Clichés! What Are They Good for?

Absolutely something!

Clichés exist for a good reason. Namely, they work.

…That is, they worked, once upon a time, before everyone realized they worked and tried to mimic them without taking the time to analyze why they had worked and thereby ruining them…

Clichés also come about when something becomes so inanely popular that anything using anything remotely similar becomes labeled a blatant knock-off, even though novel series with schools for wizards existed before Harry Potter, and stories where the evil guy ends up being the hero's dad existed before Star Wars.

This even applies to names. The name Luke can be used without necessarily thinking of Star Wars, but probably not for the hero, and not so for Leia. Gandalf and Arwen, both names with origins from long before The Lord of the Rings, are now universally associated with a wizard and an elf.

Clichés therefore exist because they make readers think of something else, another book, another world.

But there's another reason for them, too.

Consider the usual character flaws you see in novels: a hot temper and stubbornness come immediately to mind, to me. I never fully appreciated why those flaws are so common until I tried writing a novel from the perspective of a passive character. Talk about "Eeek".

Kick-butt heroines are so incredibly popular among writers because they're easy. It's an extreme, and extremes are inherently easier to develop and write. If you try to tone it down, you run into the other extreme of the utterly passive, only-there-to-scream-and-faint women who are utterly flat and nobody wants to see in modern fiction. (I hope.)

But anything that steps outside the box of what's considered "normal" risks getting burned.

Consider all the bad rap Stephenie Meyer has gotten about Twilight (other than for the misplaced modifiers). Bella has passive aspects, placing her outside the norm, and the author gets criticized for it. (People also say Bella has no sense of humor, which I honestly don't get, since I was laughing through most of the book.)

Consider also the movie Underworld, which is an action/adventure meets romance meets a bit of horror, and could be called an action Romeo and Juliet with vampires and werewolves. I've read reviews that give it bad ratings for no other reason than it's an action movie that actually has a plot.

So writers use clichés to stay safe. All stories have at least some clichés in them, but what does the author do with them? Every writer should have a care to examine his story and analyze why he uses the clichés he does; if he built and developed them well, he should be fine. The danger comes when an author relies on clichés.

And please, don't do that. Just… don't.