Stages of Revision 14: Get rid of clichés

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The effectiveness and the ineptitude of clichés

There is one thing that is very annoying about clichés; they are very good.  They are extremely apt for what they’re trying to describe and they’re hard to beat. The problem is, though, that they become tired and can make your writing seem dull, even though the cliché was spot on in the first place.  So, you need to go about it like a bull in a china shop, avoid them like the plague, and don’t get me wrong, I think clichés have their place.

Do you see what I mean?

Nothing can do quite as much damage as that bull rattling around between the plates and dishes, can it?  Is there anything you’d need to avoid more than the plague? (Covid 19 perhaps?)  and what better warning for your reader than that they may be about to misinterpret you? (Really? Isn’t it your job to make yourself clear?)

Get to the heart of the matter

You can often get underneath the cliché and work out what’s really going on and you may find that the cliché wasn’t as effective as you thought. You may come up with other similes and metaphors. Perhaps what’s happening is actually more like a toad trapped under a saucepan, or someone is procrastinating because they can’t face doing their tax return, or your character steps out of the story to tell you something unexpected about themselves.

Here are some real challenges for you. Try to describe the following without resorting to cliché:

·         What chocolate tastes like

·         What orange peel looks like

·         What rain feels like on your skin

·         What church bells sound like

Believe me, these are quite tricky.

When there is nothing that works as well as the cliché

Then perhaps you can subvert it a little. Replace your bull with an equally rumbustious animal and put him in a named store. Avoid your clichés as you would another nasty disease or situation. Anticipate your readers’ misinterpretation in another way.

Borrow from other languages

If you speak another language you may have a real advantage here. What is a cliché in one language isn’t in another. It will seem fresher in the other language.  Spanish for example is peppered with them. Here are a couple of rather interesting ones:

It had always pleased him to remain superior (or on top of!) his mother.

She had eaten the soup before midday. (Had sex before marriage and got pregnant)

And here are a few from German.

I don’t want to tread on your tie.

Don’t put your mustard on my sausage.

It’s all sausage to me. (I don’t care)

Delightfully, when there is one of those sudden inexplicable silences, the French say “It’s an angel passing by.”    

Images by Michelle Maria  and ArtTower from Pixabay 

Clichés – how can we avoid them and do we really have to?

Clichés become clichés because they do what they do rather well. There isn’t anything else quite like a bull in a china shop. Nothing could be nastier than having a ton of bricks fall on you. Putting a spanner in the works probably works better than throwing a wooden clog into the machinery --- that act which gave us the word sabotage, form the French word “sabot”.

Plots and stories can be clichéd too, yet it is good for our psychological health to consume the same story over and over. Christopher Booker, anyway, tells us there are only seven stories, Arthur Frank offers us three and Robert McKee provides a template that will structure any story. Part of our enjoyment of stories comes from recognising this pattern over and over.

Language, too, has to repeat so that we understand it.

The Anti-cliché Edit

I knew I was a writer a long time ago, even if it did take me ages to take myself seriously. Probably even before I received some praise from my teacher because I had written in my account of visiting my grandmother that “Sandy, her little brown dog made us welcome.”  That is actually one great big fat cliché but the teacher was delighted because I had taken my work beyond  the very simple level of subject verb object, which is what most other seven-year-olds were producing. I had managed this probably because I had been reading a lot – that too was no doubt a joy for my teacher. She probably hadn’t noticed that it was mainly Enid Blyton.

Yes, I’m currently completing the “get rid of clichés” edit on The Tower, and I would not tolerate that “made us very welcome” phrase in my work, nor in any of my students’ work, nor in any of the texts I edit.

But clichés are there because they work

Yes they are. And often it’s very difficult to express that idea any other way. How else do you describe a bull in a china shop? It’s probably all right now and then. But too many really weaken your work. Close your eyes. Look at your scene. What do you see, hear, smell, taste, feel (in both senses)? Now write. Writing with the senses helps you to avoid cliché and always produces good work. Try these: How do you describe rain to someone who doesn’t know water? What does chocolate taste like? What does orange peel look like? Pretend you’re an alien and look at your own planet differently.

It’s okay if it’s a part of someone’s voice

Yes, you can use them as much as you like in speech – as long as it genuinely is part of the way that person talks.

Borrowing form other language can be effective

Indeed you may have an advantage if you speak another language. You can borrow clichés, sayings and proverbs and they will sound fresh in your own language. An angel is passing, they say in France, when the conversation suddenly stops. Young women shouldn’t eat soup before lunchtime in Spain, if they don’t want to end up as single mothers. Many a Spanish man has taken delight in staying on top of his wife. Germans may tread on your tie, put their mustard in your sausage and find that a problem is in fact nothing but sausage. The Greeks are wary of announcing the spring if they have seen but one swallow.

Avoid the lazy option

If your resort to a cliché, no matter how apt, you are simply being lazy. Use them sparingly even in your characters’ speech. Maybe making up clichés peculiar to your characters is more effective. And even take a little care with borrowing from other languages. Only use the new phrases if they really fit – don’t contrive to find a space for them.    

      

Phrases that irritate

I’m a great fan of Rudolfo Anaya. His Bless Me, Ultima is, I believe, one of the best novels ever written for young adults. He wrote it in 1972, many years before the current explosion in YA texts. It is very well written and deals with identity possibly better than any other book. I’m currently reading The Anaya Reader – a collection of novel excerpts, short stories and essays. They are good – especially so if one remembers that he is not writing in his own language.
Yet he still gets away with some clichés and overwriting that I would pull my students up for. He uses “pervades” and “fills the air” quite often. These annoy me. Not as much as those writers who use the word “garb” or “vestments” when they really mean “clothes”. Such language should only be used as part of a character’s voice and even then there is an argument that says one should use modern speech… because in Tudor time, or whenever, they used what was then modern speech.
I think the more abstract examples, such as those I’ve quoted form Anaya, might come about because the writer is writing aurally. They are matching the voice they hear in their head of other writers reading their work out loud. As with all clichés, the “fills the air” and “pervades” were quite clever - the first time, but even then I suspect that particular writer ought to have killed off a darling.
Not that Anaya need worry. I award Dan Brown 58% for his work. So any of my own students who receive 59% or higher – and most of them are considerably higher – stand some chance of publication. I’m not afraid to award marks over 70% - a first class mark and again, several of my students achieve this. To Anaya, for all his works, I give 75%. If he ditched the clichés he be in the region of 87% - or higher.