cliches in short stories

Unfortunately, death is "easy" to write, to incite a lesson or moral. A personal example is a deathbed confession. I had written a piece, and kicked myself after submitting it. It was very cliche, and I rewrote it. Same confession, with all characters very much alive.

I wouldn't start a story with the intent to have to be a theme that's been done way too many times. I just write the story, and judge after I've read it. Sometimes it needs changed, sometimes it doesn't.

I think life is full of cliches and there must be 1001 ways to write a deathbed story or story about death.

Worry less, gettingby; write more.

gettingby said:

jacksen - I posed this question because I thought it could be interesting for discussion not because I am worried about anything.

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gettingby, if you pose the questions for discussion, and not because you're worried about having clichés in your own writing, perhaps you should give us your opinions on the topic. When someone intends to lead a discussion, they typically start by sharing their own thoughts on the matter, no? Then others can add to the conversation.

College English 102 was so depressing I almost dropped the class because I couldn't stand all the death and dying. Even the one poem we read was about a boy getting his hand sawed off by a buzz saw as he was chopping wood. His family just watched him bleed to death because they lived so far out in the country it was pointless to call an ambulance in hopes that it would get there in time.

I looked at the Norton Anthology we had there were plenty of stories that weren't about death, dying, or going insane.

There's a finite number of themes, whether or not a piece comes across as cliche is all about the execution. I think the same holds true in most genres and styles.

Death is not a cliche. Might as well say life is a cliche. That gives us very little to write about.

I know something is cliche if I've read it before, or seen it in a movie.

But cliched writing is a lot deadlier than cliched subject matter.

I suppose everyone has written something cliche during the course of their writing life. It's really more about how it is written rather than the inner topic of the story. I have tried this in another forums, two people writing the same plot each in their own voice and the results were interesting.
Cliche topics can become very intriguing if written uniquely, as everyone has a special writer's voice within them.

gettingby said:

jacksen - I posed this question because I thought it could be interesting for discussion not because I am worried about anything.

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Whoops, sorry!

Posters often present a problem or issue because it is something they are concerned about, or wish to avoid. It has become a sort of 'stumbling block' preventing them from writing the way they want.

My response is often, get over it! Don't worry about it! Just get on with the writing!

As some writers do 'overworry' about things so much, they simply don't write. They get hung up on the use or overuse of adverbs; how long a chapter should be; whether or not their writing should be PC, or not; dialogue tags; how to write description; which POV to use...etc. etc.

Therefore my response has often been: write more, worry less. The actual physical act of writing will often get the writer over this 'hump,' or issue which is keeping them from writing the way they want.

So if you ain't worried, then I is happy.

Sometimes - especially in very short fiction - a cliche is actually a good thing as it can convey a very specific idea with few words.

I agree: killing characters is an easy way to make a short story dramatic with little effort.

It's an easy habit to fall into. Death is easy, and the short-term results are often positive.

Recently, I challenged myself to write stories where nobody dies. I've banned myself from killing anyone off. Not because I want happy endings, but because killing characters is a crutch that makes things too easy.

kuwisdelu said:

I agree: killing characters is an easy way to make a short story dramatic with little effort.

It's an easy habit to fall into. Death is easy, and the short-term results are often positive.

Recently, I challenged myself to write stories where nobody dies. I've banned myself from killing anyone off. Not because I want happy endings, but because killing characters is a crutch that makes things too easy.

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Killing characters is no more a crutch than anything else, and doesn't make any story one bit more or less dramatic, or one bit easier to write. Death is a heavy subject, it's a natural part of life, and takes just as much, or more, skill to write well as anything else. There's nothing easy about it.

Death is not a cliche, it is not an easy way out, and it is one of the most important subjects out there. Intentionally not writing about death is simply to ignore something that's present in every life.

kuwisdelu said:

I agree: killing characters is an easy way to make a short story dramatic with little effort.

It's an easy habit to fall into. Death is easy, and the short-term results are often positive.

Recently, I challenged myself to write stories where nobody dies. I've banned myself from killing anyone off. Not because I want happy endings, but because killing characters is a crutch that makes things too easy.

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Wow, I'd disagree with his. Death sets off ramifications that even I, supposedly in control of everything, often cannot foresee. The elimination of one character sets off chains of events that ripple off in all directions.

I know it's not a short story, but take the Death of Thrones novel, and the various deaths. Each one is 'boom' and what you thought was going to happen, or the path a particular character will take is now going off in a different direction.

However, my shorts are all mysteries, and there usually is a death at the beginning of the story. It is the seed from which everything springs. Often it is, no death, no story. (Some of my stories involve other types of crimes, or a puzzle to be solved.)

But death is so - THE END. For someone, and its effects will be felt for good or bad by the other characters, too.

Depends on where the cliche is.

If it's a textual cliche--the fire was hot as hell, he avoided her like the plague, that sort of thing--I think that a cliche that makes the story work is much nicer than forced originality that slows the story down and makes the reader think (at the wrong moment). Obviously, if your story is nothing but cliches, there's a problem, but that's rarely the case.

There's nothing wrong with textual cliches--after all, their very potency is what made them used so often that they became cliches--but they lack power. You probably don't want to use them where you need to create an effect, but they can efficiently convey an idea on the way to your payoff.

If it's a situational or plot cliche--we were all living in a jar of Tang! the stranded couple turned out to be named Adam and Eve! The vampire managed to corner the pretty young woman only to discover she was a vampire hunter!--well, that's a more difficult situation. Your story might not survive. In that case, you probably have to dig deeply into the situation and figure out how you can twist it. The jar of Tang you might be able to rescue by starting after the escape, rather than having the realization of the truth be the subject of the story. Alfred Bester thought about the stranded couple and realized that you only needed gut bacteria to seed the earth--same basic idea, but it avoids the Adam and Eve cliche. Maybe the vampire hunter is part of a tag-and-release study of vampires.

In all of those cases, the original story does not survive unscathed.

gettingby said:

A lot of people die in literary short stories.

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I don't think people die in short stories any more than they die in novels, so I don't get the point of that statement.

gettingby said:

How do you guys write about topics that can easily fall cliche?

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Topics usually start out cliche. It's what you do with the cliche that makes the difference. It's the "new twist on an old theme" thing.