Terrific post. I know I tend to use cliches and it is my critique partners that call me on it. Sometimes they aren’t even needed.

Thank you for your post. One thing I plan to do after getting the act together for next novel is clean out all my cliches. That and repetitive phrases, like using the word “realize” twice in the same paragraph. Or using the same phrase several times in a story. “Dead as a zombie” may look cool twice, but grow tiring after the third repetition.

Barbara

Barbara,

Any unique phrase that is used more than once such as the “dead as a zombie” phrase is going to stick out like a sore thumb (cliche alert).

Caution on the repetitive words. Done correctly they are a literary device. For instance, anadiplosis is where a 2nd sentence starts with the word that ended the preceeding sentence. Here is a contemporary example, perhaps penned by fantasy author Terry Brooks who wrote the novel to go with the release of The Phantom Menance. Terry uses lots of rhetocial devices in his writing and is a long-time presenter at the Maui Writer’s Conferences. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.”
(Yoda in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menance)

The anadiplosis occurs with the words anger and hate.

There are tons of rhetorical devices and you might decide to use them and restructure your sentences. Perhaps you’ll use anaphora where a word or phrase is repeated, intentionally several times for emphasis at the beginning of a sentence, or use antistrophe where the phrase is repeated at the end of a sentence. If you read or listen to political speeches, they use anaphora and antistophe on a regular basis.

Wayne,

Be careful what you think is a cliche. To me, alot of the words you used were thematic for a hard boiled detective or a gunslinger. They add a certain color to the narration. They were period words, not words that truly impacted the emotion of a scene or were a discription which is frequently the intended function of a cliche used by an author.

And some of your words, may actually be fine, but the character his or herself is cliched.

For instance, we all know loads of stories about private eyes having drinking problems. I can’t honestly say, though, that I know WHY any of them have their problems. Maybe the guy saw his wife and kid hit by a Model T and slumped into a horrible depression, and the only way he could alter his mental state enough to survive is by driniking.

I don’t know how many readers are fans of It’s A Wonderful Life, the movie made by Frank Capra and starring Jimmy Stewart, but in a pivotal scene, a scene where the young George Bailey is slapped in the ear to the point it bleeds, Mr. Gower the druggist is drinking because he learns his son has died overseas from the flu. He drinks to comfort his sorrow, and in one version of life without George intervening, Mr. Gower makes a terrible mistake and kills someone with a wrong presceiption fill. Mr. Gower is convicted of murder, sent to prision, gets out and becomes a drunk to handle his guilt. But that is revealed to us in the story, and it is motivated. Many cliched characters are not motivated by the author for being as they are.

And in the case of a detective having a drinking problem; well a lot of them are people we really wouldn’t like in real life. Why? Because we don’t understand, even in little tiny ways, why they are the way they are. We don’t have anything to make us want to cheer for them, any reason to want them to get out of the rut they are in. So, we, as authors, need to give them that something. They have the little girl next door that is always leaving a crayon drawing in the mail and it is the one bright spot of the day; our detective looks forward to that and we see he has a soft spot for kids. And then, woomp…the prictures stop coming. He doesn’t know why. Eventually he finds out the cute little tot has been kidnapped and we’re off and running. We want him to succeed and now he’s a little different from all those other hard drinking private eyes.

Another character cliche? The hooker with a heart of gold. Do we ever find out why she’s so caring and nice? Seldom. Reality would probably indicate these people should be harsh and jaded, but even that character would be cliched if there weren’t something significantly different about them. It’s up to the author to reveal that in bits and pieces as we come to the page ready to cheer them on.

So be careful from thinking that perhaps period language is cliched. It may be, and it may not be. It is all in the hands of the author. What it needs is careful examination; just like a cliched character needs careful examination. Find out how to get the same emotional response across in a different way and you’ll be killing cliches.