Cliche: Define Please!

A cliche, Merriam-Webster says, is a trite phrase or expression, or the idea expressed by it; a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation; or, something that has become overly familiar or commonplace.

So, in agreement with this definition, phrases on truth like ‘you can’t handle the truth’, ‘sad but true’, ‘truth will out’, and ‘too good to be true’ are cliches. Yet, so is the idea that love knows no bounds, and that good will always triumph over evil. So is the stock character villain-type who wants to rule the world and the underdog who just wants to have his day.

How Much Is Much Too Much Cliche?

Look the world over and you can find tens of thousands of trite expressions. Do a general review of world literature and you’ll find hundreds of underdog heroes and knights in shining armor who come to the rescue of damsels in distress and sweep them off their feet. Inspect your local donut or coffee shop and if you find a cop there, don’t be surprised if someone makes a joke about it.

These ideas are cliched. So are any others that have been overused to a degree where they have lost their initial impact. No reader wants to hear them anymore. Use the cop at the donut shop joke more than twice and it will get stale. No one will laugh at you. No one wants to hear it anymore. Writers writing in today’s world need to avoid cliched ideas and the overuse of hackneyed expressions, because frankly, no reader wants to hear them anymore, and the avid reader doesn’t want to read that 53rd installment in How I Love My Lover series. In all honesty, pushing the 3rd installment is pushing the limit. Do you get why no one wants to hear it anymore?

A Proper Perspective

Some ideas conquer that sterility through constant re-invention. I have often wondered how Sue Grafton ever got past the letter E, leave alone the letter P, yet she’s still going strong.

Of course, the themes of love and death and injustice will never grow out of style, yet, it is how those topics are presented that eventually loses its fad.

Let’s take the idea that Earth is being invaded by aliens. Do you think you’d be the first to write about that? You wouldn’t be, nor would you be the last. Present the theme of unrequited love through the sad and outcast pubescent, and see how far you get with a publisher. You’ll get as far as the ‘slush pile’.

The ‘slush pile’ is the stack of unrequested material on an editor’s desk that hovers near the garbage can, so that if he or she can’t get past the fifth page of a too cliche story or fifth stanza of a too cliche poem, all he or she has to do is lift and drop.

(Just for the record, triond doesn’t have a slush pile. The moderators here may monitor for content, but not for errors. Anyone can be published through triond in any subject, therefore triond does not take writing seriously.)

Avoid the Lift and Drop

Yet, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done and done successfully, it just means that if you’re going to write about such common ideas you had better come up with some unique way to present your case, or you may not get past the ‘slush pile.’

The same goes for the number of common expressions you use. If your work is riddled and pockmarked with cliche after cliche, an editor is going to wonder if you have any idea what novelty means. If you want to use cliches because they help you to organize your thoughts, then write a cliched outline first. Then, think of a way to rearrange each one so that it is not commonplace, but singular.

For a poem, use as little of the original cliche as you can. For instance, if you want to express that the feeling of love is like a rose with thorns, then at least try to say it in a way that it hasn’t been before, like: your love’s perfume and hue is rose, or is it blood-red, for your thorns have punctured my heart. That of course may not have a unifying  meter, but it is poetic without being cliche, and that is the point.

For a story, add another aspect to the idea. The pubescent pariah, for instance, may have a reason for not trying hard enough to gain the affection of the object of his desires. Perhaps the reason is he has AIDS, but he hasn’t told anyone. Think what might happen if the popular kids ever found out. That idea in itself has already been done, but let’s add a few more twists. Let’s say that he has less than a year to live. Let’s say that he doesn’t know how he got it because he’s still a virgin. Let’s say that he caught it from someone else in the school. Let’s say that particular someone has been secretly infecting as many people as he or she can. Now, let’s say that particular someone is the object of his desires. So, do you see what adding aspects does to a story’s potential?

The Writer’s Endeavor

The writer’s job is to illuminate some quality of human nature, is it not? Whether you’re a poet or a journalist, a novelist or a playwright, that is the endeavor that most every writer assumes after realizing their goals. Even if it’s not about humans, personification does its job well. So, does it not stand under reasoning to try and show that specific quality of human nature in a fresh style or with an individual approach? It only makes sense then, to try to do away with cliched expressions and ideas. Who, after all, wants to write the same story as Joe Blow did down the road, just with different characters and place names? What person, who wants to be considered a poet, wants to write the same poem that Jane Doe did on the other side of the continent? Yet, this happens all the time, and that is why those ideas do not make it into print: because too many people saying the same thing is not interesting; it’s boring.

Every new writer has a challenge to face if they want to ‘make it’. That challenge is to overcome the impulse to write the same thing over again, and I’m not only referring to their own material. It may make for dull reading when verse after verse is about how sad their love life is, but it becomes overwhelmingly monotonous to read poet after poet who says nothing more than life sucks. It begins to sound like the cop in the donut shop joke; it’s just not exciting anymore.

That challenge, of course, is also a good thing; the real writer will persist in diversifying. In this case, only the nimble survive!

A Waste Of Artistic Expression

So, to be banal is to be a barren soil where nothing fruitful can grow. To express yourself in timeworn style is not pleasing to the eyes or ears. To write in cliches is to avoid artistic effort. So, stop wasting your time and learn how to open the paths to your imagination; tap into your vision and resourcefulness. Don’t write the same thing twice, unless you are doing so to make a point. Make like DQ and try something different. Be venturesome. Diversify! You can do it when you want to.

“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”  Winston Churchill