I've seen that done before, and the results are not much better. Reign In Darkness had, in my opinion, an excellent foundation / concept behind their script. Only problem is that the writers didn't have any clue whatsoever what to do with it. So yes, taking good framework and using it to tell a craptacular story isn't much better.Chris wrote:worse than constructing a framework and coming up with a plot that doesn't fit it?
It's generally easier, however, to make the plot conform to the framework than the other way around.
Going back on Stephanie Meyer as an example, much of what she did to further the "plot" involved tacking on extra rule-sets to her vampires and werewolves just to try to justify her plot advancing as she desired it. Meyer could have made a couple out of Edward and Bella by giving them mutual interests or sparkling (pun not intended) personalities, or if she found their personalities were not immediately compatible with each other, by using a plot point to bring them together.
J.K. Rowling, one of the authors Meyer defiantly compares herself to, was smart enough to do this. Even though she had a world of wizards as her framework, she didn't use any magical means to make Ron or Hermione become friends with Harry. Harry and Ron did meet by chance, but became friends mostly on account of Harry's support and generosity and Ron's patience with the kid that didn't know jack crap about the world he was famous in. Hermione, on the other hand, Harry and Ron initially couldn't stand. Then came the incident with the troll, but even after that, they weren't really friends; it was their mutual respect for each other and an intense interest in the sorcerer's stone that made them a trio. Rowling was able to bring the three of them together without making any changes to the rule-sets of her setting to allow them.
Meyer, on the other hand, justified the relationship between Edward and Bella, not by giving them compatible personalities, common interests or interlocking plot points, but by stapling a superpower to each of them; she made Edward a mind-reader (Can all vampires do that? No. Will we ever find out how it is that Edward can and not anyone else? No.) and Bella (also without explanation) the only one whose mind he can't read. This was Meyer's method with virtually everything -- whenever she wanted the plot to go a certain way, she slapped on an extra rule (one often unique only to that character) to her rule-set to make it happen, and not once did she ever explain why she included this new addition to the rule-set, much less try to justify it as being within the realm of even her reality.
As an added consequence of Meyer's murdering of the framework, none of her characters ever truly developed -- by the end of the series, every single one of them was the same personality-deprived douche bag that they were when she first introduced them.
What I would argue is that, by forcing her characters and plot to adhere to her framework, J.K. Rowling wound up creating better characters and a better plot. In contrast, Meyer, by continually altering her framework, did a great disservice to her characters by never requiring them to develop, and to her plot by allowing it to advance without any effort.
The best plots are, in my opinion, the ones that not only adhere to a strict framework, but deliberately drive their protagonists into situations where that framework works against them. Lets take this Youtube classic, for example. Would that scene have been better if the central character could catch bullets in his fist or shoot laser eye-beams at his enemies instead of having to outmaneuver them? No, of course not. And it's because he has to work within the limitations that were given to him that the scene is so entertaining.
That's not the only way they could have handled that situation either. If their character was more of a nerdy bookworm Chuck Bartowski type for whom kung-fu would have been seriously out of character (why yes, I did love the first two seasons of that show and despise the third), the plot could have progressed with him trying to sneak out, hide, set traps or bluff his way out. The scenario should never have required any alteration to the ground rules of their fictional setting for it to advance.
And if your characters are not capable, in any way, shape or form, of working their way out of the tough scenarios that you place them in, you might as well just let them get killed in such scenarios, because chances are they are not going to be characters that your audience will be able to relate well with or have any sympathy for.
So what I would like to say in closing (and to tie it back into the original subject of this thread) is that some things are cliches because they make perfect sense. Vampires living in large dark estates while werewolves live on the outskirts or coast along under the radar is one of the cliches that does.
Is it annoying? Yes, sometimes in an "I think I've seen this story before" kind of way. But that's okay -- it's a framework cliche -- apart from the Douchy McNitpicks in the audience, nobody will pay attention to it. As long as you can do something else outside the norm, nobody else should mind at all.