I support my public library by purchasing gently used books and music year round. The money they make is used to supplement their annual budget for doing outside activities. The book on the left is about the world's oldest profession in the Old West, while the one on the right is a memoir about a barn owl. Yes, this solidifies the fact that I have eclectic tastes in books.
Continuing on a theme from last week's post, we're going to expand and expound on the concept of cliches. Now I know that most people do not like using cliches, but since they're a {un}necessary evil (like cheapskate owners in your favorite pro sport), it's up to us, the writer, to make them as fresh and palatable as possible. Granted, this is no easy task, but your pal G.B. is gonna try to give you some pointers just the same.
Now, roughly 98.5% of the cliches that I use are like the 4.0 version of the extremely tired cliches that one is usually faced with when writing a story. I say "4.0" because I try to make those loathsome cliches seamlessly fit into a given scene.
A good example is one that I mentioned in my previous post. The overused cliche is, "being thrown under the bus." While technically the meaning of that cliche is to blame someone else for your foul-up, that doesn't mean you should ACTUALLY use it like that in your story. In my particular case, my overall story has a blending of at least five different motifs: modern day; ancient early second millennium peoples (Aztec, Inca, Mayan) with a modern twist; Medieval Europe; pseudo steampunk/modern day/mid-to-late-mid second millennium and religious concept of Hell.
So in order to make it more appropriate for the motif in question (the pseudo steampunk etc), we tweaked it to be, "thrown under a team of draught horses". It still conveys the concept of blaming someone else for your screw-up, but makes it more appropriate for that particular motif. Because, why refer to a bus when your main mode of transportation is equine.
In general, if you need to use a cliche, always tweak it for the time period you're working in. Even if you're creating one from scratch, make sure it fits the motif you're writing in. For me, having multiple motifs to work with forces me to become that much more creative with my cliche usage. My saving grace in deciding whether or not to use/create a cliche, is the vast warehouse of minutia that is contained within my head. This allows me the luxury of performing deep rabbit hole digging without hitting the same vein twice.
And let's not forget another small, but salient point, when it comes to cliches: it doesn't necessarily have to be a longish phrase, like the example above. Instead, it can be something simple as a few words, like "hallowed grounds". Yes, that particularly short phrase can be a cliche, because how many times have you read it as part of a well worn (i.e. timeless) description of a school/college/university?
I thought as much. In my particular case, I was able to use it to describe the dominion of a Sulfur Underground for two different religions. As a personal preference, I've always used that particular phrasing whenever I'm describing Hell for a story. In this particular instance, I wove in the fact that the current overlord of the Sulfur Underground is also someone who has mastered the fine art of diplomacy, thus being able to expand his realm. Thus, we have given new life to another worn out cliche.
For me, a vital component for writing my current story, or any story for that matter, is to creatively rework a tried and true cliche so that it doesn't turn off a potential consumer of my product. Nobody wants to pick up a book and be bombarded with a mixture of fresh and stale writing.
Tune in next week when I explore the topic of creating fictional business entities out of two different parts of a noun: persons and places. Until then, have a fantastic week, and remember to apply the old cliche of "the world indeed does revolve around you", to your day-to-day activities.😎
No comments:
Post a Comment
Lay it on me, because unlike others, I can handle it.