Hello all, This is a thread about common clichés - so please add to it. Hopefully this will help people with their writing. Originality is what gets you noticed, but pesky clichés can hinder that. I'm not saying all clichés are bad (I'm still learning myself), but in some cases they can put off prospective agents and make your writing fall flat and seem unoriginal. 1) The one I’ll start with relates to the beginning of your story. Starting your story with a character(s) waking up is a cliché apparently, and in some cases, can stop an agent in their tracks. They won't read the rest of the submission. This is because it has been overdone. A top US agent wrote a blog post about this a few years ago. 2) Starting your story with the character looking at themselves in a mirror and describing their appearance. I won't go into detail about this one. It's a well-known cliché. 3) Describing eyes/sky/objects as cerulean blue - learnt this one recently...
Suspense and action/adventure novels where a character is cartoonishly superior in every way and out-fights, out-shoots, and easily out-does his/her adversaries at everything (worst example I can think of is Lucy in any of Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta books).
I know what you mean. I like a character with weaknesses and flaws, makes them more interesting. If they are unbeatable, the story just becomes boring and flat. Another one: Love triangles... so overdone!
Starting the story with a journey, that doesn't divulge who is making the journey or what the journey is about. I'm sorry to admit I did that one myself, in my novel's first draft. It's common. Nothing wrong with starting a story with a journey, but ensure that the purpose of the journey is made crystal clear at the outset. A named character riding the train to Somerset, to visit his unpleasant granny, who is on her deathbed—that would be a good launch to a story, I reckon. A cloaked figure riding a horse through wind and rain and dark of night? Nope, not so much.
Totally get this! As a reader I don't like to be left in the dark. I get frustrated with stories like that. I'm like... errr who are you and where are you? I like to get to know the characters from the offset. Another one: The character being an orphan/absent parents... Loads of YA books have main characters who are orphans. Nothing against being an orphan! It's just overdone...
Authors who consider their novels as 300-page info dumps on some subject that most of their readers couldn't care less about. There's a woman who writes detective novels who specializes in this, but I can't come up with her name right now.
Ah, yes, the teacher of lessons. We've seen it here, someone who created narratives for the sole express purpose of correcting calamitous inaccuracies, for as we all know, the answer to whether Gauls and Romans wore socks is the very hook upon which hangs the fate of the universe.
or, in a love triangle there is always a "good guy" (who has the heroines best interest at heart, and who loves her whole heartedly, and has always loved her) and a "bad guy" (destructive, dark and brooding, has no real interest in heroine)........ and the girl ALWAYS pick the "bad guy"
Sadistic and ruthless bad guys who by contrast are also cultured, intelligent, well-mannered and always impeccably dressed.
May I raise Darkly Brooding Boys™ to its own tier? You know the ones, forever off in a corner, smoking a cigarette, smouldering viciously, calling to every hapless female (or male) in the vicinity (apparently through pheromones because dude doesn't have to speak, just brood), sure to derail the most arduously constructed life plans. So happy Korra chose Asami. Bolin would have been okay too, but Mako... a mistake with a pulse.
The vast, Vast, VAST hordes of fantasy characters with heterochromia. It occurs in one half of one percent of the human population. In fantasy land, though, it seems people have a 50/50 chance.
Hey Woody; I guess it doesn't matter how you begin a story, its probably done countless times before anyway
Ah. The least annoying of the snowflake features, if I may say. Wings - they always baffle me. Even on creatures that don't fly, just wings. And tails. Then there's the more acute case of a less-experienced writer seeking a "flaw" for their character and somehow thinking "hang on, I could make them a /psychopath/!".
I don't like the trope where a character gets into deeper trouble because they fail to ask for help for an immaterial reason. "If I ask for help, then they will know I need help!" It is fine if it goes on for a page or two, but a lot of the time it eats up half of the second act. Once I know I'm in it, I usually flip ahead 50 pages.
1) The Love Triangle 2) "I'm so ugly" The rest of the world "OMG he/she is devastatingly gorgeous!" 3) The Chosen One or one who gets a title they have no earned (not always a cliche but it really irritates me. They'll call someone the savior but they haven't saved anyone yet." 4) the insanely intelligent evil master mind who is actually incredible dumb 5) Abusive and absent parents - not just in teen things. I've read quite a few books about adults and no parents are ever mentioned. They are of an age where many would have parents, but, nope. 6) Something that can be a cliche. Wicked, abusive, creepy guys being portrayed as romantic and just protective and all is sweet.
