Concerning Clichés and Tropes in Storytelling

Here's perhaps a controversial opinion: people don't really hate cliches.


Ready to hear me out? The definition of cliche is "a very predictable or unoriginal thing or person." Now when we read a story once, we can predict everything during the second read, but good stories hold up after many readings. Similarly, people like to be able to predict something, and writers like to use foreshadowing. Lastly, people are more upset if things don't go as they should or hyped for. Therefore predictability is not really an issue.

How about originality? Surely we value original stories, right? "There is nothing new under the sun" is the common phrase. Writers often base off experiences, thoughts, or even other works. Sure, the stigma of being a clone hurt the original Digimon anime, but I never see anyone claim and successfully defend that the first season was inferior to the first season of Pokemon, even though half of the each of the later episodes are recycled animation. And recently, people more often claim that Pokemon copies from Digimon. Unoriginality is actually mostly just an obstacle for starting to consume a work if not a copyright infringement. Therefore unoriginality is not an issue either.

The real issue that readers and critics hate is lazy writing. When people encounter lazy writing, this is when they lament cliches and tropes. The reason for this is because as time goes on, we recognize issues with them and we become tired of seeing these imperfections, which in turn make us think the writer is lazy. This is even worse if the reader can think of a better way of accomplishing the same thing, as can be the case when very familiar with the stereotypes.

I was beta reading one story and it started off really well. The first half of the first chapter was utterly fantastic, but the second half was written in a manner to advance the plot and used cliche after cliche to do so. Not every one annoyed me, but some did. In addition, I was able to think of ways that, in my opinion, would be more interesting and character-driven. As a result, I greatly disliked the second half of that chapter.

So how should we write cliches? In part, it depends upon our story. Tales of Symphonia is a game filled with them, but I still enjoyed the story when I played it years ago, perhaps because it was a mixture of satire and for comedic effect in my opinion. If we think about that, then we can realize the key is to be intelligent with them.

When I started writing Neostriker: Shining, I was well aware of cliches in anime at the time and one of my goals was to make sure they all made sense. The prologue starts with stereotypical world building only to provide the first twist that also explains everything; the world is the character's fantasy. The first scene has the character self-aware of the it and expresses trying to do better. It is a common theme throughout the book to either question a cliche, use it as a platform for a joke, or actually discuss it.

All that being said, I will admit that there is a danger. When something is predictable for a long period of time, it's easy for the reader to gloss over and potentially never return. If we have important facts in the middle of these, they risk being missed and the reader will be frustrated later on.

What do you think? Any points that I miss on either side? Sound off in the comments below or engage with the tweet this will be shared with.