How to avoid clichés and melodrama

Each book you write should be fresh, new and different. If you have ten books they should not be the same story told ten different ways.

Resist the lure of stereotypes. Real people are much more interesting, and much harder to write.

Tell your own story. Don’t try to rewrite someone else’s.

You do have to keep the story moving, but don’t rush. Give the reader detail so they understand and relate to the characters and the situation.

Conflict doesn’t have to be sensational. Ordinary lives with the problems set out so the reader relates to them work fine. Avoid gratuitous violence and melodrama.

Your characters need to grow, develop, and change. The reader needs to see this happen and understand how and why it happens. That makes them want to keep reading.


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel? Avoid clichés.

 

 

According to the dictionary (in this case, Merriam Webster) a cliché is

1: a trite phrase or expression; also: the idea expressed by it

2: a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation

3: something that has become overly familiar or commonplace

All of which translates as something not to be used too often in your story. Sure the occasional cliché may be clever, or funny, but too many of them, and it starts to sound as if the author has no fresh ideas of her own, and is merely churning out a loosely cobbled together arrangement of other people’s words.

Pick a few clichés and think about them for a minute. If the hero says to the heroine, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” do you really think the heroine will say, “Oh, my. He knows Shakespeare”? or is she more likely to say, “I’ve heard a lot better pick-up lines than that.”?

Or, “The villain has an ax to grind”. Or possibly he’s “made of money”, but then again “money is the root of all evil”.

If the heroine is “walking on eggshells” while she’s “waiting for the dust to settle” she probably needs better dialogue.

Clichés are boring.

Get your head in the game, get your ducks in a row, go the extra mile and give it a go. Write your own dialogue!

 

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

 

Clichés that make me groan

Why is it that in every movie when the hero or heroine goes shopping they come back with either a breadstick or celery or both, sticking out of their shopping bag? Are movie goers so stupid they don’t recognize a brown paper bag full of food without the breadstick and/or celery?

There are clichés just like this in books too.

The heroine who has red hair and green eyes and a temper to match her hair color. Note to authors: More than 70% of people have brown eyes. Blue eyes are 2% of the population and green is said to be more rare than blue.

The kitchen, which always has granite counter tops. Actually, most kitchens don’t have granite counter tops.

The epilogue where the hero and heroine, with their son aged three and daughter aged two, are playing with the dog on the lawn of their house. The average age difference between siblings in the US is 2.5 years. The children could be boy, boy; girl, girl; girl, boy; or boy, girl. So only one time in four will it be that way.

Then there are the clichéd phrases guaranteed to make the reader grind her teeth.

According to a survey, the most annoying phrases uttered in Australia include “at the end of the day”, “let’s do lunch”, “it’s not rocket science” and “24/7”. At work, “push the envelope”, “110 per cent” and “think outside the square” put us “on the same page”.

For a list of clichés to “avoid like the plague” see: http://clichesite.com/alpha_list.asp?which=lett+1

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.