What About Clichés? - Writing and Editing Advice by Greg Luti
Updated: Oct 3
A writing and editing advice post about a rule writers often take too seriously. In “What About Clichés?,” Greg Luti argues that familiar ideas are not automatically a problem, and that the real question is whether you are building on them, mocking them, or trying too hard to avoid them.
What About Clichés?
If you write enough, you will find yourself in the situation where the very idea you came up with, one you felt was all your own, is not yours at all. In fact, it is not only not your own idea, but it is an idea from many years ago, and many other writers have been using it. Heck, the very idea has a sub-genre in literature, and there is even a man who is called the father of that sub-genre. Damn, and you thought for a second that idea was worth exploring….
What exactly should a writer do about cliches and tropes that readers have seen so many times that they can help the writer figure out what to do with them?
Don’t Panic If You’re Writing a Cliché
The first thing I would say to do is not panic if you are writing a cliché. Hey, there are only so many story ideas, only so many ways a character can go about their journey. I don’t think you should view your entire writing endeavor as pointless because you decided to use a trope already popular.
The Upside of a Familiar Trope
Let’s look at the positive side of writing a cliché or something that the audience knows very well, and that is you don’t really need to explain all that much. The audience gets it. They have seen it before. That may even be the reason they are following the story to begin with.
We can take a few examples of stories that were already in genres that were well-known. The first is the book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Today, we view it as the book about pirates, but pirate books were not an entirely new thing at the time. Or if you want a more modern example: The Scream movies didn’t invent the slasher genre of movies. The movie even includes knowledge of the slasher genre being popular before. Did that stop either story from working? No.
Don’t fret about cliches. Shakespeare didn’t invent the tragedy. There are some things in your writing life that you will take from others. That is how it is.
Know Why You’re Using It
The second thing I would suggest is knowing why you are using that trope. Is it to mock the trope, or are you trying to build on it? I don’t think Stevenson was trying to subvert the pirate genre as much as explore it. Scream mocks slasher films, but still is one.
You can go with the trope and see if you can add more to it, which may not sound as bad as you may think. I mean, there is a reason that some stories are retold again and again, and we see characters who act like other characters over and over again. They work. People like them. Whether we are talking about a god-fighting demi-god like Percy Jackson, or a womanizer like Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men. Sure, we have all seen the gods before, and we have all seen a man hit on women at insane levels, but that is because we like it.
You’ll be told that you have to be original and that you should create something completely new and not seen before, but maybe you should not overthink this. There are some things in the storytelling world that work, and using them for your own sake is not always bad.
Why Originality Gets Overrated
Why then do people suggest that you be original? I definitely think a writer’s ego has something to do here. A writer who creates a brand new story feels like they accomplished more rather than the one who noticed people like a certain story arc and writes it. I will relate to music. I think a musician feels better if they can create their own genre, rather than hearing something and trying to copy it. Does that mean that the original piece is inherently better? No. I wouldn’t say it does.
The Problem With Chasing Trends
There are also times when we see the opposite happen here. The trend is popular, so you chase it and become another person who wrote about that trend, not being seen as an artist, but as a part of a cultural moment where something went wrong. Everyone knows the trope so well that you can’t really go anywhere with it, and the people are just not interested in it either. That is a double loss.
Think of hair metal music, or mafia movies. At one point, it would make sense to make them since they are what sold and people liked them, but then the people moved on, and the artists are left wondering if they were successful because of the trend or because of the actual quality they put out. When you get on a wave, you should be aware that it will meet the shore eventually.
Subverting the Cliché
What if you don’t want to go with a trope you have seen before? What if you want to do something different, but you also know that the trope can be helpful to your story? I would say that is where you have to learn about subverting the cliché. Go against what you know the audience expects from you.
Here is a funny example I feel illustrates this point. A child is given advice. “Look both ways before you cross the street.” A line that we have all heard a million times, saying it in a story is almost pointless. The child gets to the street, and looks right and then looks left, and crosses it without a problem. When he gets to the other side, he trips on the sidewalk and falls and hurts himself. By including the cliché line, we can then add our own message, one that, in our case, may be “You never know what life can throw at you.” We had the cliché. We used it. But then we subverted it to make another point. That is a good use of cliché, if you wish to have one without mimicking it.
You Can’t Really Avoid Them
Is there any way for you to avoid clichés? I don’t think there is. I heard a writer once say that he doesn’t read stories once they introduce the third cliché. I am not sure how many stories he reads, since it feels like every story has a cliché in it, and it is up to the writer to decide what to do with that overused part of the story.
What if you are writing a story, and then you do learn of the cliché a little too late? I know that I have done this. I made a point and thought it was original, and then I learned it was a proverb. That is a tough spot to be in, since you were not writing the cliché as though it was one. If you are done with the story, then I would not worry all that much about it.
Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t worry that pirate stories were not new when he started. Scream was not ashamed of the thriller genre. Shakespeare knew the tragedy was much older than himself.
Learn How They Belong in Your Story
The overall quality of a story should not go down because you use a cliché. That is really the lesson here. You can use them. You can subvert them. But you can’t really ignore them, so it is best for you to admit they are not going anywhere, and learn how they belong in your story, rather than the other way around.
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