The secret to avoid clichs while improving your writing
It is a cliché in itself to say that a writer has to avoid clichés. Nevertheless, when you are an editor who spends several hours a week reading manuscripts, you think you cannot stress the point too much. You also realize that an appreciable part of the clichés you read are written by good writers.
A cliché is, by nature, common; so common that you may use one without noticing it. Some expressions and phrases belong to your linguistic environment for so long that you cannot analyze them: you do not even know you (over)used them. How could you avoid something you cannot see or hear?
If the saying “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree” has been used in your family as a way to shorten long explanations about some fact the whole neighborhood was aware of, you may well forget how trite it sounds.
To get rid of most clichés, when you are proofreading, visualize your work and describe your vision. So many clichés use metaphors that the method will sieve eighty percent of them. Thus, even if you are not aware that you, your aunt, your grand-father go repeating that “the acorn…”, you cannot ignore the scene when you “shoot” it.
Of course, most times you cannot simply erase (more often Control-X) the incriminated part and go on reading. You have to replace it. Obviously, to replace “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree” with “a chip off the old block” will not improve your writing. Your strategy will depend on the status of the phrase within your work. Is it said by a character? Which one? Does the way he appears allow him to say: “The acorn doesn’t fall far from the old block”?
If the cliché is not part of a dialogue, does it belong to the narrator’s thoughts? In the reader’s mind, can the narrator be mistaken for the author? In such a case, you may feel like showing a connection with the reader.
If you are writing a funny novel, go with any distorsion of the platitude. “The acorn doesn’t fall far from the elm” is enough to free you from the accusation of using clichés.
If your acorn falls in the middle of an eulogy, it may be better you choose another way to renew the bromide, but there is no rule, except the canonical one: avoid to write clichés. In fact, this rule is part of another one: do not write what has already been written.
Tags: how to get rid of cliches | how to get rid of cliches | how to write | how to write | writing | writing
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I look for Gabrielle’s writings almost everywhere on the internet. They are often funny. What about a multilingual newsletter to learn French and Spanish at once?