It’s New Year’s Eve. I was thinking about the end of the movie When Harry Met Sally. You know the scene (well, unless you haven’t seen it, in which case, spoiler alert!)—Harry is racing to meet Sally and tell her how he feels as the clock ticks towards midnight on New Year’s Eve.
The countdown to the new year, the airport chase scene, the race to the altar. All of these so-called clichés don’t have to be avoided entirely. (After all, the urgency in the examples I listed helps to heighten the drama.) You just have to know how to use them in a fresh way. Here’s how:
Photo by Cristian Bortes
10, 9, 8…
When you’re veering towards clichéd territory, first consider if it’s truly necessary to include it in your writing. Is there another way to convey the same idea, perhaps in a new setting or under a different set of circumstances?
If you’re really tied to the cliché, think about how to turn it on its head. What would be the expected outcome, the clichéd outcome? What if the opposite happened? Or look at bringing in new elements—change the characters, the emotion, the motive.
And if none of these modifications work in your story, write it well. Use unique language that jumps off the page, witty and beautiful and so full of life. Create descriptions and dialogue that transform the clichéd scene into something that sounds completely new.
Don’t get stuck in the trap of feeling like everything has already been written. You can get away with using clichés… if you write through them until they no longer appear to be clichés.
Is it ever okay to use clichés? How do you make them feel fresh?
PRACTICE
Start with a cliché of some sort (feel free to use the New Year’s Eve countdown scenario if you would like). Write about it in a new, fresh way for fifteen minutes.
When you’re finished, please share your practice in the comments section. And if you post, please respond to some of the other comments too!
In my writing, I’ve studiously avoided cliche for many years. And yet, I remember the first time I read a Harry Potter novel and choking after the use of cliche after cliche. It was rather a revolutionary moment in my writer’s life. It made me realize that while it’s good to know the rules, it’s stifling to adhere to them religiously.
Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and know when to stop playing Zynga Poker and get back to work.
Good point, Yvette. It seems readers don’t always mind cliches if they’re cleverly used, as J.K. showed.
Okay, here’s my cliche sample!
…………………………………………..
The black analog timer began to tick downward, as he had always imagined a bomb would if he were James Bond valiantly struggling to disarm it and save his girl from certain doom.
9 seconds…
Time ticked on, faster than it seemed it should. He was slow to move, tentatively
stretching out his hand to grab the…
8 seconds…
…clock. The clock continued its relentless march toward nill.
7 seconds…
Reality was beginning to set in now. He would need to work fast if he were to…
6 seconds
Okay, time to move. He reached across the back of the device, struggling in the
darkness to find the back access panel…
5 seconds…
There! The small plastic catch he was looking for, the catch that would open the back of the device and expose the ticking innards…
4 seconds…
Time grew short. Perspiration betrayed his lack of metal in these kinds of
situations…
3 seconds…
Well, this is it, he thought as his meaty fingers fumbled inside the device for the
small red wire that could be his key…
2 seconds…
Judgement Day. The Apocalypse. Days of reconning so far in the distant future felt so much less threatening than the imminent failure to disarm a simple…
1 second…
“Well, damn,” he said aloud.
A ear-splitting screech echoed around the room as laughter from a dozen other
bomb techs in training filled the air.
He blushed as the instructor turned off the device and ushered the next trainee to
the stage. Today was practice, he thought. Today he would live to try again.
But tomorrow..
………………..
The end!
Beautiful! I wondered if it was someone trying to disarm his alarm clock. Never saw the bomb tech training coming. Nice work.
Thanks, Paul!
Very clever. Like Paul, I was trying to figure out some alternate scenario and alarm clock was all I could come up with. Great job!
I was thinking alarm clock, too, then turning off a house alarm system.
There were two of them, and I had only one shot left. She was about 100 feet away, a little to my left. He was off to my right about the same distance. If either of them spotted me, I could be in trouble. At least they were upwind and facing away from me, less likely to hear me creeping closer. I decided to go after him since he was the bigger challenge. Still had to keep an eye on her, though, in case she doubled back and sounded the alarm after spotting me.
The afternoon was getting late, but there was still enough time to get this done before they could slip away in the dusk. The sun was behind me as I faced east. Easier for me to see them, blinding for them if they looked my way.
They moved up the slope a little further. I walked in a crouch up to the next tree, trying to keep them in view while not stepping on noise makers. They moved up again and she disappeared over the crest of the hill. The shot would soon be ideal, so I sneaked up to the next tree. Wouldn’t get better than this today.
Looking through the lens, I zoomed in and lined up the shot. Just then he was standing on the crest and the light was perfect. Click! That was calendar material. Startled by the shutter, the buck trotted off down the other side of the hill. I retreated back down my side. My editor was sure to be pleased with this photo, which meant some timely cash to pay the bills. I swore to myself that next time I’d take more film, or maybe it was time to think about one of those digital cameras my grandkids kept talking about.
Nicely done, and not at all where I thought it was going
Thanks, Charlene!
This was excellent! I predicted the deer but was blindsided by the camera. Thanks for a great read!
Thanks, Garrett!
Due to the nature of the prompt, I was expecting a twist, but I didn’t guess it, so well done! And even after the camera, the deer were an added surprise.
Thanks, Sam. Glad you liked it.
Well played!
Thank you, sir.
Love the suspense you created here!
Thanks, Joan!
Fun twist! You got me!
Thanks, Steph. I wondered if I could sneak up on readers with this idea.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Which is probably a good thing, since a bright and stormy night would really freak the neighbors out.
They’d truly start to wonder about the oddities I’ve been collecting in the back yard. Even those who haven’t seen “Foreman’s Scrap Yard,” as it has come to be called, would have to wonder about the blue wooden booth with the light on top and “POLICE Public Call BOX” on all 4 sides … never mind wanting to look at how big the inside might be.
They’d start answering the traditional New Year’s Eve question, “Should old acquaintance be forgot?” with “yes, please, especially in Foreman’s case!”
That’s OK. I prefer weird. I prefer that even to “eccentric,” as some have called me. After all, as one wise guy — er, man — once said, “weird is a relative concept.” Never mind that such a statement becomes even more true when you look at my relatives. Instead of going on with the “if weird stuff happens where weird stuff is supposed to happen, then it’s normal” bit the comedian originally used, I usually ask them, “if I acted like everybody else, wouldn’t that be weird?” A shut mouth and a fast nod is adequate, though the oft-offered smile is also welcome.
Still, sitting inside the thing offers quite a bit of peace. Since it is an original British Police Box, it’s heavy enough and sturdy enough to offer some solitude in a suburban neighborhood, even with tons of fireworks going off. Fireworks that are supposed to be illegal in Florida, except for scaring away birds.
I guess the old box also provides protection against all the nasty birds out there. Considering the large amount of ammo going off nearby, there must be more of them than the so-called bedbug invasion, or the lame commercials for the “only solution” for them. It makes me wonder whether that statue of Alfred Hitchcock also standing in the yard is having flashbacks to his classic movie about them.
I will admit it, though. The “storm” is really all the celebratory fireworks for New Year’s Eve. The noise, noise, noise … no, wait, that’s from the Grinch. It still applies, though. It makes me wish the sensory deprivation tank next to Hitchcock still worked. Somehow the large hole in its side, left by a green-suited stuntman according to the salesman, makes me think it wouldn’t hold water. The green-suited stuntman bit didn’t hold much water, either, but that’s another story.
So I sit inside the blue box, looking at the fireplace next to the library near the corridor leading to the pool, and wonder what it would be like if I had a police box that was smaller on the inside than it was on the outside.
So Foreman has the TARDIS… …cool! Thanks for sharing this entertaining read, Joe. The comment about the Hitchcock statue having flashbacks was a nice touch.
Consider, all we really know is that everybody called the guy “Foreman.”
The clock was ticking—only one week left until her manuscript was due and Janie found herself staring at a blank computer screen. The pivotal moment, the last few chapters, eluded her like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—just beyond her reach.
I’ll never finish this manuscript by the deadline. There isn’t enough time.
She rose from her writing desk and walked to the window to look outside at the falling snow. A myriad of birds flocked to the feeders, fluttering about, sometimes fighting among one another. She stood and watched—mesmerized by their movements.She rose from her writing desk and walked to the window to look outside at the falling snow. A myriad of birds flocked to the feeders, fluttering about, sometimes fighting among one another. She stood and watched—mesmerized by their movements.
Janie didn’t realize how long she had been there until her cell phone chimed to indicate a new email message. She looked at her watched—fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes wasted. Oh well, that’s not a lot of time.
She walked back to the computer to stare at the blank page again. I’ll listen to some music—Beatles music always lifts my spirits. She opened iTunes and browsed through her Beatles collection for the Sergeant Pepper album.
She recalled seeing a video of the song When I’m Sixty-four. It showed how many minutes were in sixty-four years and stated how long one minute could be. They proved the point by counting down sixty seconds while playing the last minute of the song.
Let’s see—one hour is sixty minutes. There are 1,440 minutes in a day and 10,080 minutes in a week. I can do this! One minute can be a very long time.
I like how you bring this full-circle. That can be difficult to achieve in such a short piece! I think the closure combined with the character’s growth make the cliche work here.
Dare I mention that I know precisely the video you referred to? It was part of the animated movie, Yellow Submarine.
You are absolutely right, Joe. I thought it was a clever way to show just how long one minute can be!
She wanted to die. She wanted it all to just end. It had to be an accident. She wasn’t going to become some suicidal cliché using a rope or razor or tablets. It would have to not only look like an accident but be a real accident.
So she took up bungee jumping and adventure racing. She began camping in secluded spots, vying for the attention of random murderers with more unsuspecting souls.
The endorphines produced from extreme exercise made her feel better, no enough to cope with being alive but in odd moments she found herself smiling. So she upped the ante with sailing and kayaking in summer and skiing and bobsleigh in the winter.
The same kind of people did these sports and she found herself part of a community of adventure seekers. Eight of them went on a trek around the Himalayas, not going for the obvious Everest but traversing an unknown route through the Mahabharat Range. The rock slide cut them off on all sides, three dying in the first hail of granite. They hunkered down under a ledge, the others bemoaning the loss of their friends but she was jealous. Jealous of dead people.
She suddenly lurched into the role of leader, doing impossible feats to bring water and herbs to the survivors, all the while trying to die by accident. More rocks slid and killed more friends until only her and Joe remained.
He was on his knees in front of her confessing undying love and asking her to marry him when the next onslaught of rocks began. What a clichéd ending she thought as she contemplated a life with Joe, hope blossoming as their bones and bodies were shattered by the missiles of rock.
Cool, Suzie! You could definitely expand this into a novel. I loved all the twists…and cliches 🙂 .
how about just this sentence?
“Fifth grade came and went in the slowest blink of an eye there ever was.”
My college english teacher believes that cliches are lazy writing despite altering their meaning or making them ironic.
Didn’t see that coming! “Vying for the attention of random murderers”, hahaha.
I am editing a chapter (again). I don’t know if this is a good use of cliche as an opening paragraph or not. I tried to use the counting to establish time and setting right of the bat. Feedback welcome! 🙂
One, two, three, Rex counted the church bells as he surfaced from a hazy snooze. He was wedged into the stern of his boat that was docked in front of the train station in the border town of Jack Pine, Minnesota. Four, five, six, seven. The chimes from the steeple that rose above the sleepy town were a kinder master than the shrill alarm clock that had woken him before dawn to send him southward across the lake to fetch the incoming summer help. He stretched his arms over head and arched toward
the warm sun. Eight, nine, ten bells. He flipped up the brim of his canvas hat. The morning train was officially an hour late.
I like the bells. The contrast between church bells and alarm clock is cool also.
Loved the picture with this article! One of the best images of fireworks I’ve ever seen.