Cliches.....are they really all that bad?

[Commonmind]

None taking J.D. I've read many of your posts on the site as I frequent many of the same sub-forums you do and I know you're not the type to debase other members. I simply wanted to clarify my point; Cul misunderstood what I was trying to say, or rather, I didn't communicate it well enough.

[Culhwch]

No misunderstanding. I only singled your post out because you had actually used the term archetype; my post was really in response to the thread in general...

[j. d. worthington]

Commonmind: Danke.

On the subject of the thread itself, though, I'd say that, yes, clichés are bad, but common tropes or (as Teresa so aptly put it) staples are not. After all, that's the very definition of the word "cliché": "A trite or overused expression or idea" or "a person or character whose behavior is predictable or superficial".

[dustinzgirl]

But there is something to be said for the cliche character----every book has one, the wise old witch/warlock, the smart arsed jester, the reluctant hero, these are all staples whose behavior is highly predictable. Roland in DT was a cliche, but a well loved one. Darth Vader, a cliche bad guy, and loved even still. Donkey from Shrek, totally cliche, but so darn cute! Most cops in movies are cliche, most politicians and scientists, cliche. Women and men in every romantic comedy, cliche. Most horror flicks in and of themselves are totally cliche.

The trick is to keep the cliche, but be subtle about it. Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil, an utterly cliche reluctant zombie killing hero, but not so cliche because she was a woman.

I think cliches are important because people who will buy your stories must be able to attach a familiarity with the product. The basic thoughts of customer perception and brand equity. Your characters are your brand, the more a customer (reader) perceives familiarity mixed with innovation, the more likely they are going to love and buy your story.

But you can't be too cliche, customer's (readers) can smell a knock-off brand before they even open the package.

So use cliches, but wisely and with an innovative twist.

[Leisha]

Originally Posted by Thor_Doomhammer

But the question is...in our own writing, are these things to avoid, or things to follow?

After all, people have been successful for years and years and years using these basics molds and then incorporating their own ideas into it. Apparently people like reading these types of stories.

But at the same time, could we be reaching a point where there are so many of these stories that people are bored with them? Do we need to come up with entirely new ideas?

I hope I'm not repeating anyone. I couldn't be bothered to read the other replies, since I'm too tired at the moment.


Remember, there are no new ideas anymore, or so people say. It's about making your story unique from all the countless others. It's about bringing your book to life with engaging characters, a great plot, and a strong, intriguing world. I think if your story is well written, certain clichés can be used effectively.

[Giovanna Clairval]

Ursula LeGuin said that one character is missing in the genre. It is Mrs Brown, the mousy, unnoticeable lady.
In Science Fiction and Mrs Brown, U. Le Guin quotes Virginia Woolf, who is musing upon her meeting an old lady ("Mrs. Brown") in the train:

"I believe that all novels begin with an old lady in the corner opposite. I believe that all novels, that is to say, deal with character, and that it is to express character - not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved. [...] The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poets, historians, or pamphleteers."

Ursula Le Guin wonders whether the SF writer can ever sit across that old lady; or whether he is doomed to be "trapped for good inside our great, gleaming spaceships", which are capable of "containing heroic captains in black and silver uniforms, and second officers with peculiar ears, and mad scientists with nubile daughters", and indeed are capable of anything at all "except one thing: they cannot contain Mrs. Brown".


In the 40's and 50's,

"The humanity of the astronaut is a liability, a weakness, irrelevant to his mission. As astronaut, he is not a being: he is an act. It is the act that counts. We are in the age of Science where nothing is. None of the scientists, none of the philosophers, can say what anything or anyone is. They can only say, accurately, beautifully, what it does. The age of Technology; of Behaviorism; the age of the Act."

Around 1950, Mrs. Brown shows up in Fantasy, in the form of Bilbo Baggins, Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol. And it is the most unexpected thing that could happen in the genre, because:

"If any field of literature has no, can have no Mrs. Brown in it, it is fantasy - straight fantasy, the modern descendant of folktale, fairy tale, and myth. These genres deal with archetypes, not with characters. The very essence of Elfland is that Mrs. Brown can't get there - not unless she is changed, changed utterly, into an old mad witch, or a fair young princess, or a loathly Worm."

According to Le Guin, the arrival of Mrs. Brown is a good thing:

"Should a book of science fiction be a novel? [...] I have already said yes. I have already admitted that this, to me, is the whole point. That no other form of prose, to me, is a patch on the novel. That if we can't catch Mrs. Brown, if only for a moment, then all the beautiful faster-than-light ships, all the irony and imagination and knowledge and invention are in vain; we might as well write tracts or comic books, for we will never be real artists."

And yet, she goes on, one could say that the novel is dead because there are no characters anymore, only "classes, masses, statistics, body counts, subscription lists, insurance risks, consumers, randomly selected samples, and victims". Or: "There are moving pictures of a woman in various places with various other persons. They do not add up to anything so solid, so fixed, so Victorian or medieval as a 'character' or even a personality."

Well, if I am right, says Le Guin, then why keep writing?

"What good are all the objects in the universe, if there is no subject?"


And she concludes by saying that...

... we should either give up all hope, or write novels.

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by Leisha

I hope I'm not repeating anyone. I couldn't be bothered to read the other replies, since I'm too tired at the moment.


Remember, there are no new ideas anymore, or so people say. It's about making your story unique from all the countless others. It's about bringing your book to life with engaging characters, a great plot, and a strong, intriguing world. I think if your story is well written, certain clichés can be used effectively.

I don't think there ever were any original ideas. Even the earliest caveman drawings depict cliches. We can go back to the earliest writings and see expressions of other stories, I read an interesting article on how the story of Jesus was a rip off of Homer, LOL! So, in every story relative to the human condition, which all stories truly are, it has been done before. The environment may change, the plot may change, but the core of all stories are essentially the same. Thats why your last sentence is so important.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by dustinzgirl

But there is something to be said for the cliche character----every book has one, the wise old witch/warlock, the smart arsed jester, the reluctant hero, these are all staples whose behavior is highly predictable. Roland in DT was a cliche, but a well loved one. Darth Vader, a cliche bad guy, and loved even still. Donkey from Shrek, totally cliche, but so darn cute! Most cops in movies are cliche, most politicians and scientists, cliche. Women and men in every romantic comedy, cliche. Most horror flicks in and of themselves are totally cliche.

The trick is to keep the cliche, but be subtle about it. Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil, an utterly cliche reluctant zombie killing hero, but not so cliche because she was a woman.

I think cliches are important because people who will buy your stories must be able to attach a familiarity with the product. The basic thoughts of customer perception and brand equity. Your characters are your brand, the more a customer (reader) perceives familiarity mixed with innovation, the more likely they are going to love and buy your story.

But you can't be too cliche, customer's (readers) can smell a knock-off brand before they even open the package.

So use cliches, but wisely and with an innovative twist.

This may (again) be me being pernickety, but I think the difference here is, again, between clichésand types -- one is (again) a template: well-known, recognizable to even a mildly-literate reader (or viewer), having time-honored (or worn) characteristics while still retaining a certain individuality in subtle ways; in other words, the writer brings something of their own to the type. A cliché, on the other hand, doesn't have any distinguishing marks any longer. (It certainly did at one time, but that was long since.) It has lost all its power to evoke any positive response (save, perhaps, in satire -- though even this is questionable) because it has no originality bestowed upon it; else it wouldn't be a cliché.

[Teresa Edgerton]

One of my favorite fantasy novels (published about thirty years before LOTR, but certainly Frodo and Sam paved the way for it to be reissued and gain a following in the 1970's) is Lud-in-the-Mist, which is full of ordinary people, living ordinary lives, even though they live on the borders of Fairyland. It doesn't have a medieval setting -- although anyone determined to stretch anything pre-Industrial Revolution into medieval could probably accomplish it -- the main characters are merchants and their families, no one discovers a magical artifact or learns they're the heir of kings, and there isn't a single battle scene. There are no wizards, no magicians or witches, and it is still one of the most magical books I've ever read.

[GOLLUM]

On a more general note, Teresa is right, anyone wishing to study the Genre really must check out Lud-in-the-Mist, it's one of the most significant and inspiring novels to have ever been written, period.

[j. d. worthington]

Agreed, Teresa. A lovely book, well worth seeking out. (I believe it's still in print, actually....)

EDIT: Yep. At least, it's easily available in a tpb with prefatory material by Neil Gaiman. Interestingly, Amazon mentions that those who searched for this one also expressed an interest in James Branch Cabell's Jurgen -- another non-typical fantasy (though it does have such a setting). They're even offering the two together for a reduced price....

[GOLLUM]

Well don't forget it's part of VG's Masterwork series, sorry couldn't help myself....

[Teresa Edgerton]

There are at least two recent reprints. One of them gave me quite a jolt when I saw it in a bookstore a year or two ago, since it has nothing at all to do with the book, and it looked like they were trying to market it as the generic fantasy it most emphatically is NOT. So depressing.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

There are at least two recent reprints. One of them gave me quite a jolt when I saw it in a bookstore a year or two ago, since it has nothing at all to do with the book, and it looked like they were trying to market it as the generic fantasy it most emphatically is NOT. So depressing.

Who is the publisher? We should write to them!

[Teresa Edgerton]

I don't remember the publisher. I'll go see if I can find it on amazon.

Yep, here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/Lud-Mist-Hope-...4151246&sr=1-2

Actually, it's quite a pretty cover. I would like it on practically any other book.

What I love about Lud is that it captures the poetry of everyday things (while still advocating for an element of magic and mystery in a well-regulated life).