How to Create a Cliche from an Idea
‘Just create.’ This is the mantra of many copywriting coaches, photography courses and media advisors. It’s a seductive piece of advice, suggesting that all you need in order to succeed is to act, and from that action, something good will come. However, as many have discovered, just creating isn’t enough and many, having written a few articles on LinkedIn and developed a blog that got small readership and no results, and a Twitter feed that feels like a demonstration of the pointlessness of social media, have given up, resorting to more traditional promotion.
So where’s the gap? Why do some succeed and so many fail, when the distribution platforms are the same and everyone is constrained by the same words and mediums?
“Just create,” is not good advice.
In fact, it’s like telling a three-year-old that they’re doing a “very good job,” to increase their self-esteem; it’s nice, but doesn’t serve any tangible purpose. Better advice would be, spend more time thinking about what you’re trying to say, not how you’re trying to say it.
The idea is everything.
At the core of every great piece of content is a brilliant idea. It doesn’t need to be clever, it might be funny or sad, engaging or relatable, but the idea forms the central communication — the reader can take understand the idea clearly without needing to think about it. This is the most vital element of content in the digital age — being able to get that idea across quickly and effectively.
The audience needs to be able to relate without explanation or delay because if there’s any delay, you’ve lost them. This is where common knowledge and numerous advice columns will talk about how critical the headline, sub-headline and first sentence are — which is true — but that’s like saying you need fuel to make a car go fast; technically accurate, but it doesn’t get to the heart of what the problem is. To do this, we need to explore in more detail the anatomy of an idea.
Where do ideas come from?
It’s the question that’s plagued writers, artists, orators and singers for longer than anyone can remember. Some have said that ideas are everywhere, flying through the clouds and occasionally ducking down to earth for us to grab and bend to our will. A few have spoken of LSD, alcohol and other mind-bending intoxicants enabling them to access different parts of their brain in order to create ideas and inspiration at a higher level. Still more try to repackage the knowledge of others in a more accessible fashion, explaining the thoughts of geniuses in a more digestible way.
But it’s not about where ideas come from that matters, but how they’re ‘banked.’
Winston Churchill used to take naps, so did Joseph Stalin. Ernest Hemingway went fishing, Hunter S. Thompson shot things. Francis Bacon read cookbooks and Henri Matisse cut shapes out of paper. All wrote down ideas, told an assistant to note them, scrawled on paper or spoke into a recording device.
Regardless of what your line of business is, understanding that you need to take ideas and do something with them is crucial, and the first step is being able to take ideas that present themselves and help them evolve from theoretical precepts, into meaningful concepts. Taking something that has the potential to be exciting, meaningful or funny and being able to communicate it quickly and easily.
Write down theory, but speak concept
Theory is ugly, it’s a broad idea that has no basis in reality. Theory is a “what if?” It’s about questioning the status quo, or sensing there may be a joke, but the words aren’t quite there. In theory, you’ll find a basis and through writing it down you’ll give yourself something to talk about, to dissect and try to translate into concept.
Concept is tangible and explainable. Given a certain amount of time, and potentially a few raised voices, you can explain a concept, and, if it’s powerful enough, get someone to buy into it. Concept is something you understand, but perhaps have trouble explaining. If you’ve ever been to a sales training, personal development session or motivational speech and later attempted to explain a portion which you found powerful to friends, only to be greeted with blank stares and shrugs, you’ve taken a powerful cliche, and tried to explain it as a concept.
Cliches are monumental, they change the world. There are young clichés and old ones. Old clichés, having been repeated enough that they often make people roll their eyes in boredom — because they’ve heard it so many times before. They are passed down through generations and their wisdom is taken for granted. They may be short — “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, or long in the form of fables such as Hansel and Gretel or Peter Pan. “The Scream,” by Edvard Munch is a good example of an art based cliché, being used in both art history and popular culture and being easily recognised, requiring no translation — the central idea being fear.
New clichés make people nod; their eyes glaze over as they recognise something in the words or images that resonate within them and from then on they are slightly different as their approach to life changes, perhaps ever so slightly. When we’re exposed to newly born clichés we share the joke, speak the knowledge –often as if it’s our own– and ask others to accept it. Those responsible for new clichés have the power to change how other people see and understand the human condition and the world around them. Movie makers have used this to their advantage, manipulating emotions and making audiences feel something different, rather than simply being entertained.
Good content is a newly born cliche, born ofone idea.
