![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
Now that you’ve begun to accept that you’re a lazy, plagiarising fanfic writer, let’s look at some of the different forms of cliché that you frequently abuse, and how you can identify them — so you can plainly see that your fiction is merely a string of old, stolen ideas held together with conjunctions.
There are clichéd words: mostly adjectives and adverbs, such as “grizzled” (usually followed by “detective”), pretty much any word that ends in -ly, and the queen of all clichéd words, “quirky”. Let me tell you now, everyone is quirky when they think no-one’s looking (for example, I find delight in ripping random pages out of books in bookstores). Resorting to using “quirky” to describe a character is a stop writing moment.
There are a couple of easy ways to spot clichéd words in your writing:
There are the clichéd phrases: ”to all intents and porpoises”, “lies, damned lies and goddamn awful fiction”, or “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw clichés”. They’re often tired similes and metaphors that no longer inspire comparative thought (“a drop in the bucket”). Others are elegant variations: using five words where one would suffice (“in the fullness of time” instead of “eventually”). Still others are little more than punctuation — think about how many writers use “let’s get out of here” because they can’t figure out how to end a scene. Even synopses have their own clichés, such as “and then they”, “it turns out” and “little did they know”.
You can determine quite simply if a particular phrase is a cliché: ask yourself if you’ve ever read those words in that exact sequence before. If you’re not sure, Google it. A few hits might be coincidence, but more than ten and you might as well contact the authors of those pages to form a bad writers’ support group.
There are clichéd characters: the bitter (“grizzled”) detective with a secret that explains his bitterness and his limp, chasing the preternaturally intelligent serial killer with the absurdly complex and predictable psychopathology who appeared as a minor character on page 50; the self-aware anthropomorphic robot who is fascinated by or yearns to be a chemically-imbalanced talking meat-bag; the school bully with latent homosexuality who winds up as a twice-divorced fry cook; the hooker who inexplicably does something nice for someone without expecting so much as a bag of crack and a shot of penicillin in return; the emotionally disconnected elf (or, indeed, any ‘elf’); the young agricultural worker who it is prophesied will rise up to save the kingdom from the tyranny of market forces; or pretty much every supporting character in your fiction that you had to make ”quirky”.
You probably know who the clichéd characters are in your fiction, because you remember the original stories they come from. You didn’t really try to hide the similarity, because although you’re ostensibly writing a WWII-era spy thriller, subconsciously you really want people to figure out it’s thinly-veiled Star Wars fanfic.
There are clichéd plots and plot elements: that one crucial forensic clue the oafish police overlooked, that the preternaturally observant amateur detective finds on page 87 but only tells you about on page 279; the paradox of travelling back in time just to explain the time-travel paradox to the one smart person in the primitive tribe who conveniently learns to speak English fluently in less than a chapter; the mysterious object imbued with the mysterious power to to remain mysterious, that must be found/rescued/destroyed at any cost but never adequately explained to anyone; and dear God, any story that is driven by, makes reference to, or includes a recipe for, a “prophecy”.
How do you find the clichéd plot elements in your writing? That’s easy. Look at page one. Or, more likely, page 27, where your plot actually starts.
There are also clichéd writing careers: there’s the sophomore slump, where the author spent six years writing their first novel, then the publisher wants a follow-up in eight months; the runaway bestseller, where the author can’t think of any story that will live up to the surprise hit of their last novel; the trend chaser, where the writer keeps writing knockoffs of current hits, hoping that the money train will hit their house when it derails; and the all-time number one, the imawriterdammit, which (roughly translated) means the person who claims all the social benefits of being a writer because they once scribbled down an idea for a story combining two clichés they saw on different episodes of The A-Team.
For those who genuinely fear they have been unwittingly infested with clichés, here are some external resources which have selectively quoted the worst parts of your own writing for you:
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This post is better than an object protected by a secret organization concealing the existence of something that would change the world if it were exposed.
This post is better than the plucky upstart with natural talent for a game/sport/fighting technique who falls by hubris but finds a cranky wonk of a mentor to help him realize that it was the love of the game/sport fighting technique that gave him all his power in the first place.
This is also better than the gifted warrior who leads his army to countless victories yet only yearns for the comfort of a nice plot of farm land, and a homestead to raise his children.
This post is better than the science fiction magazine editor who alternates between seeking the one comic he needs to finish his collection and sleeping with a succession of models who still fuck him after seeing his action figure collection.
Oh, wait. We were talking “cliches”, not “desperate prayers”, weren’t we? Well, that, like the ignorant farmboy who saves Everything, is an example of cliche in fiction and delusion in real life.
And I almost forgot: this post is better than the presumed good guy who’d been planning to betray his friends to the bad guys from the beginning, but who has a change of heart and sacrifices his life to give the good guys the one break they desperately need.
This post is better than a talented team of forensic experts identifying the single carpet fiber that leads a killer to justice.
I was so inspired, I wrote up a short list of TV cliches in my Writing for TV blog.
http://www.writingfortv.blogspot.com.
TV Chick, you’ve nailed at least a couple of Reasons in your list.
This post is better than a sexy, guilt-ridden vampire.
This post is better than the twenty something columbia univ. mfa grad. in creative writing having his first novel published about a gay punkie junkie fifteen-year-old screwing his best friend the in the back of a mini-van while thinking about his stepfather raping him on the barbie doll strewn floor of his bedroom to the sounds of alice cooper and getting a glowing blurb from Dennis Cooper.
This post is better than the plucky redheaded heroine who stamps her feet when told she’ll have to sleep on the ground because her kingdom’s been overrun by raping villains.
Um… you used “preternaturally” twice in the space of three paragraphs.
“you used “preternaturally” twice in the space of three paragraphs.”
So? Both instances are referring to aspects of the same cliche: the too-good-to-be-true detective and the too-bad-to-be-true killer in post Silence of the Lambs crime fiction.
Being afraid to use the same word again when the same word is appropriate is known as the elegant variation, a recurring problem among bad writers first observed by Henry Fowler in Modern English Usage.
This post is better than the guy who goes back in time to prevent a disaster that ruined his life, only to discover that it was his going back in time to prevent the incident that caused it to happen in the first place.
… And it’s WAY better than the Ordinary High School Student who gets a Mysterious Secret Power which he only confides in his two friends, one of which is a sarcastic, intelligent and studious girl, and the other of which is a guy who constantly complains about how he’s not getting enough screen time.
Wow! that’s interesting about the elegant variation.
“[...] The fatal influence [...] is the advice given to young writers never to use the same word twice in a sentence — or within 20 lines or other limit.”
I was taught this at school!
I’ve learned something today
But all those so called cliches in the lists, sounds more like a complete list of every plot device they could think of. Doesn’t leave much does it. So only totally original plots are allowed to be a good writer?
Sounds a bit harsh.
Like the cliche character of the angry cynical hack writer who tries to make everyone feel as bad as he does?
Yeah, I hate that cliche.
The cliche of the anonymous, whiny abusive troll is much more pervasive and damaging. This is what makes you a bad writer – you think I give a shit about your opinion.
wait is this to makes us feel lame and stop writing? Wow. That isn’t nice since i’m twelve.