Cliché

In practice

A cliché is an expression, image, character or plot turn that has been used so often it has lost its force. "It was a dark and stormy night," "cold as ice," the detective with a drinking problem, the villain who explains his plan instead of acting on it: each was fresh once, and repetition wore it smooth. The reader recognizes it before finishing the sentence, and recognition replaces feeling.

Clichés are not only phrases. Writers talk about clichéd characters (the wise old mentor who dies at the end of act two), clichéd scenes (waking up from a dream, the shower crying scene, the countdown stopped at one second) and clichéd plots. The test is the same at every scale: if the audience can predict the next beat from habit, the story has stopped surprising them.

The common mistake is thinking the cure is to avoid every familiar element. Genres are built from conventions, and audiences come for them. The difference between a convention and a cliché is execution: a familiar element used with a specific detail, a twist or real feeling still lands. The fix for a cliché is usually to make it particular, not to remove it.

The same moment, rewritten

The first draft is built from clichés ("time stood still," "a heart breaking into a million pieces") that announce emotion without creating it. The rewrite finds a specific object, labeled sandwiches, that only these two people would have, and lets the feeling sit in Iris's hand refusing to let go. The goodbye is as familiar as ever; the details make it new.

What a cliché is

A cliché is a phrase, idea or element of a work that has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect. Merriam-Webster defines it as a trite phrase or expression, and also as a hackneyed theme, characterization or situation. Both senses matter to writers: the tired phrase in a sentence and the tired situation in a plot.

The word comes from French printing. A cliché was a stereotype plate, a cast block that reproduced the same type or image again and again. The word is often said to imitate the sound the mold made in the printing process. By the late nineteenth century, English writers were using it for phrases that seemed to come off a plate rather than out of a mind.

Many clichés began as vivid metaphors. "Raining cats and dogs," "a needle in a haystack" and "the calm before the storm" were striking images once. The more people used them, the less anyone pictured the image, until the phrase meant only its literal message and carried none of its original surprise.

Examples of clichés

Phrase clichés include "at the end of the day," "only time will tell," "every cloud has a silver lining," "avoid it like the plague," "fit as a fiddle," "scared to death" and "it was all a dream." Description clichés include eyes like pools, hair like silk, a smile that lights up the room and a silence you could cut with a knife.

Character clichés include the hacker who types fast while numbers scroll, the cop one day from retirement, the jock bully, the nerd with tape on his glasses, the mentor who dies so the hero can grow and the villain who could kill the hero but monologues instead. Many of these overlap with tropes; a trope becomes a cliché when it is used without thought.

Scene and plot clichés include the opening alarm clock, the character looking in a mirror so the narration can describe them, the bomb defused at the final second, the run through the airport to stop a departure, the slow clap that spreads through a crowd, and the ending that reveals the whole story was a dream.

Cliché, trope and convention

A convention is an expected element of a form or genre: the meet-cute in a romantic comedy, the body in the first act of a mystery, the final confrontation in an action film. Conventions are promises to the audience, and breaking them carelessly disappoints people. A trope is a recurring device, pattern or character type that readers recognize; it is neutral, a building block like any other.

A cliché is a trope or convention that has gone stale through lazy use. The same element can be either. A mentor's death is a convention of the hero's journey; it becomes a cliché when the mentor exists only to die, and it becomes powerful again when the death costs the story something the audience did not expect, as Obi-Wan's does in Star Wars.

Subverting a cliché, setting up the expected beat and then delivering something else, can work well, but subversion is itself a familiar move. The scream queen who survives and the twist that the obvious suspect really did it have both been done. The more durable fix is specificity: details, motives and consequences that belong only to this story.

How to fix a cliché

Start by finding them. Read the draft and mark any phrase you have heard before, any description you could have written without looking at the scene, and any plot beat you saw coming. Clichés hide well in first drafts because they are the first words that arrive; that is exactly what makes them clichés.

For a phrase, ask what is actually happening and describe that. "Her heart was racing" might become the sound of her pulse in her ears, or her fingers too clumsy to unlock the phone. For a character, give them a want, a contradiction or a habit that does not fit the type. For a plot beat, ask what the characters would really do, then what it would cost them.

Sometimes the right choice is to keep the cliché, on purpose. Characters speak in clichés because real people do, and a character who leans on stock phrases ("it is what it is") is revealing something about themselves. Parody and comedy also use clichés knowingly. The goal is not to avoid every familiar word but to make every familiar word a decision.