I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 14th

Girl howdy and howdy to the boy who shakes his groove thing, often with disastrous results, and welcome to the highly skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where SJW is a dirty word, Democrat is a dirtier word and common sense is extinct.

Last week we touched upon the topic of "throwaway scenes" and how they could showcase a particular scene without any adverse effects.

Today's topic of choice, which is a newbie's absolute favorite writing crutch, is the cliche. For you established writers, I know you're gonna cringe in pain as if you were listening to this aria, but please bear with me as I try to do a intervention by enlightening those who are learning the ropes and just getting their toes wet.

There are quite a few writing rules that one should absolutely pay attention to when you're starting out on the road to being comfortably rich enough to buy a case of quality beer/lager/IPA once a year. One of those rules is the minimal use/overuse of cliches. There is a right way and a wrong way to use cliches, and today we're going to talk about both.

Part the 1st, the wrong way to use cliches.

An over-reliance on using cliches can turn an average story into something that a reader would say, "Bleech!" before tossing it away. In case you're a bit clueless on what a cliche is, this definition by the Oxford Dictionary should help immeasurably.

While you think that you're being extremely clever with peppering your story with the tried and true cliches, you're really not. As a reader, unless you the writer are writing a period piece that requires an over-abundance of slangy phrases, I get extremely turned off by cliches. Makes me think that you the writer doesn't have diddly/squat. So at all costs, do not use them. Use the talent that you're busy fleshing out to describe what you want to say in better detail. However, if you must use cliches in your stories, then continue reading.

Part the 2nd, the right/less wrong way to use cliches.

An under-reliance of using cliches is your best bet. Your second best bet is to create fresh phrases to replace the ye olden phrase that means the roughly the same thing. As a writer, I try to use a mixture of both. I always shoot for an under-reliance of cliches, because I know my writing is strong enough to keep the cliches at the bare minimum. However, there are times when I do need to use them in order to get a point across.

Example #1: "Sure as you're black and he's white."

This was basically an answer to the question of "Are you sure?" that the MC had asked. While on the surface it may sound crass, it does point out that the person asking is black and the person with her is white. In other words, the answer is confirming a case of the obvious.

Example #2: She licked it like a lolly, sucked on it like a vacuum and embraced it like a jar of warm honey.

This is basically a fleshed out description of....a particularly personal act one does in the confines of the bedroom with their significant other. There are myriad of ways to describe these kind of things but sometimes, you really want to get creative w/o getting explicit, and reworking a trite cliche can do wonders for scenes such as these:

Example #3: Nuder than a centerfold and twice as hot.

Most of the ways that you can describe a person's physical attributes, whether male or female, absolutely drip with conformity and staleness. Thus, a new twist on describing a naked person, which in this particular case, is a woman. It paints a vivid picture w/o getting overly explicit.

So as you can see, there's a right way and a wrong way to use cliches. Cliches are great for when you're practicing your writing (kind of like Tom Swiftys) or when you're blogging and you want to use a little humor. They're not so great when you rely on them for your story and write them verbatim. If you must use a cliche, then your best bet is to rework it into something fresh, unique and 100% you.

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