"Avoid Clichés" is a guideline, not a rule

It would be a mistake to understand that any use of any cliché is "wrong," as you humorously do in your question.

Clichés have certain problems (and certain strengths); understand what they are, and you'll better understand what the guideline is aiming at, and why it's good advice as a rule of thumb, even if there's no reason to follow it 100% (nor is it really possible to do so).

Clichés have less impact

Consider the difference between including a cliché in your writing vs. expecting a cliché to feel meaningful.

For example, consider the difference between:

• "That guy was mad as a hornet."

• "That guy was as mad a tiger with its tail in a trap."

Purely in terms of what's being described, I'd say a hornet is at least as vivid as the tiger. Probably even better, because honestly, an angry hornet is a simple and very vivid image.

But since the cliché is so familiar, the reader won't be imagining a hornet; won't be receiving any vivid imagery. He'll know that "mad as a hornet" just translates as "really mad."

This is not necessarily a problem. Maybe "really mad" is all you're trying to say. Maybe you're not aiming for vivid imagery here.

But, if you were relying on "mad as a hornet" as being a more interesting, way to say "really mad," as being more descriptive and vivid and impactful -- it isn't going to do that job. Don't expect it to.

Clichés often come at the expense of more precise writing

Consider the difference between:

• "Bob started cursing me out in Russian. I don't actually Russian, but it was pretty unambiguous, plus he was yelling at the top of his lungs.

• "Bob growled and punched the wall. Once, twice, three times."

• "Bob had been complaining to me about plot holes in the new Transformers movies for the last three hours, without as much as a bathroom break."

• "Bob was mad as a hornet."

"Bob was mad as a hornet" might legitimately describe each of these, but that would lost a ton of information. Being "mad," and even "mad as a hornet," is a generic, abstract thing -- any cliché is; anything too specific can't become that hyper-popular, always-handy go-to phrase.

So a major problem is using a cliché instead of actually portraying the important part of the scene.

Again: not always a problem. "Bob was mad as a hornet about the new Transformers movie, complaining about it for hours and hours" doesn't suffer from this problem (although: once you've explained how Bob is mad, is the "mad as a hornet" really still necessary?). And you don't want to portray every single thing in great detail; sometimes clichés are excellent precisely because you don't want them to occupy to much space or attention.

But a big reason to worry about overuse of clichés, is that if you're using them a lot, it's probably as a cover for not coming up with something more precise, something specific to this particular story. If you keep using clichés for emphasis and/or shorthand, over and over, ask yourself why you need to, and if that kind of emphasis and shorthand is really one you want so frequently.

The above points are as true for plot and character as they are for phrasing.

Avoiding clichés doesn't mean you can't have a swashbuckling rogue, or a boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl plot, etc. etc. What it does mean is that you can't just rely on "OMG will he get the girl?" to capture and sustain the reader's interest; or hope that readers will fall in love with your character if they're a cookie-cutter clone of a dozen others.

Maybe what happens to the rogue is what's interesting in this story. Maybe the relationship in this boy-meets-girl story is what makes it powerful. Maybe the dialogue is fantastic and memorable, even if the plot has been done a million times before. All fine.

posted over 6 years ago

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Standback‭

680 reputation 38 269 122 1

This answer requires two parts, because it is important to note the difference between cliches in the plot, and overused phrases in dialogue. They might technically both be cliches (I'm not sure), but they are not the same thing. I will deal with cliches in the plot first.

Two Truths

The first thing to realize about cliches in the plot is that they work. That's the whole reason they are cliches. They've been tested over and over, and get the job done every time, usually in the simplest and most effective way possible.

The second thing to realize about cliches is that because they work, they have been used a billion times. You already know this. You know that because they have been used so much, readers can guess the endings of predictable plots. And that's the problem.

No one (at least no one in their right mind) wants to know the ending to a book before they read it, or especially while they're reading it. That just ruins the whole experience, especially if it's a mystery or something similar.

But worse than that is the staleness of the cliches. If you write with cliches in your plot, the reader is never surprised (unless it's at the sheer number of cliches). The twists are never shocking. The character's choices are never real. The whole thing is just a collection of well known scenarios and answers strung together by a few chapter headings. Most people don't want to read something they could recite from heart (obviously not true about everything, but you get the picture).

That's why cliches get a bad rep - because authors can (and sometimes do) use them as a crutch. The character needs to be driven? Kill off his dad! He needs to be conflicted about fighting the bad guy? The bad guy is his dad! Ah! A story!

Now it is important to keep the first thing I said, in mind: Cliches work. Cliches are not inherently bad. They are overused, and they are stale when relied upon, but they by themselves are not bad. In fact, some of them are tried and true story telling techniques. The trick is to know when to use them.

Using Cliches

A good rule of thumb is: 'if it benefits your writing, do it.' If the cliche is genuinely the best way to get from point A to point B in your story, use it. Don't rely on it, use it. There is a difference.

Relying on a cliche means that you can sit back, knowing exactly how things will unfold and that they will work perfectly. Using a cliche means that you break it down into what you need, and what is simply part of the package deal of the cliche.

And if it turns out that you need to use a cliche completely, then twists are your best friend. You know what the reader expects. Change it, if you can. Mix things up at the last moment. If there is absolutely nothing you can change, have your characters remark on/simply note the cliche. Acknowledging it tends to let the reader know, 'hey, I know it's cliche, but it's what worked. I'm not relying on it.'

Dialogue

A lot of your question deals with 'cliches in dialogue'. While I am not the master of all things cliched (thank goodness), I do not believe those are cliches. I believe they are colloquialisms or simply overused phrases. A cliche is a plot device. Masters in the way of cliches may correct me on this.

You are talking specifically about overused phrases. Here, your job is simple: Make sure you create characters who use these phrases, not characters who default to the phrases. Once again, it's the same idea of using the cliche as a crutch. We all use cliched phrases when we talk, but we rarely do so for no reason. Perhaps we could use a little more reason, but you get the point. It's fine for your characters to use these phrases if they make sense. If they are what the character would actually say.

At the same time, you also want to make sure the dialogue is readable. If I were to make a character who spoke exactly like members of my family, the reader would be lost within seconds.

tl;dr

Find the balance between necessary cliches, originality, acknowledging the cliches, and readability. Use cliches. Don't rely on them.

I hope this helps you!

posted about 7 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Thomas Myron‭

1163 reputation 133 98 143 10

I'd note that there's a difference between using cliches in dialog, and having a plot that is a cliche. But anyway ...

There are lots of tried and true plot lines. Anyone who watches a romance story and gets to the point where the hero and heroine have a fight, and starts biting her nails and saying, "Oh, I wonder if they'll get back together by the end of the story?" ... or someone who watches a TV show and gets to a scene where one of the main characters is in extreme danger, and cries out, "Oh no, is he going to get killed?" ... such people no doubt find the world a place full of mystery and wonder.

I remember being in the room when my daughter was watching some teen romance once. And the story started out with the popular super-jock guy bragging that he could make any girl the prom queen if he wanted, and his friends offer to make a bet on it, and he accepts the bet, and then of course they pick the ugliest, least popular girl in the the school ... And I said to myself, wow, let me see if I can predict how this story is going to go. I'm sure you're thinking the exact same thing: He tries to make her popular, it turns out that with the right clothes and hair style she's suddenly beautiful, in the course of it he falls in love with her and she falls in love with him, then she finds out about the bet and they have a big fight, he tells her how yes at first it was a bet but he really loves her, eventually he wins her back, then they win prom king and queen and it's a happy ending. Right? Is there any part of that that you didn't also predict? The only surprise in the movie was that in the end somebody ELSE won prom king and queen, which was a little bit of a twist I guess.

But you can make routine plots like that interesting by doing it well. Add a little twist here and there, make your characters interesting, make your dialog interesting, etc.

posted over 6 years ago

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Jay‭

1055 reputation 1 97 207 0

You have to make a distinction between plagiarism and familiar ground. Writers cover familiar ground all the time. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. It is familiar ground. It is not a cliche.

Writers stick to familiar ground because that is where they find the stories that people want to hear. Boy meets girl. Girl is captured by space aliens. Boy becomes a door to door fryingpan salesman in antarctica. That is not familiar ground. Nor is it a story anybody want to read. It has no logic, no shape. Its original. But it's boring.

Cliche is not about covering familiar ground. Cliche is about lazy writing. It is about drawing stock phrases out of your head because they are easy, not because they are apt. George Orwell in Politics and the English Language talks about writers seeing the world and writing what they see vs throwing stock phrase together without ever truly thinking through what they are trying to say. Cliche does not mean familiar. Cliche means lazy, dull, and not fully realized.

EDIT: Dialogue is not speech. Speech is fractured, repetitive, and largely trivial. Dialogue is whole, unique, and consequential. Speech is full of cliches. People talk lazily, often just because the cannot endure silence. That kind of talk is incredibly tedious to read. Dialogue is something quite different and the cliched nature of speech should have no impact on the way you write dialogue.

posted about 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

4381 reputation 12 1104 745 58

Why are clichés discouraged in fiction writing?

Neurology.

The first time someone said or wrote, "Why isn't anybody talking about the elephant in the room?" it was a surprising metaphor, and apt, and it evoked an image of an actual elephant in a room with people standing around ignoring it.

The first time someone said, "as big as a house," It was a good thing, people imagined a big house, and this worked.

The same may be true the first time each person hears such a cliché.

But, the brain learns things, and surprise and evoked imagination fades away. The brain learns to translate the cliché into standardized thought patterns, that no longer surprise, or evoke any imagination.

In short, they are boring placeholders for what have become boring concepts.

It is the job of the fiction writer to entertain the reader, by assisting and stimulating their imagination of a setting, characters, experience, wonder, and adventure. Boring is the opposite of the job, and because by repeated exposure clichés no longer evoke any new or clever imagination, they are spurned. Both in prose, and in dialogue.

As for plots, they are not clichés, they are patterns of action, but the specifics of the actions and characters within that pattern are new. Yes, the plot of a detective story is pretty standard, but every Sherlock Holmes story contains new surprises, different characters, a different mystery for the reader to solve (or be amazed that Sherlock solves it), etc. Every Rom Com has pretty much the same plot, but the details, dialogue, and problems are unique.

When they are not, we still call them derivative, ripoffs, imitations, etc.

Plots are not clichés, they are overall patterns of an order of events, a skeleton that is fleshed out by original work. A "twist" in a story is not a cliché, it all depends on whether it is a twist we have seen a dozen times, or a twist we have never seen (e.g. Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense).

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3166 reputation 2 1399 614 37