Edit like an Editor: A Wattpad Featured Guide ✔

Part v. The Thing About Clichés

Writing a successful novel requires a sense of authenticity, of credibility, of accuracy. A cliché is a phrase or an occurrence or an opinion or an idea that is overused and lacks originality. Clichés rely on stereotypes to fuel characters' personalities and traits.

Clichés are usually frowned upon because they have been overused so often, they can give off the effect of a lack of authenticity or a lack of creativity and originality.

Clichés are a problem because they're predictable. No reader enjoys a novel that's characters do exactly what's expected of them.

There are some instances when clichés are accepted, however.

Your first draft—unless your imagination has truly been charged and has led to some real surprises—will include some clichés. The whole plot might be one big cliché, but don't worry. Clichés can be freshened up, twisted, adjusted.

The Clichéd Character

The evil mother, the shy submissive protagonist, the possessive bi-polar love interest, the clueless blonde, and other stock characters of novels that have been written a million times. You've seen these characters before in published novels as well as your fair share on Wattpad.

Literature is full of character clichés—in fact, that's where they come from. Way back when, someone wrote a great character like that, and then other people copied it until it became a cliché.

Clichés are particularly lethal in your protagonist.

The Clichéd Plot

There are a number of clichéd plots on television and in movies: the serial killer plot, the business tycoon who ignores her family, the hostage crisis.

Add to this the abused wife who has to seek a shelter and the alcoholic father who abuses his children. It's hard not to turn out a clichéd plot from these old storylines, but it's possible.

How To Avoid Clichés

The challenge for the writer is to come up with new twists on old clichés to make them different, to make them unexpected, to make them original.

Rethink, re-experience, and tackle your draft with new energy. Read the story over carefully, and give your imagination another chance for it.

If the father in your story is an alcoholic who abuses his wife and children, your story is clichéd. Yet, a refreshing revision could redeem your story if you see new qualities in the father that aren't typical qualities we've seen and heard before.

To escape clichés, you must peer more deeply into your characters and their issues, going for as much complexity as you can. You need to make your characters surprising.

Make some other conflict the major conflict and the clichéd one—the abusive husband or father plot, for instance— just one part of this more major conflict. Not that the abuse will be slighted—it will be recontextualized from a different, more interesting perspective.

Rewrite Clichéd Expressions

A novel full of clichés is the sign of an amateur. Go after them ruthlessly.

If you have a character who's a pretentious fool, then it's fine to let him spout clichés in his dialogue. But write them in your narrative and you're the one who looks like the fool.

Clichés often sneak in when you're trying to come off as smooth or smart. Sometimes, too, when you're tired and just haven't got the energy to reach beyond the cliché.

Whenever you come across a clichéd expression in your novel, try doing one of these things:

• Replace it with your own fresh image or metaphor.

• Delete the cliché and write something descriptive.

When Clichés Are Okay

Take the excerpt below as an example. The character, Ryan, just lost his mother to suicide due to her worsening cancer.

Shamefully, he acknowledged there was a tiny part of him that was angry with her. Even while the larger part of him had to admit the truth: In the end, it didn't matter if she went this way, or in another month from the disease; it was never going to be enough time. And he was glad that she was done suffering. For her to have shown any weakness, any sign of discomfort, must have meant the pain was excruciating.

Still, he couldn't help wishing for just a little more time.

- JessaMartell's "Untethered" - chapter 29

In this instance, Ryan's experiencing grief, anger, and remorse. He wishes he could have had a little more time with his mother before she passed. This scene is cliché because wanting a little more time with a loved one who's passed on is severely overused in literature.

However, what makes this cliché okay is the fact that everyone in real life has also felt this way once before when a loved one has passed away. Readers can relate to this scene. Even though it is cliché, it is realistic.

In instances where the scene is as realistic as it could be, yet still is considered a cliché, it is passable.

Please remember to vote! And check out Jessa's book if you're into romance, mystery, and amazing character growth.