I would avoid trite and cliche statements in the narrative but I think you would lose the voice of your character if they were removed from dialog. For instance I have a hard edge FBI agent in my new WIP and he will say things like "That's a lot of bull shit." I guess I could change it to, "Male bovine excrement." but to me it just doesn't sound the same. Another one of my characters will say things like "It is what it is." I can't imagine how I could change that and get the same meaning.
The thing about clichés is that.. you cannot reinvent the wheel. The only thing you can do about it is to make the wheel different, from its conception to the finished product. You also always need wheels to keep your story going (or grease, so it does not rust). (Yes, I'm studying mechanic and clearly the car metaphors do seem logic today in particular, so sue me. ) I try and minimise their use, but since there are so many books that have been written, you cannot make something entirely new that have never been done before. You can just make it as efficient and solid and believable as possible so your reader gets hooked on your story and your character. And for that, you need to work on your story a lot. - hW
Well it is something that is on most YA readers hated cliches list. Though you can look at angry Romance Revs too, and it may pop up there.
A cliché (or trope) is like a costume. You can wear the costume, pretend to be the vampire, hold the cape in front of your face and babble inanities like "Bluh, bluh, bluh, I vant to suck your blood!" and that's it. Good enough for Halloween when you're 9 years old. Or you can really think about inhabiting the character, about the character's motives and reasons for being in the story, what he wants, what he doesn't admit he wants, what he needs, what he can offer, his history, and you can take something that would seem to be nothing but a dopey cliché, a hackneyed set of dynamics, and elevate it, transform it, give us a character like Gary Oldman did in Brahm Stoker's Dracula (pronounced dra-koo-lya, please and for pity's sake). To me (this is a metaphor), a cliché is a badly inhabited costume. It's an actor who doesn't understand his or her character and is just pantomiming the props across the stage, empty, hollow.
The trouble I have here is the total subjectivity. Just sticking with your gothic example: are any of the vampires in Interview with the Vampire cliche? The characters undeniably exhibit vampire and Victorian tropes, but seeing as I found them compelling, I wouldn't sign off on any of them being "badly inhabited costumes." Others might, and have, but I wouldn't. So we're left with cliches in the same camp as beauty—in the eye of the beholder. I prefer to use cliche to refer to commonly observed narrative archetypes and situations. Dumb, bullying jocks; sexy and seductive vampires, etc. I find it's much easier to agree on what's popular as opposed to what's well executed.
I find your definition clouds the capacity to talk about the difference between a trope and a cliché. All clichés are tropes; not all uses of trope are cliché. Your definition is just the definition of a trope. And you've missed my point and its metaphorical aspect entirely. My metaphor has nothing to do with quality of the execution. It has to do with purpose. It has to do with making use of the trope in a way that rises above the trope itself as just an empty place-holder. Let's go a different direction: There are uncounted cliché-a.f. zombie stories that are just Zombies™ and Standard Crew of Survivors™ (or if it's got Mila Jovovich, then Crew of Smexy Male and Female Survivors with $500 Hair™) trying to reach the Zombie/Plague Free Zone™, oh, look, here come zombies out of a building... run. Or... You can have a completely non-cliché film like Warm Bodies that makes use of the otherwise tired trope of zombies to talk about digital addiction. Or the British series In The Flesh that makes use of the zombie trope to talk about people living with HIV.
That's possible, though I believe my definition is perfectly inline with the original poster's video. Clichés are not good. Clichés are not bad. Clichés simply are. That's straight from the video, so if I'm using cliche incorrectly then I'll put some of the blame on the video. As to your other point(s), I'm sorry, but I couldn't make sense of it/them. I got lost in all the trademarks and references to film or television I haven't seen.
That definition isn't helpful to me, as I don't believe in the concept of an "overused" archetype or narrative situation. Poorly executed, yes. Overused, there's no such thing from my point of view.
That may be true, but its definition begs the question that there's such thing as an "overused" narrative concept. I would argue, there isn't.
I'm speaking about a judgement as well. Overused is inherently negative, and I don't believe in (or see the logic of) inherently negative narrative concepts. A knight's quest to slay a dragon is a well-known fantasy trope—some would call it cliche. But if it was cliche, and cliches are inherently negative, then such a story would have a strike against it from their intended audience before a word of it is ever written. I call bullshit on that. Some of their audience may hold the cliche against them, but many would feel more favorably towards the story should they learn of its inclusion. It's simply a preference, and you can't, and shouldn't, universalize a preference.
I haven't done that. I call bullshit on the attempt to universalize an "overused narrative concept." It can't be done. Narrative concepts can be subjectively negative, but not inherently negative.
Just gonna slide in real quick and add my opinions. I'm kind of a sucker for cliches, so I'm biased, but I do, in fact, think that cliches cause problems within a story. However, I don't think it's because of cliches themselves. I think that the problem with cliches is the fact that, to a lot of people, cliches are boring. The way I see it, the people who don't like cliches don't like them because, once they see it beginning, they know exactly what's going to happen next. Cliches have the unique potential to make a story predictable. That won't inherently ruin the story, of course, but it will dull the narrative stakes, to a degree. By that, I mean that people will worry less about what happens next if they already know what's going to happen. A good writer can take advantage of this, however, and subvert the cliche. That, however, can also fail, as subverting cliches has become a sort of 'cliche' in itself. A really good writer can make the cliche work without hurting their story, as long as it works within the story's world. In short, I have nothing against cliches, but I believe them to be dangerous. If not used properly, they could end up souring your story for you readers. If used properly, however, they might just increase the drama/tension/cuteness/et cetera of your works. Well, that was fun. I really love talking about this kind of thing, so I kind of went overboard here. Just gonna slide out now.
Sure, though that's basically a tautology. And I think that rarely, if ever, applies to storytelling. Just because a storyteller uses cliches doesn't mean they aren't creating anything. How many Batman comics have been written? While I'm sure many of those comics have lots in common—in some cases even identical formulas—each book, whether we enjoy it or not, is a creative product. The same could be said for Star Trek episodes, high school television dramas, and many other types of stories. In short, the inclusion of cliches and tropes (whatever the difference between the terms might be) doesn't mean the storyteller didn't create anything.
Can you give me an example of an entire story that doesn't contain anything new? Outside of a word for word plagiarism I can't conceptualize that.
I've read lots of superhero comics, but I've never encountered any two quite so similar. In order to see if your definition of cliche is useful I'll need to determine if it can be applied. Could you please provide three specific movies or books that "don't contain anything new?"
