The Truth About Cliche
Right from the get go of my writing career people have told me that cliches are a no go! When I was in school we had a subject called Life Orientation. The teachers there were stuck on telling us how much they hated cliches. And yet distinct opposite opinions were continuously rewarded with ugly marks. The kinds you wouldn’t dare take home to your parents. When I submitted “cliche” they always rewarded me with the marks I always wanted! The kinds we made sure our friends “accidentally” saw.
The Experiments
Round One
I remember this one particular story quite well. We had to discuss beauty from our own perspectives as it was life orientation. It’s no doubt a cliche to say that the first few topics that come to mind is self appreciation to the core, outer beauty and the constant self tearing over the beautiful models that exist in magazines. The ones that have no pores and features that are so symmetrical they might as well belong to barbie herself. And that’s exactly what I chose to talk about, despite being a highly egotistical female teenager who struggled more with conversation and making friends than appearances at the time. Yup you guessed it — I scored a 95% grade for that. While I know some people actually do struggle with these topics I didn’t necessarily feel that way about it but I was doing an experiment and so I went straight for it with my least favourite subject and I was proven right. Unlike some of my less fortunate peers who got 50’s and 60’s for actually following the guidelines and finding unique was to address the topic.
Round two
A year later in English we were expected to write a creative writing essay. The prompt involved something about cities. We had all been discouraged from describing the city view from a balcony. But you know what I’ve never been one for following the rules and so I got down to writing a full on description of the city but from the buildings perspectives. And yes that wasn’t a complete cliche but it was describing the city. Which was exactly what we had been told not to do. That article was published in the school magazine and I can’t forget how stressed I was when my teacher called me to speak to her after class to propose the publication. I was certain that I’d be fried for having gone point blank against her instructions, but instead she suggested that I email the essay to her for the magazine — for over 500 students to read.
And so as you may have suspected this article is highlighting the ways in which cliche has always been a profitable trademark — form my experience at least. I’m not saying you should copy people. But should we be trying to find a way to take others already thriving ideas and make them our own?
The Secret
Here’s what I think the secret is. One doesn’t necessarily mean it when they say don’t be cliche. What they really mean is don’t plagiarize, don’t use the same ideas over and over without twisting them at least a little. What they want is for you to spin a spider web off of old already successful topics. Twist it into something new that’s never been seen before. At the end of the day everything has been done before so why bounce off of the ideas that don’t work? Is that what they mean? Who knows?
Why is it that extremely unique ideas never seem to kick off?
Well that’s simple. You are a highly niched down topic of all your interests. If you focus on producing only your uniqueness well it’s tough to find plenty of people out there who agree and find your ideas as interesting as you do. Much like it’s difficult to find someone just like you. It’s one in every million I think the saying goes.
Penny for your thoughts
So this is an open question to all of you. What is the deal with cliche. Why do we get so many conflicting views on it. Why do so many people disapprove of cliche articles, books, photography, etc. And yet it’s the very first thing that everyone runs to and the first that we all reward!
