efficiency
empathy
energy
enthusiasm
excellence
fairness
faith
faithfulness
flexibility
forgiveness
fortitude
friendliness
generosity
gentleness
grace
gratitude
helpfulness
honesty
honor
hope
humility
humor
idealism
insight
integrity
joyfulness
justice
kindness
love
loyalty
mercy
mindfulness
moderation
modesty
obedience
open mindedness
order
orderliness
passion
patience
peace
peacefulness
perseverance
perspective
playfulness
prayerfulness
pride
principled
productivity
prudence
purity
purposefulness
rationality
reliability
resilience
respect
responsibility
reverence
righteousness
sacrifice
self confidence
self discipline
self possession
self restraint
service
silence
steadfastness
stillness
tact
temperance
thankfulness
thrift
tolerance
trust
trustworthiness
truthfulness
understanding
unity
wisdom
wonder

Here’s the list of words that I used for the writing prompt — though more of a game really! — in the Dragon Writing fun shop at the Live and Learn Conference. (Click on Comments at the bottom of the post for a list of the words.)

For those who weren’t there, I had a whole bunch (maybe 300) colored popsicle sticks with words written on both sides. We drew a bunch of sticks and tried to come up with fantasy tabloid headlines.

The only instruction I gave was to choose 2 sticks of each color. That just gives you a good mixture of word types to start working with. You don’t need to use them all. You don’t need to use each color. You can throw back and redraw any that aren’t working and draw whatever color. Whatever helps!

I used two packs of colored popsicle sticks and put words on each side. I can’t remember how many were in each pack. (150 maybe?)

Plain - Conjunctions and Prepositions. These are the only ones that have 4 to a stick. Katelyn came up with this idea in the headlines she sent to the list and it seemed to make them more interesting. I went through the newspaper and kept track of the prepositions that were most common. There are multiple copies of each set. Katelyn needed an "on" a couple of times so I made one but it’s all by its lonesome at the moment. There’s a list of prepositions at Test Magic. Way more than the newspaper headlines ever use! ;-)

Green - Places and Objects. Probably the least useful category but interesting to have.

Red - Verbs. There are more words than I had sticks for so I colored some plain sticks with a red marker.

Blue and Purple - People and Creatures. Probably the most useful category since the nouns can often do double duty as adjectives: vampire astrologist for instance.

Yellow and Orange - Adjectives. If I were doing it again, I would change what adjectives I could to nouns, like "baby" for instance. (Especially since I had extra blue and purple and ran short of yellow and orange so had to make some.)

Using colored sticks isn’t important. It’s just less annoying. My daughter and I have another set of just plain sticks with random words on it originally intended to generate manga-ish story ideas. They’ve expanded beyond that (a recent one had something to do with a local radio personality and sparkly pants ;-) But since they’re all the same color, it’s annoyingly easy to pull out a whole series of nouns as you search for a verb.

I don’t know if it makes a difference but, as I was writing them, I had the words printed in two columns (4 columns for the adjectives) and chose the word for one side of a stick from column A and the other side of the stick from column B so all the "a"s, for instance, weren’t clustered onto the same sticks. As I said I’m not sure if it makes a difference but it seemed to make sense at the time!

Yellow &	Blue &	Red	Green	Plain
Orange	Purple
Adjectives	People & Creatures	Verbs	Places & Things	Conjunctions & Prepositions
(world’s) best	actor	accuses	abyss	of — 7 sets of each
(world’s) biggest	adversary	assassinates	altar	for
(world’s) oldest	alchemist	assaults	armor	outside
(world’s) smallest	alien	attacks	bakery	before
(world’s) worst	android	avenges	bazaar
(world’s) youngest	angel	banishes	bones	after — 5 sets of each
340 pound	apprentice	betrays	camera	inside
abandoned	artist	bewitches	castle	outside
acclaimed	assassin	bites	cavern	before
accused	astrologist	blames	chamber
alienated	avatar	blasts	computer	over — 5 sets of each
ambitious	Barbie	blesses	crypt	but
amnesiac	beggar	bribes	diary	with
ancient	bounty hunter	builds	dungeon	and
angry	boy	burns	empire
annoying	bride (of)	captures	fire	on — 1
arrogant	brother (of)	celebrates	forest
baby	bunny	challenges	garden
balding	cat	charms	goblet
barbarian	creature	cheats	grave
beautiful	crime boss	chills	heaven
bitter	cult hero	chokes	hell
bizarre	cult member	claims	holy book
blasphemous	cyborg	completes	island
blind	death	conquers	jewel
brawny	death god	convicts	key
brilliant	demigod	cooks	kingdom
broken	demon	corrupts	labyrinth
brutal	demon hunter	curses	monastery
bubbly	demon slayer	dares	palace
charismatic	dog	deceives	paradise
chocolate	dragon	defeats	ring
compulsive	dragon hunter	defends	runes
corrupt	dragon slayer	deposes	sanctuary
crazy	dwarf	destroys	sarcophagus
creepy	elf	devastates	scroll
crimson	Elvis	disappears	space colony
crooked	embezzler	discovers	star ship
crumbling	emperor	disguises	sword
cultured	enchantress	dooms	tavern
cursed	evil overlord	dumps	temple
cyber	executioner	eats	tomb
dancing	exorcist	eliminates	tower
dark	fairy	escapes (from)	underworld
dastardly	father (of)	exiles	volcano
dead	fiend	exorcises	well
delirious	fortuneteller	explodes
delusional	ghost	exposes
desecrated	ghoul	falls for
deserted	girl	fears
devoted	goblin	fights
diseased	Godzilla	frees
disguised	goth	gives birth to
dishonest	groom (of)	hatches
disturbed	harpy	hits
divine	heir	imprisons
doomed	hellion	invades
dreamy	horse	is
dusty	husband (of)	jealous of
dying	investigator	kidnaps
eerie	king	kills
embarrassed	lady	liberates
emerald	lizard	locates
enchanted	lord	loses
enigmatic	mage	mourns
escaped	mecha	murders
exiled	mermaid	plots to kill
extinct	monk	poisons
faded	mother (of)	proves
failed	mouse	quests for
fake	murderer	rebels against
famous	musician	recovers
fanatic	mystic	rejects
feline	ninja	reproduces
first	ogre	resists
fluffy	orphan	resurrects
forbidden	outcast	reveals
forgotten	Ozzie	ridicules
foul	pickpocket	rips off
fractured	pig	rules
frozen	pirate	runs off with
ghastly	poet	sacrifices
giant	priestess	saves
glowing	prisoner	seeks
gold	psychic	seizes
golden	pyromaniac	separates
greedy	queen	shames
grotesque	rat	shoots
hairy	runaway	silences
half	side kick	slays
haunted	sister (of)	smacks
heavenly	slave	smashes
hellish	soul	stabs
hidden	soul stealer	strikes
hollow	specimen	stuns
horrific	spider	substitutes (for)
hot	spirit	sues
hungry	spy	summons
hysterical	tabloid reporter	suppresses
icy	terror	surrenders
idiotic	thief	terminates
illegal	troll	terrorizes
imaginary	undead	threatens
immortal	vampire	torments
impenetrable	vampire slayer	tortures
indecipherable	villain	transforms (into)
infamous	warlord	traps
infested	warrior	tricks
ingenious	weasel	uncovers
inhuman	werewolf	vanquishes
insane	wife (of)	was
insectoid	witch	weds
interstellar	wizard	weeps for
invisible	wolf	yields
isolated	worm
killer	writer
last	youth
lavender	zombie
loathsome
long buried
lost
lucky
mad
magic
malevolent
masked
massive
mechanical
miniaturized
missing
mist enshrouded
mistaken
moldering
monster
morbid
mortal
murdered
mutant
mysterious
mystery
mystical
mythic
naked
noble
notorious
obsessed
oozing
otherworldly
outcast
paranoid
paranormal
paroled
passionate
peculiar
perverse
phobic
pink
poetic
poisoned
primitive
primordial
puzzling
quirky
radical
random
rare
reincarnated
renowned
repulsive
resurrected
revolting
rotting
royal
ruined
sacred
sapphire
secret
secretive
shadow
shattered
silver
singing
sinister
smelly
sparkly
stinky
strange
stupid
supernatural
suspected
tattooed
teen
telepathic
time traveling
toothless
twisted
tyrannical
ugly
unearthly
unholy
unlucky
vain
vanished
victorious
violent
virtuous
wacky
weird
wicked
zany

by Joyce A. Fetteroll, Version 1.0, September 2006

Or kill someone. Depends on your point of view. But murder does have a more dramatic sound to it.

This list of reasons to murder someone is just the tip of the blade poking out of the black trench coat.

I’ve divided them into categories. Some clearly belong in one category. Some I’ve duplicated and put in more than one category. Some are duplicates with different wording. Some could go either way depending on what is gained and whether someone gains greater control or merely freedom from being mauled.

And it is all about personal gain. It may, for the killer, be gaining freedom from an attacking monster, gaining greater control, gaining peace and quiet, gaining money, gaining a sense of having made the world a little bit better ….

There’s even an aspect of personal gain in mercy killings. The murderer gains the freedom of not having the memory of his/her victim suffering through his/her inaction, even if he/she also gains the knowledge that he/she has done something he/she can’t live with having done.

(Any) - An extra layer tacked onto one of the other reasons

1. imagined they were someone else/delusional/insane
2. mistaken for someone else
3. was about to die but recovered unexpectedly (and no one knows yet)

Annoyance - Often to gain peace. The murderer will return to regular life, not take on power or control. Most of the reasons indicate a severe need for anger management training.

1. “road rage”
2. 57 years of irritation
3. android malfunctioning in an annoying way
4. annoying habits
5. arrogant
6. bad taste
7. beautiful
8. better at everything
9. charming popular personality who is actually clueless about the subject he/she is an “expert” at
10. cheater
11. disgusting habits/repulsive
12. dreams too big, makes others who’ve accepted lot in life look like failures
13. dumps garbage on property
14. famous person whose attention, fans, etc. are destroying peace of neighborhood
15. greedy
16. inexplicable dislike, sets teeth on edge
17. irritation
18. jealous of privilege
19. jealous of the free, easy life someone has when others have had to work so hard
20. jealous of their success
21. maker of annoying jingles that get stuck in peoples’ heads
22. mentally or physically challenged
23. messenger with bad news
24. no longer necessary for goal
25. obnoxious little kid
26. once famous person who won’t shut up about it
27. out of control animals (loud, killing livestock, pooping in yard, attacking)
28. overly ambitious
29. owner of annoying business (loud, smelly)
30. paparazzi
31. peeping tom
32. phobic/unreasonable fear of person
33. practices or holds opposing beliefs/values (Hummer driver)
34. recovered from mourning too quickly
35. represents what someone hates
36. slob
37. smug winner
38. spammer
39. steals services (water, electricity, gas, phone, cable, internet, etc.)
40. stinky (e.g., fish monger)
41. tabloid reporter
42. taunting/embarrassed on purpose
43. too happy
44. too happy that someone died/was punished/suffers
45. too intelligent/nerdy/know it all
46. too loud
47. too lucky
48. ugly
49. vain about privileges
50. weaknesses that are embarrassing
51. wrong color shoes

Instrument - Commanded or compelled to; not done for personal reasons toward target, though sometimes done for personal gain (money, regard of god, freedom from being vaporized for not doing it).

1. directive/must obey (android or other creature programmed/genetically encoded to obey its maker)
2. fulfill a dying wish or promise
3. law says to (perhaps ancient laws/rules that don’t have a meaning now, just need obeyed)
4. order from ancestral spirit
5. ordered to by superiors
6. ordered to under duress (self or loved one/thing will be harmed or released)
7. prophecy said to
8. spell/hypnosis/mind control/chip in head/evil spirit
9. told to by God/Goddess
10. tricked into killing person by someone else who made it seem like the right thing to do
11. voices in head said to

Law - Not personally threatened. Threat is to society. Just a sampling of common reasons for execution or justifications for killing a criminal. Past societies have turned some petty crimes into capital offenses, like cutting down a tree. You can too! Littering? Sure! (Some of the reasons listed under other categories could be turned into laws creating a legal justification for, say, executing someone wearing Nikes instead of Adidas.)

1. abortionist
2. adulterer
3. alien/foreigner
4. amoral
5. arsonist/blows up buildings
6. assassin
7. assisted suicidist
8. avenger
9. behaving in a dangerous-to-others manner
10. blasphemy
11. breaker of rules
12. carrier of infectious disease
13. criminal who can’t be caught or escapes conviction
14. deformed/mentally or physically challenged
15. embezzler
16. escapee from prison
17. escapee/deserter from group
18. evil dictator responsible for many deaths
19. false prophet
20. fleeing arrest
21. half breed
22. illegal business
23. illegal/forbidden talent/knowledge
24. indebted
25. kidnapper
26. magic user/wizard/sorcerer/witch/psychic/astrologer/fortune teller
27. mass murderer
28. member of outlaw/forbidden religion
29. member of royal line that has been exiled
30. more children than allowed
31. murderer
32. outsider who committed a small crime
33. pornographer
34. practices forbidden (magic/scientific/religious/artistic) ways
35. rapist/sex criminal
36. resisted arrest
37. resurrectionist
38. self-appointed executioner of those who don’t deserve to live
39. slaver
40. sniper
41. terrorist
42. thief/pirate/outlaw
43. threat to the government/leaders/king
44. too much/too little intelligence
45. too old, reached age that law dictates people must die by
46. touching/looking at one forbidden to touch
47. unrepentant law breaker
48. weapons possession
49. “ruined” according to customs (as warning to others not to do the same)

Maintain control - Eliminate threat to own control or way of controlled life. Some seem like punishment or revenge, like killing an escapee, but ultimately it’s about providing a little lesson to others thinking along the same lines.

1. ability to translate some ancient knowledge want kept secret
2. alien/foreigner in a closed nation (feel threatened by different ideas)
3. alienating loved ones/followers/customers/fans
4. amoral person
5. arrogant, loose cannon who challenges authority
6. astrologist who gave “wrong” reading (as warning to others not to do the same)
7. avatar of opposing god
8. avatar who is speaking the truth of god’s wishes that is opposite of what religious leaders have been saying
9. challenging control
10. changed beliefs
11. child born out of wedlock/from unapproved father/from man other than husband
12. claimant to throne/inheritance/position
13. conspirant
14. cryogenically frozen person/embryo who threatens inheritance
15. cult hero of cult have no control over
16. cult hero who has become an embarrassment
17. deflowered the one wanted kept virginal (as message to others who might try)
18. desecrater of sacred place/person
19. deserter
20. disgusting morals
21. distracting someone from fulfilling duty/prophecy
22. dreams too big, makes others who’ve accepted lot in life question
23. embezzler
24. embodiment of morals who is amoral (e.g., womanizing priest)
25. escapee from closed society
26. ex-spouse who has taken children
27. famous retired person coming out of retirement (who will gather a following)
28. follower or outsider who is more talented/more (potentially) powerful/has bigger weapons
29. freeing those someone wants confined
30. group member becoming too famous and drawing regard and attention of group members
31. group member growing in intelligence and questioning what everyone else accepts
32. has special knowledge that could stop defenses from working/androids or mind-controlled minions from obeying
33. has special knowledge to revive ancient enemy
34. helper of runaways
35. hero with feet of clay (who would disillusion followers)
36. informant/seller of information
37. innocent bystander/peeping tom/reporter (covering a different story) who saw/heard incriminating things
38. keep people fearful
39. keeping self alive unnaturally (against morals)
40. last of royal line with claim to throne
41. leader of faction who is trying to take over
42. leaders in war who are negotiating for peace that would threaten arms/war magic business
43. left group/cult when it’s forbidden to do so
44. liberator who will end person’s power in a closed society (prison, controlled community)
45. loner/not a team player
46. lost in contest/failed at task (as lesson for others who might lose)
47. lover/bride/groom/spouse of hated being
48. memorizer of forbidden knowledge
49. mourner of death that clan/group wants celebrated
50. murdered to make it look like illegal practices done to person or that took deadly turn were done by unknown murderer
51. new/rival belief system that will put an end to one’s job
52. obnoxious/amoral/embarrassing/criminal/deformed/untalented/illegally talented/wrong believing family/group member reflecting on others
53. one who knows person’s past and can expose who person really is/as a fraud
54. one who will awaken power in another (love/sex/knowledge) before it’s time/ready to control
55. painter of amoral pictures/writer of amoral stories
56. person who could prove an accusation (that would weaken an enemy) is false
57. practitioner of forbidden knowledge
58. pregnant with another’s child
59. previous spouse presumed dead who has returned/been resurrected
60. prove that one still can
61. raising doubts that could split group apart to put fear into others
62. random business owner/family member to reinforce power of extortion racket
63. random person to maintain control through fear and intimidation
64. rescuer of sacrifices to gods
65. resistant to being controlled
66. resurrected holy one who will gather following away from current leaders of religion
67. returned vanished/”dead” revered leader who will take back leadership
68. ruler/heir/leader who returned “from the dead”/resurrected from the dead who will gather following
69. runaway/escapee
70. seller/distributor of information that is dangerous
71. spirit of dead leader/ancestor who won’t stop meddling
72. taunting and causing those under control to laugh and question authority
73. threatening divorce
74. too intelligent, could discover secret
75. weds against will of parents/those in control
76. woman carrying last of royal line with claim to throne
77. woman pregnant by man unapproved by head of clan/family
78. innocent photographer who inadvertently shot incriminating photos/video
79. suicide turned to look like murder to save face/rally followers

Mercy - Put an end to or prevent someone from suffering.

1. “ruined” according to customs to prevent a life of being shunned/outcast/abused
2. android/creation who thought they were human/biological but realized they’ll never (naturally) die
3. as an alternative to suicide (which person’s religion claims will doom one’s soul)
4. avatar of one god about to be fed as sacrifice to another god
5. before can become (painful) sacrifice
6. being tormented with no release
7. child who would be taunted for being different (half breed)
8. disgusting habits/repulsive/no fashion sense (person thinks they’re putting them out of their misery)
9. doomed/about to go to fate worse than death
10. dreams too big in hopeless situation, can only lead to a life of misery
11. dying slowly and painfully/unpleasantly
12. escapee from controlled society who can’t survive on own and will soon die painful death
13. forced into marriage
14. has forbidden/illegal abilities (magic/artistic/mechanical/religious/psychic/alien/alien to group (vision among the blind)) to protect them from torture and execution
15. has talent desired by enemy/those in control in order to prevent them from exploiting person
16. hero who has been weakened by enemy/lost what made him/her heroic to prevent followers from becoming demoralized
17. immortal who won’t naturally die but can be killed (who is in pain, injuries that won’t heal, etc.)
18. in pain (from disease)
19. infested by disease/aliens/alien devices
20. insane
21. intelligence growing beyond ability to relate to others/falling beyond ability to care for self
22. kept alive as a resource/food/incubator/egg sac/body parts
23. kept alive unnaturally/against will
24. loser in a contest/competition/task before they’re tortured as an example to others
25. overthrown child heir/ruler before enemy can kill to eliminate any rivalry for throne
26. physical or mental vegetable
27. physically damaged
28. physically or mentally challenged
29. predestined to die in a horrible way or become evil
30. prevent someone from having a secret tortured/drugged/spelled out of them
31. sold into slavery/prostitution
32. transforming into something else
33. under unremovable enchantment
34. zombie/living dead/vampire/werewolf

Personal gain - To gain status or benefit through, often any target will do.

1. #100
2. anger/convenient outlet for negative emotions
3. as a distraction to stop an event or draw attention away from something else
4. as a substitute for person was assigned to kill
5. as a test to challenge a detective
6. assigned target in job as assassin/done for money
7. become them and live their life
8. being whose death is required proof (dragon/demon etc.) that one (still) has what it takes to hold title
9. best warrior to test self against
10. blockade to advancement
11. business owner in order to take over their business
12. business owner in order to take over their customers
13. cannibalistic practices/to gain their power by eating them
14. criminal/own group member who committed a crime wanted by group want to maintain peace with
15. dying too slowly for those who would benefit from death
16. evil ruler/ruler one strongly disagrees with so new one will be found
17. famous person to become infamous for having killed them
18. fits some profile of group an insane person is trying to eliminate/punish
19. for food/to process for food
20. for fun/felt like it
21. for some part of body that’s needed (magical body part/ingredient for spell/use in an experiment)
22. gain regard of those in control by eliminating one they find threatening
23. heir to fortune so will be split fewer ways
24. heir to throne to take heir’s position
25. heir who will or is squandering a fortune
26. inherit their money
27. inherit their position
28. make a statement — Kat F.
29. make the world a better place — Kat F.
30. marry their spouse (for love/gain their property/power/influence)
31. obsession that one can’t possess or who spurned
32. on a dare
33. paragon, long retired, who others never stopped comparing replacement to
34. part of advancement to next level to kill fellow students
35. person forcing loved one into marriage
36. person loved one’s family wants him/her to marry
37. person who caused strict rules on all to be imposed
38. person who will satisfy masses as being the criminal sought, to gain public confidence and praise
39. possess something (loved one/property/possession/title/business) that rival has always wanted
40. possess their home/land
41. possesses something murder feels should rightly be his/hers
42. powerful/intelligent person to prove more powerful/intelligent
43. prove that one can
44. replace with copy/imitation/pretender/actor
45. resurrect previous leader to regain power
46. return person to spotlight
47. rival for belief system to be accepted as authority
48. rival for translation of ancient manuscript so can twist meaning of it
49. sacrifice to a god for good favor/prevent bad favor
50. set someone else up as the murderer
51. spouse (who won’t divorce) so can marry another
52. stop something being sold to someone who would ruin it/mistreat it
53. strike fear into those who thought themselves well protected
54. test weapon on
55. to gain their power through killing them
56. too smart person who is ruining the grade curve
57. usurper (to take control)
58. wanted person for bounty
59. woman tricking loved one into marriage with claim of pregnancy
60. won’t tell secret (to frighten others who also won’t tell)
61. wouldn’t agree to political/business arrangement (want to get someone who will agree into negotiating position)
62. wrong sex baby

Remove obstacle - Someone, often deliberately, who’s blocking “rightful” progress.

1. ancient ruler who won’t change for the times, rules as though society hasn’t changed
2. android/creature/computer programmed to enforce ancient laws that no longer apply
3. boss who won’t allow to advance
4. controller of needed scarce resources (medicine, water, food, air, protection against something deadly in the environment …)
5. guard
6. holder of information/material/object needed to complete own project
7. holding onto old ways, holding others back
8. in way of heart’s desire
9. one preventing rebuilding of sacred place
10. roadblock between people and king
11. someone who would stop one from completing an objective
12. standing in way of goal
13. standing in way of progress
14. suppressor of knowledge/progress

Revenge - Just a sampling. Many of the reasons listed under other categories could be for revenge if they’re changed to the past tense.

1. abandoned as a child
2. abused self or loved one as a child
3. accuser who ruined life
4. adulterous spouse
5. always got best grades, best girl/boy friends, awards
6. banished
7. betrayed group
8. betrayed personal trust
9. bigamist
10. broke up family
11. brought [the person who kills him/her] back to life as an experiment (gave new body)
12. created person against his/her will
13. deceived
14. descendent of one wanted revenge on
15. desecrated one wanted kept virginal (in revenge for spoiling plans)
16. deserted group to fend for self
17. destroyed or responsible for destroying (e.g., made decisions) family/clan/way of life
18. destroyed what one values (dams Venice, blocks view from home)
19. distracted someone from fulfilling duty/prophecy
20. dumped for someone else
21. embarrassed (accidentally)
22. exploited young and talented
23. exposed secrets
24. failed to promote a career properly and ruined life
25. family member of one wanted revenge on
26. harmed loved one (physically or mentally)
27. humiliated
28. ingenue who ousted from limelight
29. internment camp leader
30. liberator who brought person’s power in a closed society (prison, controlled community) to an end
31. lover who spurned
32. pay back for insult
33. possesses something that rival/hated one always wanted (loved one/property/possession/title/business)
34. prevented suicide (causing life of pain, loss of face for family)
35. prosecutor who ruined life
36. rejected (love, creation, job application)
37. responsible for death/destruction/betrayal/loss of reputation
38. rival who won (see Rival list for a few ideas)
39. seduced into criminal activities as a young child
40. shunned
41. spouse who is an android/something other than what he/she led others to believe who has deceived all these years
42. stole idea and became successful with it
43. stole spouse
44. surrendered, which brought demise of group
45. teacher who gave a bad grade/prevented from advancing or continuing or participating in other activities because grades are too low
46. tormented during childhood
47. turncoat spy
48. turned down marriage proposal
49. usurped throne (to punish)
50. warlord/barbarian who destroyed family
51. winner of battle/contest

Rival, eliminate - Opponent, enemy, competitor. Not even an attempt at being an exhaustive list of rivals someone might want eliminated.

1. cheater
2. current holder of title/position so can advance or take position for self
3. first to achieve something
4. keeper of rival sacred place
5. loved one of rival to infect corpse with deadly disease
6. more charming sibling/parent/friend who stole all boyfriends/girlfriends
7. new business in area had exclusive control
8. other ghost competing to haunt a place
9. rival “chosen one”/”savior”
10. rival artist (painter, sculptor, writer …)
11. rival assassin
12. rival astrologist vying to publish official horoscope/be leader’s astrologist
13. rival at sports
14. rival bounty hunter
15. rival buys vying for same limited product
16. rival conspirator (of other conspiracy)
17. rival counterfeiter
18. rival crime boss
19. rival cult hero
20. rival curser who curses same targets
21. rival drug dealer/supplier
22. rival elemental
23. rival embezzler at same company
24. rival evil dictator
25. rival faction leader vying for control
26. rival fake avatar/avatar of competing god
27. rival for exploration of best archaeological sites
28. rival for interpretation/translation of scholarly/religious/ancient writings/holy writings
29. rival for job/position/title
30. rival for love/affection/attention of another
31. rival for most pure to be dedicated to god
32. rival for power over sphere of influence
33. rival for rebuilding revered landmark
34. rival fortune teller (using same ways or rival/new fangled ways)
35. rival game master (chess, go)
36. rival gang leader
37. rival heir to throne
38. rival high level thief after same items
39. rival hunter/predator
40. rival liberator wanting to gain credit for liberation
41. rival mathematician/inventor/scientist
42. rival of other rebel group
43. rival outlaw religion leader
44. rival outside influence on isolated people (e.g., religious, political, scientific group trying to help them see new ways)
45. rival performers in circus
46. rival psychic
47. rival reformer
48. rival religious leader
49. rival seller of information/stolen information
50. rival shop keeper
51. rival spy of other faction/business who’s spying is interfering with own spying
52. rival superhero
53. rival terrorist from another terrorist group after same targets
54. rival to kill someone for revenge/have been seeking for a long time
55. rival weapons dealer/supplier
56. rival who just gained a big advantage
57. rival who subscribes to different way of casting magic
58. rival with unfair advantage (very wealthy, very smart, very talented, magic, technology)
59. rival wives/pregnancies/husbands
60. rival wizard/magic user/witch/sorcerer

Rival, weaken - Killing the rival wouldn’t be sporting. Murderer just wants the outcome tipped in his/her favor. At whatever cost.

1. arms dealer/manufacturer/importer/smuggler
2. assassin for rival
3. avatar of rival
4. best protector of rival/opponent to not only weaken defense by demoralize
5. create a martyr to the cause
6. eliminate a rallying point for rebel group
7. famous spokesperson for rival
8. guardian who keeps some threat to rival in check
9. has special knowledge needed by rival (for defenses/weapon/skills)
10. hero of enemy
11. holder of information/material/object needed to complete rival project
12. holds a secret or important/powerful information to prevent rival from getting
13. leader of group who won’t form an alliance against rival (to intimidate or get new leader)
14. leader of rival group
15. leader/morale booster returning/coming out of retirement to help rival
16. magic user/wizard/sorcerer/witch/psychic/astrologer/fortune teller for opponent
17. mercenary spy
18. messenger of rival
19. military expert/strategist for opposition
20. photographer who won’t turn over incriminating photos/video about rival
21. political power for opposition
22. power behind opposing beliefs/values (greenie, PETA)
23. primary inventor for military/business opposition
24. primary religious leader of opponent
25. prophet/false prophet who supports rival
26. prove someone isn’t immortal
27. resurrect previous leader of enemy group to cause division
28. sacrifice meant for rival’s god
29. sidekick/partner/loved one/dedicated follower to punish leader
30. source of rival’s power/wealth
31. spy
32. spy to replace with own spy
33. stabilizing influence in rival group who keeps them from infighting
34. suicide made to look like murder done by rivals
35. supporter of rival faction vying for control
36. supporter/minion of evil person
37. up and coming ingenue
38. vendetta (for ongoing feud)
39. weaken leader’s (see Rival, weaken) power so oppressed people will rise up and overthrow
40. well-spoken vocal opponent
41. woman carrying heir/infant heir of dying leader of opposition
42. “immortal”/”Omniscient”/seer to prove they aren’t
43. (inadvertently) calling attention to those who want to lay low

Stop threat - Threat is to safety and security or way of life rather than threat to control. Could be done by a person without power in the society, who sees something that threatens to change their way of life. Think the flamboyant hippie family who has moved into an ultra conservative neighborhood that the children are eying with interest. (Or are the hippie children eying the new conservative neighbors?) Murderer will return to regular life, not take on power or control. (See also reasons under Law and Maintain control.)

1. about to betray group
2. about to uncover long lost secret/object that will threaten self/loved ones/family/clan/group/culture/religion
3. abuser of animals
4. abuser of power (from king to police officer to head of gang or family)
5. abusive of self/loved one/weaker ones
6. acting above station
7. amnesiac who knew secrets before memories come back
8. android who is malfunctioning
9. assassin about to strike at self or loved one
10. avatar of opposing god
11. before can become sacrifice (and release god’s power)
12. behaving in a dangerous-to-others manner
13. bewitcher/sorceress/enchantress, someone who controls with charm, charisma and magic
14. blackmailer
15. blasphemous person
16. breeder of monsters
17. briber
18. bringer of change and “advancement” to simple people
19. brutal
20. bully coach/teacher/mentor
21. butler (because the butler always did it) — Kat F.
22. carrier of disease
23. child of monster/devil/demon
24. child who could be embarrassing if found out
25. chosen one/preordained
26. clan leader taking clan against tradition
27. clone
28. compulsive nature destroying family/reputation
29. controlling leader/master
30. controls a monster
31. corrupt political person
32. corrupt religious person
33. corrupter
34. creator of protection (device, spell, sutras) against predator (vampire, aliens, demon, mental controller)
35. creepy, strange, makes nervous
36. criminal a long time ago who has been punished and repented
37. cruel dungeon/game master
38. cult leader
39. currently humiliating
40. dancer/singer where it’s forbidden
41. defiler of sacred place
42. deformed/mutant (child)
43. demon hunter/vampire slayer/bounty hunter/exorcist
44. demon/angel, opposing being
45. destroyer of what one values (dams Venice, blocks view from home)
46. destroying or is responsible for destroying
47. developer ready to destroy land
48. did or let someone else do something forbidden
49. different (seems to threaten comfortable conformity)
50. disband their political/religious following, end cult of personality
51. discoverer of what some want to remain lost
52. disguised to protect secret and live in peace (opposite gender, other race, other species)
53. dresses weird/against gender type
54. drug dealer/manufacturer/importer/smuggler
55. embarrassment to family
56. escaped experiment
57. ex-spouse who has taken children
58. excess child beyond number allowed
59. executioner/interrogator who likes his/her job too much
60. exorcist
61. exposer of secrets
62. extortionist
63. false prophet
64. follower of forbidden ways
65. fortune teller/seer/mystic/telepath who seems able to find out too much
66. gambler who caused indebtedness
67. gives birth to demons/monsters
68. God of Death
69. grave robber/desecrater
70. group member becoming too famous, bring attention to group who wants to stay unnoticed
71. half breed
72. has incriminating evidence
73. hated being who is seducing loved one
74. holder of information/material/object needed to complete (threatening) project
75. hunter of endangered species
76. hunter of kind
77. hysterical (in a deadly situation when calm is needed)
78. idiot/stupid
79. incompetent healer
80. incompetent in position where lives are at stake
81. infectious
82. infested by disease/aliens/alien devices
83. influenced by drug/disease/spell
84. invader of home/country
85. kidnapper
86. knows a secret (though may not realize it)
87. knows secret of what keeps society protected
88. knows too much
89. last of hated race
90. law enforcer executing people who satisfy crowd rather than tracking down true criminal
91. leader of belief system that will be accepted as authority
92. lover who could be embarrassing if found out
93. magic user/wizard/sorcerer/witch/psychic/astrologer/fortune teller
94. magical being
95. mass murderer
96. mastermind behind evil
97. member of outlaw/forbidden religion
98. mentally damaged because person is imperfect or because they’re dangerous
99. messenger with life altering news
100. misleading followers
101. monster/vampire/werewolf/demon
102. morose/downer/dragger down of morale when needs kept up if chance of survival
103. mortal in immortal world
104. mystic/paranormal/psychic/abnormal abilities
105. new/rival belief system that will bring an end to current way of living
106. next in line for position who would be dangerous (incompetent/controlled/bad or evil beliefs)
107. ninja/incredible deadly skills
108. no longer competent to lead
109. object of obsession who is becoming threatening
110. obsessed/obsessed fan
111. old, feeble, sickly, dependent, drain on society
112. one who holds gambling debts of self/loved ones
113. one who would (unknowingly) release a great evil
114. opposing nature makes another ill
115. outsider/unwanted type who will bring property values down
116. owner of “ugly” business in a nice/family neighborhood
117. part of a prophecy want to stop
118. participants in a deadly game/deadly initiation rite
119. perfect copy/replacement/pretender
120. person leading loved one astray
121. person trained to be a weapon/killing machine
122. poisonous to others/environment
123. poor/orphaned/abandoned/sick drain on society
124. possessed by evil spirit/devil/demon
125. possessor of esoteric knowledge (like an exorcist) that could stop someone
126. possessor of evil soul
127. potential betrayer of criminal/avenger who can’t be caught
128. predator
129. predestined to murder self/loved one
130. pregnant with demon/opposing god’s child
131. preserve/protect loved one/family/home/clan/culture/society/religion
132. pretender (alien, shapeshifter) for nefarious purposes
133. pretender (different class/race/sex) trying to fit in
134. promoter of belief system that would take away certain rights
135. prosecutor who could win case
136. protest leader
137. prover that religion/leader is wrong
138. pulling away from family
139. radical
140. raising doubts that could split group apart in order to silence them
141. rebuilder of what was deliberately destroyed (to eliminate an evil)
142. rebuilder of what was deliberately destroyed (to preserve a controlled way of life)
143. reincarnated evil person
144. repossessor
145. returned vanished/”dead” revered leader who isn’t as great as memory has it
146. rising above class
147. rocking the boat
148. secret past that threatens present peace
149. seeker of truth
150. sellers of illegal copies of artistic work
151. soul stealer
152. spouse/child/parent who controls
153. spouse/friend of loved one who is wrong race/religion/sex/species/class
154. spreader of lies
155. spreading family/corporate/country/personal/group/gang/clan secrets
156. stalker
157. stole secret recipe/formula — Kat F.
158. stop a reform
159. stop an invention (that would change way of life)
160. stop something being sold to someone who would use it for evil
161. stop something/someone being sold to someone who would mistreat it
162. suer
163. summoner
164. tax collector
165. teacher/possessor of forbidden knowledge
166. tempter from/to paradise
167. threatens harm
168. time traveler changing time
169. tormentor (of self/loved one/others)
170. transforming into something dangerous
171. translation ability of some ancient knowledge want kept secret
172. translator of some ancient knowledge (before his/her work is revealed)
173. trespassing in home or on private property
174. trying to control or take over control
175. trying to revive an evil that group fought hard to eradicate
176. ultimate warrior
177. uncovers hidden secrets (detective)
178. unlucky person
179. upstream person dumping poison into stream
180. violence induced by drug/disease/magic/curse/mutation
181. waffling in beliefs
182. will complete some society damaging device
183. will resurrect/resurrected and controls ancient demon/god
184. worships wrong god/evil god/enemy of god
185. writer/publisher of dangerous ideas

Copyright 2006 by Joyce A. Fetteroll. Feel free to share provided the text is not altered in any way, and this copyright notice is attached.

101 Writing Tips

by Prof. D. J. Higham
Department of Mathematics
University of Strathclyde

(These are all original, but some are based on old jokes.)

1. Every sentence should make sense in isolation. Like that one.
2. Excessive hyperbole is literally the kiss of death.
3. ASBMAETP: Acronyms Should Be Memorable And Easy To Pronounce, and SATAN: Select Acronyms That Are Non-offensive.
4. Finish your point on an up-beat note, unless you can’t think of one.
5. Don’t patronise the reader-he or she might well be intelligent enough to spot it.
6. A writer needs three qualities: creativity, originality, clarity and a good short term memory.
7. Choose your words carefully and incitefully.
8. Avoid unnecessary examples; e.g. this one.
9. Don’t use commas, to separate text unnecessarily.
10. It can be shown that you shouldn’t miss out too many details.
11. Similes are about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
12. Avoid ugly abr’v'ns.
13. Spellcheckers are not perfect; they can kiss my errs.
14. Somebody once said that all quotes should be accurately attributed.
15. Americanisms suck.
16. Capitalising for emphasis is UGLY and DISTRACTING.
17. Underlining is also a big no-no.
18. Mixed metaphors can kill two birds without a paddle.
19. Before using a cliché, run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.
20. There is one cheap gimmick that should be avoided at all costs…………..suspense.
21. State your opinions forcefully-this is perhaps the key to successful writing.
22. Never reveal your sources (Alistair Watson, 1993).
23. Pile on lots of subtlety.
24. Sure signs of lazy writing are incomplete lists, etc.
25. Introduce meaningless jargon on a strict need-to-know basis.
26. The word ‘’gullible” possesses magic powers and hence it should be used with care.
27. The importance of comprehensive cross-referencing will be covered elsewhere.
28. Resist the temptation to roll up the trouser-legs of convention, cast off the shoes and socks of good taste, and dip your toes refreshingly into the cool, flowing waters of fanciful analogy.
29. Don’t mess with Mr. Anthropomorphism.
30. Understatement is a mindblowingly effective weapon.
31. Injecting enthusiasm probably won’t do any harm.
32. It is nice to be important, but it is more important to avoid using the word ‘nice.’
33. Appropriate metaphors are worth their weight in gold.
34. Take care with pluri.
35. If you can’t think of the exact word that you need, look it up in one of those dictionary-type things.
36. Colons: try to do without them.
37. Nouns should never be verbed.
38. Do you really think people are impressed by rhetorical questions?
39. Pick a font, and stick with it.
40. Sufficient clarity is necessary, but not necessarily sufficient.
41. Less is more. This means that a short, cryptic statement is often preferable to an accurate, but drawn out, explanation that lacks punch and loses the reader.
42. Sarcasm-yes, I bet that will go down really well.
43. The problem of ambiguity cannot be underestimated.
44. Never appear cynical, unless you’re sure you can get away with it.
45. Many writer’s punctuate incorrectly.
46. Colloquialisms are for barmpots.
47. There is a lot to be said for brevity.
48. To qualify is to weaken, in most cases.
49. Many readers assume that a word will not assume two meanings in the same sentence.
50. Be spontaneous at regular intervals.
51. The era of the euphemism is sadly no longer with us.
52. Want to be funny? Just add some exclamation marks!!!
53. Want to appear whimsical? Simply append a smiley ;-)
54. Some writers introduce a large number, N, of unnecessary symbols.
55. Restrict your hyphen-usage.
56. Choosing the correct phrase is important compared to most things.
57. Some early drafts of this document had had clumsy juxtapositions.
58. Try not to leave a word dangling on its own
    line.
59. The number of arbitrary constants per page should not exceed .13.
60. Use mathematical jargon iff it is absolutely necessary.
61. And avoid math symbols unless $ a good reason.
62. Poor writing effects the impact of your work.
63. And the dictionary on your shelf was not put there just for affect.
64. If there’s a word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite pin down, use a cinnamon.
65. If somebody were to give me a pound for every irrelevant statement I’ve ever read, then I would be very surprised.
66. Strangely enough, it is impossible to construct a sentence that illustrates the meaning of the word ‘irony.’
67. Consult a writing manual to assure that your English is correct.
68. It has been suggested that some words are absolute, not relative. This is very true.
69. Be careful when forming words into a sentence-all orderings are not correct.
70. Many words can ostensibly be deleted.
71. In your quest for clarity, stop at nothing.
72. Complete mastery of the English language comes with conscientious study, notwithstanding around in bars. Moreover the next page. Inasmuch detail as possible.
73. Sporting analogies won’t even get you to first base.
74. If you must quote, quote from one of the all-time greats (Cedric.P. Snodworthy, 1964).
75. In the absence of a dictionary, stick to words of one syllabus.
76. Steer clear of word-making-up-ism.
77. Readers will not stand for any intolerance.
78. If there’s one thing you must avoid it’s over-simplification.
79. Double entendres will get you in the end.
80. Vagueness is the root of miscommunication, in a sense.
81. Don’t bother with those ‘’increase-your-word-power” books that cost an absorbent amount of money.
82. Self-contradiction is confusing, and yet strangely enlightening.
83. Surrealism without purpose is like fish.
84. Ignorance: good writers don’t even know the meaning of the word.
85. The spoken word can look strange when written down, I’m afraid.
86. Stimpy the Squirrel says ‘’Don’t treat the reader like a little child.”
87. Intimidatory writing is for wimps.
88. Learn one new maths word every day, and you’ll soon find your vocabulary growing exponentially.
89. My old high school English teacher put it perfectly when she said: ‘’Quoting is lazy. Express things in your own words.”
90. She also said: ‘’Don’t use that trick of paraphrasing…… [other people’s words]…… inside a quote.”
91. A lack of compassion in a writer is unforgivable.
92. On a scale of 0 to 10, internal consistency is very important.
93. Thankfully, by the year 2016 rash predictions will be a thing of the past.
94. There is no place for overemphasis, whatsoever.
95. Leave out the David Hockney rhyming slang.
96. Bad writers are hopefully ashamed of themselves.
97. Eschew the highfalutin.
98. Sometimes you publish a sentence and then, on reflection, feel that you shouldn’t ought to have been and gone and written it quite that way.
99. Practice humility until you feel that you’re really good at it.
100. If there’s a particular word that you can never spell, use a pnemonic.
101. A strong ending is the last thing you need.
102. Make sure that your title is accurate.
103. Spelling dictionaries should be made compulsary.
104. Sometimes, a foreign phrase can add a little ‘je ne sais rien.’
105. In terms of writing convoluted sentences, don’t.
106. Let’s face it, we all hate it when a writer appeals to the lowest common denominator.
107. Learn the basic spelling rules; don’t just rely on fonetix.
108. Only take writing tips from world-renounced writers.
109. Writing for the non-native English speaking market is a different kettle of fish.
110. If you can’t afford a book on grammar, at least find someone to lend one off.
111. Nothing is worse than ambiguity.
112. Oh, and avoid afterthoughts.

by Emily Hanlon

1. Don’t think. Creating a story or book has little to do with the intellect or language when we first begin. Our best ideas will emerge as a spark or image. Like dreams, they will make little sense. Followed, they will hold the key to the creative unconscious.

2. Creativity is cyclical. You cannot and will not be creative all the time. What is full must empty and what is empty will fill. Creativity has its own internal rhythms. Learn to listen to yours.
3. Nothing kills creativity faster than criticism. Don’t share your work-in-progress with people who are critical or those whose opinions leave you vulnerable, no matter how much you love them. Good critiquing should leave you inspired, not deflated.
4. Learn to distinquish the voice of your Inner Critic from the voice of your Inner Writer. The Inner Critic is not comfortable with the risks demanded by a creative endeavor. By becoming aware of the foul jabber of your inner critic, you can see how your own mind puts up roadblocks to your creativity.
5. Being a creator is risky business. Don’t underestimate the tremendous emotional and psychic risks the journey demands. Learn to push ahead even when you are afraid. Learn to love the risk.
6. Don’t be afraid to fail. Every successful creator has failed hundreds of times. Failure is an integral part of creativity. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong or stupid. It only means you’ve uncovered a path or technique that does not work.
7. Don’t be afraid to write garbage. Every successful writer writes mounds of garbage. Give your work time to percolate. Play the What If game. For example, if you’re writing fiction and a characters is sweet and loving and you’re stuck, have the character mean and hateful. In the world of the imagination, anything can happen.
8. Nurture your creativity. It is as fragile as a budding flower. Open to the dance. Listen to music that makes you feel like flying. Go for a walk. Laugh with a friend, child or lover. Creativity is about feeling.
9. Be passionate. Creativity is passionate. Passion is always creative.
10. Learn your craft. And write, write, write! The more you write, the better you will get. Discipline yourself. Successful writers are disciplined writers.

©Ten Tips on Creativity(sm), Emily Hanlon 1995-2006.

Ten Tips on Creativity(sm) may be be copied and used on other websites only after advising Emily Hanlon. Credit must be given to Emily Hanlon with a link back to her website: www.thefictionwritersjourney.com

Here’s a link to Patricia Wrede’s Worldbuilder questions to ask when creating a fantasy world.

It looks like an awesome set of questions to ask yourself as you’re creating a world, some you’d never think to think about. The questions are categorized. (I’ve listed the categories below.) Here’s a sampling, one question from each category:

• Do non-human races have their own games and leisure pastimes? How do they differ from human games? How do they reflect the physiology and/or particular magical talents of the non-human races?
• How are living quarters arranged? Are bedrooms on the top floors for privacy or on the ground floor for convenience? Are parlors or libraries common? How are houses heated/cooled?
• How is the day divided into smaller time units? What are they (Hour of the Lark, Sunrise Bell, Nones, etc.)? Are the names relevant to anything? Is the length of an hour fixed, or does it vary depending on changes in the length of the day as the seasons change?
• Is forensic magic possible? Commonly used? Admissible in court? Used only for certain types of crimes (and if so, what)? Is it something any wizard can do, or do you have to specialize?
• What things are considered luxuries–chocolate, coffee, cotton, flush toilets, spices?
• What foods do non-humans like, and how do these differ from those favored by humans? Are some foods poisonous or distasteful to one species that are delicacies or necessary to another?
• How many changes of clothes can a normal person afford? A noble person? A peasant?
• What eating utensils are used, if any? Forks, eating knife, spoons, chopsticks, what?
• What is the literacy level in the general population? Is literacy considered a useful/necessary skill for nobility, or something only scribes/clerks/wimps need?
• How much do official attitudes toward other countries affect commerce and trade? Do merchants pretty much ignore tensions between governments as long as they can make a profit, or will this get them into trouble?
• What gestures are insulting? What do they mean? Do some gestures differ in meaning depending on the culture or time (example: the American “V” for victory sign, which became the peace sign, is/was highly insulting in Europe)?
• How has the presence of magic and magicians affected law and government? Are wizards barred from certain kinds of government jobs or offices? Do some positions require that their holder be a wizard?
• How are two people who have not met before introduced to each other? What is the order of precedence when there are several people of differing sex, social status, or race/species present who must all be introduced to each other?
• What areas do local slang phrases come out of? (Example: In a fishing town, referring to good luck as “a good catch”; in a farming town, as “a good harvest”, etc.) What kinds of colorful turns of phrase do people use?
• What level is medicine at? Who are the healers? Do you have to have a talent to heal? Who trains healers, herbalists, apothecaries, surgeons, magical vs. nonmagical healers, etc?
• How has the presence of magic affected weapons technology? Do you have to do anything special to armor, weapons, walls, to make them better able to resist spells?
• How important are “good manners” in this society? How do “good manners” differ from race to race? How to people/dwarves/elves/dragons react when someone has just been, by their standards, rude?
• What customs surround death and burial? Is there a special class of people (doctors, priests, funeral directors, untouchables) who deal with dead bodies?
• Are there certain classes of people (wizards, foreigners, children, peasants, women) who have fewer legal rights or less recourse than full citizens? Why? Are they considered mentally or morally deficient, a danger to the state, or is there some other rational?
• If there are non-human inhabitants, are there any areas they particularly claim as their own (e.g., dwarves in caves under mountains)?
• If there are imaginary animals (dragons, unicorns, etc.) how do they fit into the ecology? What do they eat? How much and what kind of habitat do they require? Are they intelligent and/or capable of working spells, talking, etc.? How common are they? Are any endangered species?
• What water resources are available, and for what uses? (Example: a mill wheel requires flowing water, i.e., a river or stream; irrigation needs a large, dependable water source like a lake or large river, etc.)
• How far back are there records or tales of historical events? How widely known are these stories?
• How diverse is the population of this country–how many different races (human or non-human), creeds, etc. normally live in various cities and towns in this country? In what percentages?
• Is there tension, rivalry, or outright hostility between any of the actual gods? How does this affect church politics? Court politics? People’s everyday lives?
• Is there much immigration into or out of various countries? Why? To or from what other areas?
• How do the various temples and philosophies explain the classic “problem of evil”? Do they think bad things are always a just punishment for some transgression, a character-building exercise, the result of an evil antagonist (Satan, Loki), or just something the gods can’t prevent?
• Where does magic power come from: the gods, “mana” (cf. Larry Niven’s Warlock stories), the personal will-power of the magician, etc.? Is it an exhaustible resource?
• How are farming/food-producing areas divided up between humans/nonhumans? What kinds of conflicts are likely (example: expanding human farms encroaching on the forests werewolves or dragons use for hunting)?
• In what areas might magic replace technology, and thus suppress its development (example: if a spell to keep food cold is easy and cheap, there’s no need to invent refrigerators)? In what areas might magic cause more rapid technological or scientific development (common use of crystal balls might lead someone to think of inventing the lens/telescope sooner)?
• Does it require a license to be a wizard? A driver’s type license (something nearly everyone gets upon coming of age) or a doctor’s-type license (something that only a small portion of the population will ever get)? Who certifies wizards: the government, wizard’s guild, local priests, independent accounting firm?
• How do people find out what is happening in the world — rumor, town crier, newspapers, TV and radio? How slanted is the news they get this way, and in what direction? Is there freedom of the press? If not, who controls/censors it and through what means?
• Does city layout reflect some philosophy (religious or architectural or political), such as that the “head” of the city must be at the center, the highest point, or the most strategic location? Or were layout considerations mainly practical? Or did most cities “just grow”?
• What is considered a courteous response to a host’s offer? Are there things it is considered rude to accept? Rude to turn down? Rude to ask for? Rude not to ask for?
• What are the accepted conventions for making war (example: only fight in winter when nobody is busy with crops; don’t make war on civilians; only certain kinds of weapons are used; etc)? Do they differ from race to race?
• Does a magician’s magical ability or power change over time –e.g., growing stronger or weaker during puberty, or with increasing age? Can a magician “use up” all of his/her magic, thus ceasing to be a magician? What do such magicians do then–retire to teach, commit suicide, get a normal day job, go into consulting?

The categories:

• Arts and Entertainment
• Architecture
• Calendar
• Crime and the Legal System
• Daily Life
• Diet
• Fashion and Dress
• Eating customs
• Education
• Foreign Relations
• Gestures
• Government
• Greeting and Meeting.
• Language
• Magic and Magicians
• Magic and Technology
• Manners
• Medicine
• People and Customs — Ethics and Values
• Physical and Historical Features
• Climate and Geography
• Natural Resources
• General History
• History of a Specific Country
• Politics
• Population
• Religion and Philosophy
• Rules of Magic
• Rural Factors
• Science and Technology
• Social Organization
• Transportation and Communication
• Urban Factors
• Visits
• War
• Wizards

Here are some sites that offer lists of plots.

The Big List of RPG Plots
Nice summaries of a large list of plots, each with a list of Common Twists and Themes.

Hatch’s Plot Bank
Not really plots but mostly scenarios to spark your imaginations. Over 2000.

Strolen’s Citadel List of RPG Plots
Submitted by members. All nicely organized by type. The titles link to fuller descriptions. (In the dark band at the time are also links to lists of locations, characters (NPC), items, lifeforms … And over on the right is a list of Sections where Idea Seeds is.)

Here are a few from the Idea Seeds page:

Idea Seed (Plot): Dreams are Stars A society in which the belief is that the hundreds of stars that dot the sky are the dreams of the sleeping. When the sun goes down, and the people of the world rest, the dreams begin to seed the sky. Could be just a folk tale, or could be real.

Locations: This is a a city where your wealth, social standing and everything is decided by the society of prohecy who keep the rich, rich and poor, poor.

Character: A voice as supple as silk, a face hidden in the shadows of a hood, yet the words she speaks are colder than the grave and burn more furiously than any inferno.

Plots: At the base of the Cyllerean Mountains a small coven of witches has laired where once was a Temple of Good.

Systems: The Way of the Many - One spellcaster cannot achieve very much, but many minds can. Like insects, spellcasters are at their most formidable when they are united.

Item: The Tome of Life - Book with initially blank pages which records the life of the holder from the time it is picked up to the day someone else picks it up, at which point it starts again as blank pages.

Get a Plot
Some good summaries of some well known books written in general terms (for Role Playing Games).

imdb.com Search a Plot
Type in keywords and click Go. (Or, over on the left, click Alphabeticallly, by year, by country)

TV.com
Type in the title of an episode (it may display a list and you’ll need to pick which one), click the Episodes tab and it will display synopses of the episodes for each season.

Provide this to your villains before they confront your hero so they don’t make the same mistakes every villain seems to. ;-) Or use it to pack every known cliche into a farce.

At his website Peter has a few more suggestions in “Cell Block A” and “Cell Block B”. There are similar lists for heroes and sidekicks and evil overlord’s daughters at Evil Rulers. And for anime fans there is Issendai’s If I Ever Become a Dragonball Character… and If I Ever Become an Anime Character….

---

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I’ve read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I’ve noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. With that in mind, allow me to present…

The Top 100 Things I’d Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.
4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
6. I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicament before killing them.
7. When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”
8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks’ time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.
9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled “Danger: Do Not Push”. The big red button marked “Do Not Push” will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.
11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.
14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.
15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.
16. I will never utter the sentence “But before I kill you, there’s just one thing I want to know.”
17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.
18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.
19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero’s rugged countenance and she’d betray her own father.
20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it’s too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.
21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.
22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.
23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way — even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless — my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.
24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line “No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!” (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)
25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.
26. No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.
27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.
28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.
29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

30. All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.
31. All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.
32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.
33. I won’t require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.
34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.
35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
36. I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.
37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he’s my trusted lieutenant.
38. If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.
39. If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.
40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
41. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.
42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.
43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.
44. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.
45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say “And here is the price for failure,” then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.
46. If an advisor says to me “My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?”, I will reply “This.” and kill the advisor.
47. If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.
48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.
49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.
51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess’ cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.
52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.
53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says “I’ll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!”, I will say “Oh well” and kill her.
54. I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.
55. The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.
56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.
57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner’s manual.
58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.
59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.
60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.
61. If my advisors ask “Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?”, I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.
62. I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.
63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.
64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.
65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.
66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.
67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.
68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they’d better save my life again.
69. All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

70. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.
71. If I decide to test a lieutenant’s loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.
72. If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.
73. I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.
74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk “Project Overlord” and leave it lying on top of my desk.
75. I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.
76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)
77. If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.
78. I will not tell my Legions of Terror “And he must be taken alive!” The command will be “And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical.”
79. If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.
80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.
81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.
82. I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.
83. If I’m eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.
84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.
85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. “Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse.” Instead it will be more along the lines of “Push the button.”
86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.
88. If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.
89. After I captures the hero’s superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.
91. I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.
92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)
93. If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.
94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.
95. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it’s an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.
96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.
97. My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.
98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others’ lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.
99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.
100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

This Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.

Time to create a character (or 2 or 3).

The temptation will be to agnonize over the answers to create the perfect character.

To avoid that try creating 3:

1. one that you’d love to write about
2. one whose answers are the total opposite (the bad guy perhaps?)
3. one just to goof around with (the plucky sidekick?)

If you don’t know the answer to a question skip it or, even better, put down something wild! It’s not carved in stone and it may spark some ideas that brings the character to life for you. (You can always toss it out at the end if it doesn’t fit.)

There are 90 questions and I’ll send them out 3 per day so you don’t feel overwhelmed. If you skip a day or 10 days, don’t sweat it. No one question is key. Just pick up again with that day’s questions.

Day 1

• What does he want more than anything in the world?
• What one object would she grab if her house were on fire?
• What secret does he hope is never revealed? Does anyone else know it?

Day 2

• What does she fear most in the world? How far would she go to avoid it?
• If she could have one object from his childhood back again, what would it be?
• When faced with her worst enemy, what does she do?

Day 3

• What piece of artwork does he have in a space he calls his own?
• If she could only keep one photograph from her childhood, what would it be?
• Your character walks into his home and sees blood on the floor? What’s his first reaction?

Day 4

• What hobbies or side interests are most important to her?
• What does he always carry with him?
• What does her bedroom look like?

Day 5

• If he had a free day, what would he do?
• She’s been told she has a month to live. What would she do?
• Make a list of all the things that are important to him, including principles, physical things, emotional things. Go back through the list and circle the things he’d be willing to fight or die for.

Day 6

• What was her last nightmare? What was her last pleasant dream?
• Whose forgiveness does he seek and why?
• What does she daydream about?

Day 7

• Who refuses to speak to him and why?
• If she were told she was destined to fulfill a great prophecy, how would she react?
• Who important in his life has died and how did he handle it?

Day 8

• What does she feel about fate and destiny?
• What scars does he have? What are the stories behind them?
• What tattoos does she have? Why? If she doesn’t would she? What would it be if she would?

Day 9

• How would his parents describe him as a child and now?
• Who is her best friend?
• Who is his worst enemy?

Day 10

• What one person does she most wish she didn’t have to put up with, but feels she has to?
• Who is his confidant?
• Who did she give presents to on the last gift giving occasion? What did she give?

Day 11

• What was his favorite gift that he received of all time? Who gave it to him?
• Does she have a green thumb?
• Does he have pets? Did he have a special pet as a child?

Day 12

• Make up 3 book titles he read last year.
• What does he do when stress builds up?
• What’s her favorite retreat?

Day 13

• Does she feel she has responsibilities that are more than she can handle? What is she doing about them?
• What did she want to be when she grew up?
• What does he want to do but can’t?

Day 14

• What was on her wish list when she was a child?
• What is his secret dream?
• What did her parents say to her that she’ll never forget?

Day 15

• He has a box of things stashed away that he won’t get rid of. What’s in that box?
• What is her worst flaw according to you? What does she think her worst flaw is?
• What is his greatest strength according to you? What does he think his greatest strength is?

Day 16

• What is her greatest regret in life? Does she intend to do something about it?
• What major thing does he want to accomplish in life?
• How does she feel about growing old?

Day 17

• He has an award on his shelf. What’s it for? Does he feel he deserves it?
• Has she ever struck someone in anger? How does she feel about that?
• What makes him embarrassed?

Day 18

• What makes her proud?
• Does he still keep in touch with his childhood friends? Which ones? Why?
• Write about her favorite birthday (or favorite holiday that went perfectly).

Day 19

• Write about his worst birthday (or favorite holiday that went badly.)
• What rule would she say is the most important to live by?
• Is there anyone he despises?

Day 20

• She has just received an envelope. It fills her with dread. What’s in it?
• List 5 things that could motivate him to violence.
• List 3 things that could motivate her to kill.

Day 21

• What is his romantic history? Best? Worst?
• What about her annoys others?
• Does he like poetry?

Day 22

• How would she describe her ideal mate? How would you?
• If a spell turned him into the animal that most resembles his heart, what would he turn into?
• What’s the strangest thing she ever did?

Day 23

• What’s the luckiest thing that ever happened to him?
• If she had unlimited wealth, what would she spend it on?
• If he was a writer, what would he write?

Day 24

• If she could be someone else, who would she be?
• Describe the nature and intensity of his religious feelings?
• What three adjectives best describe her inner nature? What three would she pick?

Day 25

• What three adjectives best describe his outer nature? What three would he pick?
• How does she expect to be treated differently than she treats others?
• What sort of legacy does he wish to leave behind?

Day 26

• What would she like written on her tombstone? What would others write?
• Write an obituary for him.
• What person has most influenced her development as an adult?

Day 27

• Who were his heroes as a child?
• What was the biggest lie she ever told?
• Has he ever broken any laws? Why? Does he feel justified?

Day 28

• What does she think is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen?
• What does he think is the ugliest thing he’s ever seen?
• What does she think is her purpose in life?

Day 29

• What trait most annoys him when he encounters it in others?
• Does she feel responsible for anyone besides herself?
• How well does he handle change?

Day 30

• Does she have any artistic talent (writing, drawing, music)? Are they well developed or raw? Secret or public?
• Does he swear?
• How does she respond when unjustly accused of something?

---

Most character creation charts begin (and often are limited to) physical appearance but that’s really the least important aspect of a character. These questions will help you get inside the psyche of your character to know what formed him and what makes him tick.

The 90 questions I chose are adapted from 365, Volume 1: 365 Character Questions for Writers and Roleplayers by Heather Grove. If you really like the idea, consider going there to download the full PDF and giving her a donation since she obviously put a lot of work into it! (There’s a slightly different format at Character Questionnaire where the questions are grouped by category.)

Here’s a list of familiar, mostly European, fairy tales for those prompts that suggest using one.

Aladdin
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Beauty and the Beast
Br’er Rabbit
Cinderella
Elves and the Shoemaker
Emperor’s New Clothes
Frog Prince
Gingerbread Man
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Goose that Laid the Golden Egg
Hansel and Gretel
Jack and the Beanstalk
John Henry
Johnny Appleseed
Little Red Riding Hood
Paul Bunyan
Pied Piper of Hamelin
Pinocchio
Princess and the Pea
Puss ‘n Boots
Rapunzel
Rumpelstiltskin
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White
Three Billy Goats Gruff
Three Little Pigs
Thumbelina
Tortoise and the Hare
Ugly Duckling

Wikipedia has an even better, huger, international list of fairy tales. Most of the titles link to a brief synopsis of the tale.

Sur La Lune has a collection of 49 annotated tales, including histories, similar tales from other cultures and modern retellings.

And children’s author, Rick Walton, has gathered the texts of over 2000 Folk and Fairy Tales (with multiple versions of several) as well as the texts of public domain Classic Tales and Fables including Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, Bullfinch’s Mythology.

This was several writers’ contributions to a prompt. It was amazing how few repeats there were!

• added, admitted, ameliorated, announced, apologized, argued
• barked, beckoned, bellowed, blubbered, blustered, bounced, breathed
• cackled, cajoled, called, cautioned, chirped, cooed, coughed, cried, croaked, crooned, crowed
• declared, deferred, demanded, digressed, drawled, drooled
• echoed, effused, enunciated, escalated, estimated, examined, exclaimed
• faltered, fawned, fielded, fished, fluttered, fretted, frothed, frowned, fumbled
• gabbed, gagged, giggled, groaned, grumbled, guessed, guffawed, gulped, gurgled, gushed
• haggled, hinted, hissed, hooted, howled, huffed, hushed
• initiated, inquired, insisted, intimated, issued
• jabbed, jested, joked, jowled
• kibitzed, kidded, kilovolted, kvetched
• lamented, laughed, lied, lingered
• meandered, mentioned, mewed, moaned, murmured, muttered
• nagged, nattered, noted, noticed, nudged
• objected, offered, oozed, ordered, overemphasized, overstated
• pacified, panted, pantomimed, pondered, poo-pooed, pooped, pouted, pried, protested
• quacked, quaked, queried, questioned, quibbled, quipped
• ragged, reaffirmed, reasoned, regressed, reminisced, renounced, repeated, responded, roared
• sang, screamed, seethed, shouted, shrieked, shushed, sighed, slurred, sobbed, spewed, squeaked, stammered, stated, stuttered
• tattled, taunted, teased, thought, thought-out-loud, tittered, told, trumpeted
• ululated, undulated, urged, uttered
• venerated, vented, versed, voiced, volunteered, vouched
• waffled, wallowed, wandered, warbled, warned, whimpered, whispered, whooped, wondered
• xiphoided
• yammered, yammered, yelled, yelped, yodeled
• zinged, zoned

Write about an animal which works against type, examples: an unwise owl, a disloyal dog, a needy cat, a slow rabbit, a fast turtle. You don’t need to stick to the examples. Pick any animal you wish!

After I posted this on the list, I tried to do it and couldn’t think of any animals other than the ones listed above! If you need some more examples there’s a shorter list at animal spirit guides. The following are from a list of animal totems:

Alligator - aggression, survival, adaptability
Ant - team player, worker
Armadillo - active, nocturnal, protection
Bat - guardian of the night, cleaner
Bear - power, adaptability
Bear Paw - strength, mobility
Beaver - builder, gather
Bobcat - fierce, loner intensity
Brontosaurus - harmless giant
Buffalo - sacredness, life builder
Buffalo Skull - sacredness, reverence for life
Bull - strength, warning
Butterfly - metamorphosis, carefree, transformer
Camel - weary, enduring
Cat - independence, grace, healing
Cougar - leadership, courage
Cow - patience, stoicism
Coyote - prankster, insight, playful
Crane - solitude, independence
Deer - love, gentleness, kindness
Dog - loyalty, protection
Dolphin - kindness, play, bridge man to ocean
Dove - love, peace, gentleness
Dragon - wisdom, nobility
Dragonfly - flighty, carefree
Eagle - divine spirit, connection to creator
Elephant - long life, self - preservation
Elk - strength, agility, freedom
Fox - cunning, provider, intelligence
Frog - connection with water element
Giraffe - watchfulness, mobility
Goat - stubborn, omnivorous
Goose - faithful, communicative, traveler
Gorilla - brute strength, adaptability
Grizzly Bear - hunter, nature’s pharmacist
Hawk - messenger, stopper of time
Hippo - linking water and earth, survival
Hopi Hand - life, creative, healing
Horse - stamina, mobility, strength
Hummingbird - messenger, stopper of time
Kangaroo - feisty, fun loving
Lion - power, strength, respect
Lizard - conservation, agility
Loon - solitude, song, romance
Manatee - peaceable, unassuming
Mastodon - lumbering giant
Monkey - playfulness, agility
Moose - headstrong, unstoppable, longevity
Mouse - timid, secretive, sneaky
Orca - focus, power
Ostrich - fickle, fast moving
Otter - laughter, curiosity, truth, patience
Owl - wisdom, perseverance
Panda - playful, kindness
Parasaurolophus - parallel crested lizard
Pegasus - carrier of lightning
Pelican - ever watchful, grace
Penguin - playful, loving
Pheasant - confidence, attraction, perseverance
Pig - intelligence, hunger
Polar Bear - fearlessness, power
Pterodactyl - wing finger
Quail - sacred spiral, ceremonial, Holy
Rabbit - alertness, resourceful
Raccoon - bandit, shy, determination
Ram - new beginning, teacher, hoarder
Raptor - speedy thief
Raven - trickster, mischievous
Rhino - durability, strength
Road Runner - speed, agility, cleverness
Salmon - instinct, persistence, determination
Scorpion - defense, self - protection
Seahorse - confidence, grace
Shark - hunter, survival
Skunk - wary, conspicuous, intense
Snake - shrewdness, transformation
Spider - creative, pattern of life
Squirrel - trusting, innocence
Steer Skull - silent testimony
Stegosaurus - the covered lizard
Swan - grace, balance, festive
T Rex - lizard king
Thunderbird - caller of rain
Triceratops - horrible 3 horned face
Turkey - smart, elusive
Turtle - self-contained creative source
Unicorn - redemption, salvation
Water Buffalo - enormous strength, hard working
Whale - wisdom, power, cleanser
Wolf - loyalty, success, perseverance
Wolf Paw - freedom, success, guidance
Zebra - family - oriented, alert
Zuni Bear - good health

aliceblue

antiquewhite

aqua

azure

beige

bisque

black

blanchedalmond

blue

blueviolet

brown

burlywood

cadetblue

chartreuse

chocolate

coral

cornflowerblue

cornsilk

crimson

cyan

darkblue

darkcyan

darkgoldenrod

darkgray

darkgreen

darkgrey

darkkhaki

darkmagenta

darkolivegreen

darkorange

darkorchid

darkred

darksalmon

darkseagreen

darkslateblue

darkslategray

darkslategrey

darkturquoise

darkviolet

deeppink

deepskyblue

dimgray

dimgrey

dodgerblue

firebrick

floralwhite

forestgreen

fuchsia

gainsboro

ghostwhite

gold

goldenrod

gray

green

greenyellow

grey

honeydew

hotpink

indianred

indigo

ivory

khaki

lavender

lavenderblush

lawngreen

lemonchiffon

lightblue

lightcoral

lightcyan

lightgoldenrodyellow

lightgray

lightgreen

lightgrey

lightpink

lightsalmon

lightseagreen

lightskyblue

lightslategray

lightslategrey

lightsteelblue

lightyellow

lime

limegreen

linen

magenta

maroon

mediumaquamarine

mediumblue

mediumorchid

mediumpurple

mediumseagreen

mediumslateblue

mediumspringgreen

mediumturquoise

mediumvioletred

midnightblue

mintcream

mistyrose

moccasin

navajowhite

navy

oldlace

olive

olivedrab

orange

orangered

orchid

palegoldenrod

palegreen

paleturquoise

palevioletred

papayawhip

peachpuff

peru

pink

plum

powderblue

purple

red

rosybrown

royalblue

saddlebrown

salmon

sandybrown

seagreen

seashell

sienna

silver

skyblue

slateblue

slategray

slategrey

snow

springgreen

steelblue

tan

teal

thistle

tomato

turquoise

violet

wheat

white

whitesmoke

yellow

yellowgreen