Well, you never know you luck, having a strangely (strangely) muscular gay on your side might settle the argument.
Eh, I don't agree. A writer could do a vampire romance in a new and original way whereas you can't do "it was a dark and stormy night" in a new way. But I agree this has come mostly down to semantics and it's not going to reach a conclusion. I'm happy to use tropes and not happy to use clichés - according to the definitions I use - and that's all I need to know
well, in conclusion, stuff, is different and that is how we think it. Different, cause like brains and all. Are not the same.
So on that happy note, I will now explain in detail past progressive tense: "I was going towards the deletion of my account." I will now explain the passive voice.: "The deletion of my account was inevitable." Filtering: "I realised that my account was due to be deleted." Adverbs: "The unfortunate deletion of my compelling account was inevitable"
I think you could do "it was a dark and stormy night" in a new way. It's a phrase that creates a particular environment for a story. Someone aware of that cliche (isn't everyone?) could deliberately come up with another way of creating the same environment with different words. If they did this skilfully, then the reader may not even be aware that they've done so. The way I use "reinvent", I would classify this as a reinvention if the author was aware of the cliche and deliberately aimed at the same setting but with fresh language.
As everyone has established, we're using different definitions of cliché, trope and reinvent, so we aren't going to agree.
No, but you could tell us more about your personal definitions to explain why you think my example of rewriting "it was a dark and stormy night" in very different words is not reinventing the cliche. I think part of the problem we've had in this thread is that posters have been saying ".... is not ....." "you can't ...." without explaining why in sufficient detail so that those who disagree can thoroughly understand their argument. Not that I'm expecting to convince anyone to change their mind. But, in a discussion like this one, I think it's worthwhile to strive to understand each other. When it became obvious that we were using different meanings of the words, I did look for external sources, e.g. Wikipedia and The Oxford English Dictionary. And if the definitions I found there were significantly different from my own, I would have been happy to update my vocabulary. Do you disagree with the Wikipedia and OED definitions?
Just to spite you all, I'm going to write the most cliché-ridden thing I can think of. And post it in the Workshop.
When people have disagreed with me in the past, I've written something to go into the topic further. I look forward to your story, and cannot think of how it would in any way spite me. (Though, I may not be the target of that comment.) Here's an old thread where (on page 2) I create the start of a story using the word "chortled" after having being told that it couldn't be used in a modern story. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/other-words-than-using-said.55770/page-2
I think, from reading this thread, that the problem here, is in deciding when a trope has become a cliche: For an individual or for the wide society of readers. It is subjective. With consideration, we might all agree on what a trope is, for example prophesy or magic, but as you (Wreybies) yourself have just demonstrated, by declaring simply that vampires are cliche, it is down to person reactions to books. A cliche is a tricky little beast to tie down because in reality there are two steps to the development of a cliche: 1) Through the individual's personal taste (a personal cliche). 2) By being widely accepted by most readers (a definite cliche). Therefore I would argue, even though I am not a fan of vampires, that they are simply a trope not a tired cliche. I would be very surprised if the wide range of readers/writers found them a cliche, given the hunger poor books with them in. They still capture people's imagination, just not yours. I could be very wrong, but condidering what has been said and looking at this subjectively, I suspect this is the case.
I would suggest you provide examples of what you believe to be cliches before getting people to reply, or it will become a disagreement on what is a cliches again
The examples that I've been discussing further up the thread are "It was a dark and stormy night." for a cliche of wording. Using a middle name when scolding. And "vampire romance" for a cliche of trope. Only the first of these matches the meaning of cliche as it was first created, but the meaning of the word has broadened since then. The only one that I introduced myself was "vampire romance". I think. The others were examples introduced by others that I've been talking about. I think these are sufficient examples of cliches for the discussion, and that it wouldn't help to create new ones. BTW: I think the description of cliche on tvtropes.org is a good one. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Cliche
As a reader i don't care about "cliche" i care about a good story. I assume that a good writer wont care about cliche either and care about writing a good story.
I have a story sitting on my hard-drive that does start "It was a dark and stormy night." I don't think I'm going to get away with that. But I partially agree with you. If the story is good, I won't mind the cliche, even if it's a very obvious one. But, all else being equal, I prefer there to not be obvious cliches. The link I gave in my previous post discusses this, in IMHO a convincing way. BTW: "Clichés are the hammer and screwdriver in the toolbox of communication." - Terry Pratchett (from the link I gave above).
Well yea in that sense you dont want to re-write the same words but you can be cliche we writing about a dark and storm night, just change the description.
But what if it just was a dark and stormy night, as it was here last night . . . It was a dark and stormy night. The power was already out when she got home from work. The silence was blissful, no electric hum of the refrigerator, no random red lights around the house indicating that appliances and home electronics were plugged in and operating. As the woman knelt on the hearth, lighting a fire, the industrial hum of generators began to fill the air. It was the tell-tale sings that her neighbors had arrived home and refused to go without TV for even one hour. Irritated, she knew there was one easy way to solve that problem and plunge the neighborhood back into blackness. Putting on her rain slicker and taking up a bag of sugar, she disappeared into the storm. And now you know how I feel about my neighbor's generator. LOL
The period of the planet's rotation when the location in question was facing away from the source of illumination in this solar system was, unsurprisingly, not sufficiently bright for the visual identification of even objects positioned in close proximity to the putative observer. However, it was the extraordinary ferocity of hurricane Barney that marked out this particular episode of tenebrosity as different from any other. "Amanda Bacteriophage Constantine Davina Evans! I forbid you to leave the house at this time of night to meet your vampire lover!"
Does anybody else want to start a collective forum story where each poster adds one new sentence, but it HAS to be a cliché?
