That’s my little tongue-in-cheek joke for this post, because the irony of what I’m doing literally as I type that statement is not lost on me. It’s true, though— I honestly think that advice is one of the most damaging things to a writer’s mindset. It makes them second-guess their methods, their ideas, and even whether they truly have what it takes to be a *~*writer*~* in the eyes of the rest of the world.
It’s a truly unfortunate thing, because it’s so important for writers to be able to share their experiences and successes. The problem is that these experiences get passed around in a game of It’s-Been-Ten-Years-Since-This-Essay-Was-Written Telephone, and the original intent of the advice (and sometimes its actual meaning!) gets lost along the way. They become these overarching blanket statements that offer broad limitations without reason or potential alternatives.
One of the greatest offenders of this is the idea that you ought to avoid clichés in writing. I’ve been part of online writing communities for a while now, and by far the most common concern I see is some variant of, “I’m thinking about doing [x], but I’m worried it’s too cliché”. It’s an epidemic amongst writers, and it absolutely infuriates me that so many writers have come to doubt their own work just because some vague internet grapevine has told them that clichés are to be avoided at all costs.
Because I’m so infuriated by this (and because I’m super extra and actually have a relevant platform on which to discuss this), I’m going to take some time to explain the actual meaning of this particular piece of “advice” and why it’s far less of a concern than you’ve been lead to believe.
To begin, it’s very important to address the fact that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding surrounding this idea. This starts with the fact that the terms cliché andtrope are mistakenly thought to be synonymous, or otherwise become confused with one another. Before I move forward, I want to offer the proper definition for both.
Acliché is a particular phrase that’s been used often enough to become commonplace. In writing, they’re generally used to create a specific image or tone that we can take for granted that the reader will recognize.
She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. It was raining cats and dogs, but she still stood with her arms to the sky, laughing like she didn’t even notice. She turned to me and winked, and I felt my face go as red as a beet.In that moment, I knew that I’d give my right arm to be with her.
Atropeis a convention used in writing to give meaning to aspects of your story. They’re used as storytelling shorthand to attach identifiable qualities to your plot and characters— recurring themes that exist throughout history to guide stories.
Examples of tropes include the hero’s journey, the character’s fatal flaw, the comic relief character, thehero with a dark past, and the Mom Friend.
I’ll be the first to admit that there are similarities between the two— both are used to help readers understand parts of your story, and tropes can be specific phrases as shown in the cliché example above. The key is to separate the two in your mind and think about them only by the definitions above.
It’s important to do this, because part of the central misunderstanding is that “cliché” is often used in daily life to describe ideas as a whole that have been overused (think of the “I’m holding up the tower!” pic that literally everyone takes at the Leaning Tower of Pisa). I get the confusion and concern here, I really do. The most important thing to remember is that clichés have a specific meaning when it comes to writing. No matter how often you may see a particular theme or character arc, it is and always will be a trope.
With that out of the way, I’d like to discuss why this should be good advice. The truth of the matter is that clichés should be avoided where possible because they give the impression of lazy writing. Writers and readers alike take the imagery for granted and rely on these tried-and-true phrases to add physicality to their prose instead of finding unique descriptors; while it certainly gets the point across, it comes across as more of a 2D picture from a magazine than a scene from the movie adaptation we all know our books are destined to have.
To illustrate this, let’s take a look at the example above with all of the clichés removed:
The world had never experienced a beauty like hers— neither had I. I just watched as she stood there, arms to the sky as the rain pelted her relentlessly, soaking into her clothes and hair. She smiled as it ran down her face, laughing at each raindrop, finally turning to me and winking. She could have just been blinking the water out of her eye, I don’t know, but my face was hot and I suddenly found it hard to look at her. I stared at my shoes, willing them to take a step for once so I could go and join her.
Clichés fall flat because they aren’t specific to you as a writer— they aren’t at all indicative of your unique style. Your story loses so much when it’s not told in your own voice, so you shouldn’t rely on old phrases just because you know people will automatically understand them.
While the argument could be made that tropes fall into this same category, I would point out that tropes serve a deeper purpose than clichés. Where a cliché would act as filler, a trope would act as a foundation. Tropes are tools (most frequently, structural tools) that guide the story through plot/character development and tonal themes to give your reader a general idea of what they’re signing up for when they read your story.
Example Time!
Say that you wanted to write someone a love poem. You do your research, sifting through decades of poems to pick out the best phrases and metaphors, and you end up with the following:
Your eyes are as deep as an oceans Your eyes shine like stars They’re like windows to your soul I get lost in them every time I look
The poem is essentially a cut-and-paste of phrases from every cheesy romance novel out there, and will most likely leave the object of your affections wondering why you’re so obsessed with their eyeballs.
Alternatively, you hand them this:
Roses are red, Violets are blue…
and things get a little more interesting. Sure, the opening to the poem is a cliché in and of itself, but it sets the stage for whatever you want to fill it with. You could go with something traditional and make it cutesy, you could subvert the trope by dropping the rhyme scheme for dramatic or comedic effect, you could even revive the old 2015 “gun” meme. The world is your oyster!
The point is, the poem hasn’t been written for you. Sure, it follows a similar structure to poems that have been written before, but where you take it is entirely up to you— the opening lines are simply the prompt to make way for your own creative license.
Let’s be real, here.
I get that everyone wants to make something new and exciting that comes entirely from their own imagination. It’s the dream! The idea that anything we write could potentially be sourced back to an existing piece is super aggravating, and you don’t have to tell me how discouraging it is to have something that you’re genuinely proud of suddenly fall flat because someone says, “Hasn’t the teen dystopia thing been done to death?” or “Didn’t Star Trek do an episode like this?” or “Penney, this is just a Star Trek fanfiction with the names changed to Dirk and Spork, please stop.”
To be totally honest, there is not (nor will there ever be) a single piece of writing on this earth that’s 100% original. Everything is based off of a story that came before it, or had plots and characters that were cherry-picked from the millions of plots and characters that existed previously.
Even more honestly, people like it that way. Tropes help us to identify our favorite genres and characters, guide us to stories that we may like based on those preferences, and open our eyes to new stories and authors that follow those tropes in a slightly different way.
In short, embrace your tropes. Learn to recognize them and how they can be used and reimagined, and build your story out of the wonderful things that come of that knowledge. Be like me and waste a billion hours in the rabbit hole that is TV Tropes!
Most importantly, write the way you want to write and don’t let anyone else tell you how to do it. They’ll have their time when you’re ready for peer review. Right now is your time to do as you please, ignore all writing advice you see online, make a few mistakes, and do it all over again because that’s what writers do! Get out there and make some beautiful, cliché-ridden, trope-y masterpieces.
It must be understood that each individual, through the combined operation of his innate disposition and the influences brought to bear on him during his early years, has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic life – that is, in the preconditions to falling in love which he lays down, in the instincts he satisfies and the aims he sets himself in the course of it. This produces what might be described as a stereotype plate [ein Klischee] (or several such), which is constantly repeated – constantly reprinted afresh – in the course of the person’s life, so far as external circumstances and the nature of the love-objects accessible to him permit.
The biggest cliches are actually the least cliche since everyone avoids them like the plague.
Have an idea for your story but it’s too cliche? Nothing is too cliche. Things are cliche because people can’t get enough of that shit. Go and make that bitch the hugest cliche anyone has ever fucking seen and I will fully endorse it.
Tweets from Viv and the first is referring to Charlie’s last name changing to Morningstar
Because nothing says classic like copying another name from the same character of another hit show
Dude, Morningstar has ALWAYS been a part of Lucifer’s name. Wayyyyyy before the tv show even existed. She’s not copying from Lucifer; she’s simply using the actual Biblical name.
Lucifer literally means “morning star,” ffs x3
Even if Lucifer was always Latin for morning star, that title already has a huge rep for the Lucifer series as is. Either way, it’s worn out by now, and is a really unoriginal surname in these circumstances. It’s one thing to recycle an overused name for the main character your own take of said popular trope (in this case, religious fiction), and it’s another matter entirely to go out of your way to change long standing character’s current name to it.
It’s an extremely cliche move, puts the Hazbin franchise one step closer to mainstream, and their old surname Magne was much more classy, yet simple, translating to ‘all mighty/warrior’ in ancient Norse, and ‘great’ in French. I don’t have a problem if people like how Charlie Morningstar sounds, but there’s nothing at all classic about it anymore, just disappointing to see.
Extremely cliche? Funny you say that when on your blog, your pinned post says that nothing is too cliche, and things are cliche because “people can’t get enough of that shit.”
Headline before that quote also states: “Have an idea for your story?”That post is only referring to storytelling like scenarios, prompts, writing, and genre tropes alone, example: religious fiction. It’s a much different topic altogether when it comes to individual characters that have personal traits and qualities that are much overused like something extremely upfront, for another example, a last name. Just because everyone enjoys a good kind of story, doesn’t mean we always want see the same plain Jane living it. Cliche isn’t a good thing for an OC.
Tweets from Viv and the first is referring to Charlie’s last name changing to Morningstar
Because nothing says classic like copying another name from the same character of another hit show
Dude, Morningstar has ALWAYS been a part of Lucifer’s name. Wayyyyyy before the tv show even existed. She’s not copying from Lucifer; she’s simply using the actual Biblical name.
Lucifer literally means “morning star,” ffs x3
Even if Lucifer was always Latin for morning star, that title already has a huge rep for the Lucifer series as is. Either way, it’s worn out by now, and is a really unoriginal surname in these circumstances. It’s one thing to recycle an overused name for the main character your own take of said popular trope (in this case, religious fiction), and it’s another matter entirely to go out of your way to change long standing character’s current name to it.
It’s an extremely cliche move, puts the Hazbin franchise one step closer to mainstream, and their old surname Magne was much more classy, yet simple, translating to ‘all mighty/warrior’ in ancient Norse, and ‘great’ in French. I don’t have a problem if people like how Charlie Morningstar sounds, but there’s nothing at all classic about it anymore, just disappointing to see.
“I don’t believe that old cliché that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can’t sit still”.
Get outside. Watch the sunrise. Watch the sunset. How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel big or tiny? Because there’s something good about feeling both.
