I saw a job posting recently that asked the applicant writer to pick out all the clunky usages in the posting itself. It got me thinking.
We cherish clichés.
We all do, to one degree or another. We don’t mean to. We don’t want to. We do it anyway.
We do it and deny that we do. Or we say, I’ll excuse it just this once. Or we use the cliché as a placeholder until some better idea comes along…we’ll let it go, for now, and fix it in the rewrite. Sure.
Welcome to the writer’s infinite capacity for self-deception.
The trite phrase, emotion, reaction, combination of words: We excuse it as a harmless indulgence. We love the sound of it in our ears and on our lips. We forgive it as a sentimental, self-indulgent guilty pleasure. Sometimes, we convince ourselves that it just works there…so what’s the problem?
For the reader in me who is also a writer, nothing flicks the Off switch of my tolerance faster than a cliché. Looks that burn. Lumps in throats. On and on anon. I get a severe case of the icks. Even if the work is my own.
Do I use these too-easy devices? Yes. Do I let them live? God, I hope not for long.
I’m facing exactly this issue in the current reworking of a chapter. A character, in her POV, reacts to shocking but not-unexpected news. How do we express this? Even artfully expressed, the caught breath, the lump in the throat…they’re inexcusable. Coming up with some better way at this small moment is a chafing time-eater. It’s going to take patience and a step back and, most of all, time. There will be no moving forward while this stone remains in my shoe.
To leave a cliché on the page is laziness. It is evidence the writer’s boredom; of the failure of Idea. It is self-coddling of the worst kind. Away with them.
Is there a place on the shelf for these wicked little dolls? Maybe. A cultural cliché might, in passing, define a character’s contemporariness to the reader who doesn’t share it. Another example: A cliché exploited self-consciously, one that refers to its origin and plays upon its meaning , can be an interesting device for a close third-person voice. “I am using a cliché,” the device says, “but I am better and stronger than it is.”
It takes a skilled writer to turn a cliché on its head…perhaps a writer more skilled than I am. For now, I’ll just swallow around the lump in my throat, put my shoulder to the wheel, and struggle through. And before you’re tempted to wonder…yes, I knew that those were clichés.
8 comments
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March 28, 2012 at 10:41 am
jasondegray
I hate those jobs that make you take a Language Arts test as part of application. It’s like, “If I wasn’t good with words, I wouldn’t be applying!”
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March 28, 2012 at 3:14 pm
lynnbiederstadt
Jason, I hear that! I don’t know how I’d feel about that. I have just enough ego to decline, I think. Once you’re published, the point goes sorta moot, don’t you think?
-Lynn
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March 28, 2012 at 3:26 pm
jasondegray
I agree. Once you’re published, you have an editor to take care of all that crap for you! 😀 And even better, you don’t have to pay out of pocket for them!
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March 28, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Jo Bryant
One day we will be uttering your phrases as cliches Lynn…that’s all they are really. Utterances that the populace take to heart because they express easily what they cannot find words for themselves…
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March 28, 2012 at 3:13 pm
lynnbiederstadt
Jo…I was going to send you a dismayed face :-/, teasing that you’d just called my writing cliched…but I knew what you meant, so instead I’ll say “thank you” and smiley-face you! 😉
-Lynn
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March 28, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Jo Bryant
So glad…I would have thought…OH NO…and been a dismayed kiwi…
😉
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March 29, 2012 at 8:05 am
mywithershins
It can be difficult, sometimes, to rephrase those clunky cliches once they’ve popped into a story. Good luck trying to rewrite them, but I’m sure you’ll come up with something brilliant! 🙂
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March 29, 2012 at 10:27 am
C.B. Wentworth
We must be on the same wavelength! I wrote a post last night that plays with cliches! 😉
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