When writing novels what are the "cliche" or archaic phrases should you avoid?

If you heard it before, it's probably a cliche.

Also, you should probably read this: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html

Scroll down to the list.

I'm thinking all of them.

You might occasionally get away with one in dialogue.

The list is a mile long. Remember to use a couple cliches, though. Familiarity breeds content.

Hmmm....cliche is anything that's used in novels a lot. I didn't think "suddenly" counted as a cliche though. But I suppose I can see how that would be cliche.

Someone told me saying things like "She tucked her straight, blond hair behind her ears" is cliche, unoriginal. but there are only so many ways you can show someone's appearance without telling.

Having someone glance at their reflection in the mirror to describe their appearance is a big no-no from what I've gathered. Been there, done that.

In my opinion, if your characters speak something like "Piece of cake" that's okay because it's the character saying it, it's part of their personality. I have a couple cliches like that in my novel, but it works.

When someone says don't use cliches in your book, they don't mean don't use cliches as cliches. They mean try to be original. Show your story using fresh thoughts, stringing your words together differently than everyone else.

There can also be cliche characters - you don't want your romance heroine to be beautiful and perfect in every way. You also don't want your antagonist to be ugly and evil with all the characteristics of the Wicked Witch of the West. You want your characters to have something that makes them unique - your heroine is beautiful but with a long scar from the center of her chest, around to her left hip. How did it get there? Does she have some sort of evil in her past that she's desperately trying to overcome? Does she have any bad habits that result from that like maybe she sleeps with every guy that comes her way?

Does that make sense?

I agree with AC -- although you want to weed as much of this as you can out of your prose, if you're writing dialogue and/or first-person POV, a certain amount of commonplace language and/or phrasing is probably necessary to make it feel natural. (Unless you're dealing with characters who speak in highly stylized ways.)

So what do you say when something happens suddenly... or don't things happen suddenly?
(*reminds himself to take out any 'suddenly's' in his novel)

The reader will know if it happens suddenly.

What about "abruptly"? quickly, instantly, immediately, surprisingly...hmmm....i don't know. I have maybe one or two suddenlys and I'm not taking them out. Unless an editor tells me to before it goes off to the presses....

No, by the situation itself.

If a bike crashes into a bench, if two cars collide, if a hungry badger bursts out from the underbrush, you can be guaranteed these were "sudden" actions. You don't even have to show your character gasping, stumbling, screaming, whatever. Readers understand the shape of the world. You don't have to describe everything like it's the first time they've encountered anything, at all, ever.

And badgers are mean animals. They fight bears.

I don't know if cliched phrases are as important as cliched situations in a given story. I mean, I don't mind writing a cliched phrase in the first draft because I know I'll change it during revisions. But I sure wouldn't want to find out too late that my entire story is cliched and will therefore never sell.

allen

dempsey said:

If you heard it before, it's probably a cliche.

Also, you should probably read this: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html

Scroll down to the list.

Click to expand...

That's a great list. I laughed at some of them, but I found myself going "whoops!" at one point...

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I hate the word "somehow". To me it just seems like an utter cop out so the author doesn't have to think about and explain what really happened.

I think when people say, "Don't use these words/phrases," what they really mean is avoid them if you can. A cliché is just something that's been used so much, it doesn't mean anything anymore, like "soft as a baby's bottom" (which I used on the boards recently ). It's a cliché because people say it so much no one even thinks about how soft a baby's bottom really is.

I don't think "suddenly" falls in this category, but some obviously disagree. Regardless, it is commonly overused. So, if you can write the scene without it and just make it obvious by what happens or how someone reacts, then don't use it. At the same time, there are some places where "suddenly" works, where it does exactly what you want it to do. The point is you have to choose for yourself which words are appropriate.

At the very least, you can use words like that as placeholders for when you go back and do serious revision on that scene. Don't fret about it while you are writing a rough draft. That's the time you don't want your imagination impeded by worrisome little things like whether or not to use "suddenly."

"Soft" really isn't the first adjective that comes to mind when I think of a baby's bottom.

"Poopy" would be closer.

I've read that a cliche is anything that sounds familiar. It doesn't have to be 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink'. It can be a 'rosy-fingered dawn', 'off the top of her head' even 'but then' is hinky. We're writers because we love words. Play with them, tweak them, 'off with the top of her head' ala 'Kill Bill 2' is close and gooey. Ewwww :}

Yeah, I don't like anyone telling me what my characters should and shouldn't say. One short fiction prof did that and I hated it.

It also makes it tough writing from first person - it's a character telling the story and it's filtered through their personality. Naturally, a normal person is going to have some cliche or eccentric narrative style.

I guess you just got to sort the character's voice from your own and keep yours as tight as possible.

The reason I try to cut 'suddenly' or 'sudden' from my work (in revision) is that it's usually an attempt to make the situation look dramatic instead of trusting the situation to be dramatic.
"Branches snapped, and a man toppled to the dirt path in front of them, and lay still."
You can stick 'suddenly' in that sentence, but it won't add drama or surprise. It may even undercut the surprise, because that 'suddenly' warns the reader something's about to happen.
-Barbara

I just went through the draft of my novel and looked for every 'suddenly' and I never realized I had so many (Love that edit/find). I knocked out about 95% of them without changing the meaning of the sentence. When I saw them they looked totally useless. I did keep a few of them, though, mainly those in dialogue. Maybe I might revise again to eliminate those. (Does every last 'suddenly' have to be excised from the novel?)

Next I'll work on 'that', as in Bill saw that the cat had been fed already. In that case the 'that' is unnecessary.

Any other words that should be eliminated?

Not a word, but a punctuation mark - !

Overuse of exclamation marks really rips my nips. Not everything is that exciting!!! And if you have to keep putting !s in your text, it doesn't convince me of anything other than the fact you're trying! too! hard!!!

dempsey said:

No, by the situation itself.

If a bike crashes into a bench, if two cars collide, if a hungry badger bursts out from the underbrush, you can be guaranteed these were "sudden" actions. You don't even have to show your character gasping, stumbling, screaming, whatever. Readers understand the shape of the world. You don't have to describe everything like it's the first time they've encountered anything, at all, ever.

And badgers are mean animals. They fight bears.

Click to expand...

Bears are wusses:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/03/30/pwnd/

And, on topic, in writing cliches are the product of bad writing, but they are not the cause of it.

The real cliche is poor writing. The only cliche is poor writing. If you write it purty enough, even a book entirely made of cliches will sell and be successful and make you a beloved household name. But, you've got to write the hell out of it.

Thekherham said:

Next I'll work on 'that', as in Bill saw that the cat had been fed already. In that case the 'that' is unnecessary.

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The foul stench made Bill gag the instant he walked into the kitchen. He staggered to the window, threw it open and gulped in sweet, fresh air. He glowered at the cat as it slunk out of the room. Holy crap, what was his wife feeding the brute? The ozone layer couldn't take much more of this.

Show, don't tell. Pardon the cliché.

-Derek

!!!!!!Guilty

BlueLucario said:

I was looking at my piece, and a critter said that some of the stuff in my stories are cliche, meaning that they are overused. My cliche phrases are,

Cliche phrases

Suddenly
To my surprise
All of a sudden

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These are actually unnecessary phrases if you've done the narrative right. For example, you shouldn't need to tell the reader that something happened "all of sudden"--it should be obvious in context that what happened was all of sudden.

Watch out for overuse of the words looked and turned. It's easy to use too many and not realize it. I ran a search in Word and had it highlight the occurances of look--I found eight instances (and variations like glanced) on one page. To the inevitable question of what to use instead, try thinking of what else your character can do besides look at someone.