Last month I spoke about being unique in your writing and how to not be a copycat. In the second part of this series of articles, I am going to cover the embracement of clichés. The other week, I was looking through my twitter-feed and came across a tweet from Amanda Wilcox that proves I am not alone in embracing clichés:
“The art of story writing seems to be simply re-writing clichés in your own words.”
I don’t know if I can attribute it directly to Amanda, or if someone else said it first, but story writing certainly seems that way.
I touched upon genre property last month, but not all genre property is cliché. Magical schools are not yet cliché and still have much uncovered ground. However, vampires are probably now cliché, what with Dracula, Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and The Secret Circle to name but a few.
That isn’t to say that vampire stories should be avoided. If approached sensibly and with the right mind set any cliché can be turned into something new and exciting.
Before we go any further, perhaps an exploration into the definition of a cliché is needed. According to the Collins dictionary it is:
“An idea or phrase which is no longer effective because it has been used so much.”This definition states that it can’t be used effectively any more. However, that doesn’t explain why some clichés are effective even after they have become ‘overused’. Perhaps I am being too broad with my own definition of:
“Something that has been used so much that it becomes predictable.”
Even with my definition, you probably would think it best to avoid any cliché where possible. Nevertheless, I am a firm believer that we shouldn’t waste clichés and should whole-heartedly embrace them with open arms. After all if you don’t try, you’ll never know, and knowledge is power. Remember that with great power comes great responsibility and that to use clichés is a privilege, not a right.
OK, so I went a little overboard with my clichés there, maybe to serve as an example of what not to do with them.
