By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy
Clichés aren’t necessarily bad—they’re just not original.
One of my favorite writing T-shirts says “I avoid clichés like the plague.” But clichés are so ingrained in our day-to-day lives that it’s hard to eliminate them completely from our writing. For me, the more casual the situation, the more often I use them. For example, you’ll see me use them a lot more in blog posts versus my novels.
Clichés are not bad. They’re cultural shorthand to convey an idea.
However, it’s this ease of communication that makes them undesirable in our writing.
We’re writers. We’re supposed to be original. Using something that’s been used "for ages" is taking the lazy way out and making the reader do the work. Even worse, because clichés are so culturally known, readers aren’t surprised by them. How many TV/movie plots have you ever figured out right away because of the clichés used? I’d guess a lot.
I had a WIP with a director of security type position and a second-in-command guy. It’s a cliché that both these roles are often filled by a character who’s up to no good—the guy in charge of your security is secretly working against you. Your second-in-command is trying to do you in and take over. No matter what the genre, this role is frequently where the bad guy hides.
Obviously, I didn’t want to make either of these guys a bad guy. Readers would see that coming without even having to look up.
But since I know readers will expect them to be bad guys, it lets me play with those expectations. I can twist the cliché and have my characters behave in ways that could easily be interpreted as helpful or hurtful and let the reader assume the wrong thing. I can play into those expectations and later yank the rug out from under readers when they realize those actions weren’t the actions of a villain.
Years ago, I read a book called Villains By Necessity by Eve Forward. Forward took the tried-and-true “good vs evil” cliché and turned it on its head. The good guys have won, evil is gone, but it hasn’t turned out exactly as all the fairy tales said it would. The world is unbalanced now, and that’s causing trouble. A group realizes that the world needs a little evil, and to save it, they have to turn into bad guys. The “villains” have to save the world. What a great twist!
My own novel The Shifter developed this way as well. I was playing with various fantasy clichés, trying to find a different angle on my idea. I ended up focusing on healing, and realized that you never saw it used for evil. There were rarely any consequences to it at all. I wondered, “What if healing could be bad? What if it could be harmful?” And thus, the book was born.
Can you do the opposite of what’s expected?
Can you make it positive if it’s a negative? Negative if it’s a positive? (As in, if the cliché is always for the good guy can you give it to the bad guy, and vice versa?)
Is there something that hasn’t been done with it already? Can you:
How many times have you heard “Don’t have your character look in a mirror to describe themselves.” It’s good advice, but what if your book absolutely needs to do this?
Then twist the cliché.
You expect to see the person, so what if they have no reflection? What if they remember what they can no longer see? What if they go out of their way to avoid looking into mirrors? What if it’s someone else looking at them as they look into the mirror?
What if they have something they didn’t have before? Their appearance changed in a way that’s intriguing.
What if they see something they don’t want to see? What if they’re always looking into mirrors because they need to constantly watch behind them? What if they’re waiting for something bad to show up in their reflection?
Naturally, the story will dictate which direction you go with this, but you can already see how a little brainstorming has opened up several ideas.
Wander through TV Tropes, one of the most comprehensive cliché databases I’ve ever seen. It covers all the common plots, tricks, and clichés and gives you plenty of examples. It covers books, TV, comics, and movies, so don’t let the name fool you.
What clichés do you struggle with? Does your WIP use any? Are they working or not working?
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Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.
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Great info, Janice - I WANT that t-shirt!
Isn't it fun? Mental Floss used to have a ton of shirts, but I don't know if they do that anymore. The site has changed a lot.
Great post on a topic that is not written about often enough. Thank you for the very useful link!
Thanks! Clichés are so common, I think we often just read over them. But they stick with us subconsciously.
Thanks for having me! Let's talk about our favorite and least favorite clichés 🙂
My favorite is when something is "half the battle." Always makes me laugh and think of the movie, "The Untouchables."
My least favorite is tripping and falling when someone is chasing you. That and "released a breath she didn't know she was holding."
Hi Janice!
Wonderful post. I love your definition of clichés.
The hubby reads my chapters as I write them and typically finds the clichés. They come so naturally that I generally don't realize they're in the mix.
That link will be super helpful.
Thanks!
Thank you! That's the "problem" with clichés--we just use them automatically. That's awesome you have your very own cliché finder 🙂
TVTropes is great, but you can totally get lost in there for hours (grin).
Brilliant. It's something I think I need to try.
Looking in a mirror is something I used in a short story. The MV noticed the changes that age had brought about. This was the basis of the story.
I love your ideas, though. Much food for thought.
Finger slipped! Should be MC, not MV!🥴
Thanks! That's a reasonable reason to look in the mirror, so I think that works. And it carries more weight than just a pause to describe the character. It triggered deeper reflection.
Thanks for the reminders about clichés, Janice. I don't know if I have a favorite one, but the one I hope is true is "every cloud has a silver lining." And the one that makes me laugh is "grab the bull by the horns." I doubt the sanity of anyone who does that. lol
Oh, I like that one as a life philosophy 🙂 And I agree, grabbing a bull by anything just sounds like a bad idea all around, lol.
Very actionable! Thanks, Janice, for the helpful tips.
Kris
Most welcome! Glad you enjoyed it.
I’ve had an aversion to clichés and tropes, which has translated, in my writing, into a deliberate upending of all such in my stories.
My genre is SciFi, which is rife with tropes. So, in my “alien invasion” story (a series), my alien aren’t monstrous looking, ruthless, warlike aggressors, who just show up and attack. They’re rather attractive creatures, vaguely resembling gazelles, who’ve studied us a few centuries, and show up wanting to negotiate our ‘beneficial’ surrender. They don’t see themselves as conquerors… in their heart and soul, they’re farmers, albeit self-superior, condescending, feudalistic, and imperialistic farmers.
I similarly like twisting memes and clichés in my chapter titles, which I use to provide humorous clue of what readers will find within-e.g., Let Lying Dogs Sleep, Paychecks and Balances, A Tale of Two Videos, Rules of Disengagement, Leaks of Faith, etc.
I’ve always been a fan of Asimov, who managed to provide stunning twists at key moments in his stories, which readers could immediately see were quite logical, because he’d so well foreshadowed the possibilities.
Love that. Flipping tropes and clichés around is so much fun. We clearly have the same sense of humor (grin). I also love the wordplay and puns like your titles, and have novel ideas with titles along those same lines. Those are also always the types of titles that draw my eye in a bookstore. I recently re-bought and re-read all the Phule's Company books, and every title is like that.
I love plots that have a twist. You think you have things figured out but you don't. Fooling the reader with a cliche is a great way to do it.
It certainly plays into their expectations, and then you can defy those expectations 🙂 Tons of fun. Bwahaha.
I'm constantly playing with clichés and memes in my work. I particularly enjoy twisting them in chapter titles, which I use to give readers a tease of what's within (and is immensely helpful to me when I need to look for a previous scene). Some... Truth and Promises, Let Lying Dogs Sleep, Braking and Entering, Paychecks and Balances, Espionage on Ice...
And, for fun,
Yet ironically, for most tastes, their story was bland. Even K’laadia’s oppression of indigenous species was slow and subtle, almost imperceptible until too late. As invaders go, K’laadians were boring, but with little effort, had always won.
"What the holy hell, folks!" A popular web host lamented. "Where are the bug-eyed, drooling, fang-toothed, nasty, vicious Hollywood-styled aliens? We get invaded by farmers? Effing FARMERS? Dammit! I'm effing embarrassed. No wonder they've beaten everyone else so far. Who the HELL could see that coming? Yeah, I'm embarrassed."
That's a great way to use them. I love that.
LOL great passage. A funny way to twist the alien BEM tope 🙂
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