Spin-off: Can you can yourself out on cliches?

I have done this. Nothing wrong with that. I have also done it in real life. People speak in cliche ALL the time. People are told that they speak in cliche all the time.

I would only think of that as being a cliche because mistaken identify often happens in romantic comedies and made-for-TV movies and that sort of thing.

I think it's okay if the character said that, but I might consider something else. Like, "Oh, I'm an idiot."

Just a thought.

In my story my MC admits that she really needs to stop making pop-culture references. She also mentally complains that her friend's name sounds unfit for him, like something from a romance novel, and at one point rebukes herself for thinking of a "crisp autumn day" since it's such a cliche. And she's not even a writer.

If the character would think in such writerly terms, though, it seems fine to me.

I would hesitate to call mistaken identity a cliché in the first place. It's simply a situation that could occur in any kind of story. If you've centered the entire plot on a silly misunderstanding, the resulting story may be rather unsatisfying. If you haven't, then trust your readers to accept the mistaken identity. Assuming you've pulled them into the story, they're not going to think of it as a cliche unless you prompt them to by pointing it out.

This is why I hold the dissenting opinion on calling yourself out. It's something I hate to see in novels. It smacks of authorial intrusion when the author uses a character or narrator to acknowledge a cliché, coincidence, out-of-character reaction, overused device or some other bit of laziness. Acknowledging it doesn't make it go away. It makes it worse, I think, because it can pull the reader out of the story by reminding them that the author knew better and did it anyway. That's usually my reaction, anyway.

Either revise so you've nothing to apologize for, or forge ahead unapologetically.

Devil Ledbetter said:

I would hesitate to call mistaken identity a cliché in the first place. It's simply a situation that could occur in any kind of story. If you've centered the entire plot on a silly misunderstanding, the resulting story may be rather unsatisfying. If you haven't, then trust your readers to accept the mistaken identity. Assuming you've pulled them into the story, they're not going to think of it as a cliche unless you prompt them to by pointing it out.

This is why I hold the dissenting opinion on calling yourself out. It's something I hate to see in novels. It smacks of authorial intrusion when the author uses a character or narrator to acknowledge a cliché, coincidence, out-of-character reaction, overused device or some other bit of laziness. Acknowledging it doesn't make it go away. It makes it worse, I think, because it can pull the reader out of the story by reminding them that the author knew better and did it anyway. That's usually my reaction, anyway.

Either revise so you've nothing to apologize for, or forge ahead unapologetically.

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Well said.

My character called out cliches all the time. For example, when one character said things like "I have food in my stomach, a roof over my head... life is good" the MC would say things like, "and plenty of cliches to go around." Then they laughed. I think it can be ironic when done well.

Like KTC said, people speak in cliches all the time. But in narrative, it's not a good thing to overuse cliches. And if one must, he can mock the cliches for effect.

maestrowork said:

My character called out cliches all the time. For example, when one character said things like "I have food in my stomach, a roof over my head... life is good" the MC would say things like, "and plenty of cliches to go around." Then they laughed. I think it can be ironic when done well.

Like KTC said, people speak in cliches all the time. But in narrative, it's not a good thing to overuse cliches. And if one must, he can mock the cliches for effect.

Click to expand...

I have less of a problem with cliches in dialogue since that's how people speak ... although they also um and ahh a lot and I wouldn't put much of that in dialogue.

I did have one character who would unintentionally slaughter cliches. Also, turning a cliche on its head can be fun sometimes -- when my protag found out his wife was pregnant, he threw up. (In women's fic, a big cliche is for a woman to vomit then discover she's pregnant.)

However, I would just caution against self-consciously calling out cliches with the notion that simply acknowledging them somehow cancels out their "clicheness." It doesn't. It just draws attention to them. And that goes for anything we shouldn't* do in writing. In a book I read recently (which shall remain nameless, but ScarlettPeaches knows) a normally taciturn character suddenly morphed into Chatty Cathy and gave a blow-by-blow account of events -- just because the author needed him to fill the reader in on something he'd witnessed, but the first-person-POV character hadn't.

The POV character's assertion that she'd never seen him so talkative didn't cover for the travesty; it just made it that much worse.




*Insert if done well caveat here.