Cliche

I was just thinking the same.

You've made my cheeks blush ..

I suppose it depends what cheeks you're talking about?

Copied from Wiki this harsh judgement of cliches by Salvador Dalí: "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." That made me laugh!

Isn't there a tipping point, when what was once a cliched metaphor, is so much part of common usage that its somehow acceptable again. (like wind that howls etc.)

With what, dear? That I'm cycling quickly? :-)

And I'm a bit slow today. Almost got me there. lol

@ Stella Deleuze - I totally agree...

Exactly and 'totally empty'. Um, either something's empty or not. No totally needed.

This lazy writing. Not stopping to think, just using it because many do. Writing has a lot to do with logic, same as editing, so I'll try to avoid these things.

Hi, John, by the way. Not so much into walking or running, I cycle and that quickly. Ha!

"Well, running itself is enough without the quickly. Nobody runs slowly. You walk, you run, you sprint (faster for a short period), you dash, etc."

Actually, I usually "meander", working my way up to an "amble" on a good day. But no, you don't run slowly. I think "run quickly" belongs with "freezing cold" and "boiling hot".

Well, running itself is enough without the quickly. Nobody runs slowly. You walk, you run, you sprint (faster for a short period), you dash, etc.

But I agree in general: there's always a way to play around with words.

I read somewhere that if you have to use an adverb, then you've got the wrong verb. eg. "he ran quickly", why not use "he sprinted"? Seems to make sense to me. Think it was Stephen King (of all people) in one of his memoirs.

Personally, I hate the use of idioms. "Add insult to injury", "Sit on the fence", etc.

Adjectives, as well as adverbs exist for a reason: they add colour to our language. It would be cold without them. Used wisely and in moderation, that is. I can get lost in simplicity, very much as a matter of fact. If one has the skill to play with words so well that it has me captivated...

I wrote a literary fiction novel in a simple style, no extravagant wording, etc., put it up anonymously on a writers' website and the result was they kept reading, said they were mesmerized. I broke many rules, too. :-)

Such a rebel, me.

Someone in my writing class loathes adjectives passionately and never fails to pick us up on them! But prose without any adjectives is boring to me. I love descriptive work. Simplicity is good too when well done but I can't get lost in it (another cliche!).

I'd class that as wordy. What was great wording back then is often wordy nowadays.

New writers often sound pretentious if they try the same. I'm all for simplicity; it's beautiful.

I don't disagree .. although published writers are allowed to get better?
I don't think it's always laziness on the part of a writer either. We unconsciously use cliches all the time because they've become shorthand. I recently tried (through recommendation on these forums in fact) one of those free editing websites and copied a piece which I thought was as tight as it could be. The result came back very good on most things but I'd overlooked a couple of cliches.
The likes of Woolf you mention were brilliant writers of course and not many of those around. Another of her descriptions of trees: "The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot afternoons; they paint rivers so green that when a moorhen dives one expects to see its feathers all green when it comes up again." You're there!

I don't agree that the use of cliche is ok because 'they are good,' or, which is what i think you meant, apt. One of the primary reasons for reading, at least for myself, is to be impressed or startled. Published writers ought to be adept with language, if reading them is merely akin to talking to some geezer in a pub then i'd rather not bother. Also, my assumption is that the use of imagery by a writer is an attempt to convey something specific, which cliche makes impossible. For example, Virginia Woolf (at least i think it was Virginia Woolf) once described a tree as having branches that looked like 'torn flags,' which is a wonderful image and, so to speak, individualizes her tree. If she had described it as having branches like arms with long thin fingers then i am not seeing a specific tree but a general tree, any tree, or the same tree (although one must assume it is not actually meant to be the same tree) that has appeared in a hundred or thousand other novels.

For the record, both Martin Amis and George Orwell have written essays about this very topic. I seem to recall William Gass has also spoken or written about it. None of these writers defended the use of cliche, by the way.

I think if two books of similar content were put side by side but one contained original similes and metaphors while the other was littered with cliches, the reader might not be able to put their finger on why but they would prefer the former.
Though with creative writing having taken off in recent years I suspect readers are more savvy and will pick up on things like that.
I also find writing has changed the way I read but if anything it's heightened my enjoyment because I now appreciate what a writer has achieved more.
And I was told cliches became cliches for a reason, because they were good!

As authors, we are currently given this vast list of do's-and-don'ts, (Google the Turkey City Lexicon for one of the better ones) and anyone taking the idea of writing in the internet age seriously, is bombarded with the rights and the wrongs of passive voice verses active verbs, point-of-view switches and glitches, and a whole sodden swamping of limp advice and made-up regulations from mid-listers trying to raise their own profile by building "Platform".

This results in the hobbyist and the hopeful writer examining for meaning and structure, not just every word of their own, but every word they read. This constant appraisal (for the reader consuming texts with a built in comparison to their own writings) destroys the casual relationship required to suspend disbelief. You can't read a Dan Brown with the required abandonment of discrimination to be able to enjoy it.

I once worked on a house plant magazine. When I started, house plants were, for me, just anonymous lumps of green stuff, lurking in corners. After a year I couldn't walk into a room without thinking "Oh, your Ficus Benjamina needs top-dressing" or "I love your lithops." So advice on cliché - give up reading, or give up writing, or learn to enjoy grumbling.

Oh, and read Robert Nye books.

"thought to be amongst the greatest ever written"

Perhaps when these books were written those phrases hadn't become cliches but helped to popularise them?
I tend to find them in modern books more than classics.

I suppose the more novels that are written, the greater the chance there is of authors describing things a certain way. I'm sure some have read stories over the years and then forgotten about them, then when it comes time to write their own work they dig it out of their subconscious and believe it to be their own original creation. It's probably getting increasingly tough for a modern-day writer to describe things in a fresh and interesting way. Although I think someone with genuine talent for wordsmithery will always find a way to be original.

~and can literally spend half an hour grinding my teeth, fists clenched~

no further comment on the above. ;-)

I do know what you mean, though. Can't stand them either, at least not when overdosed. Perhaps the books were written before they became a cliché?

Personally, I'm a great fan of metaphors and similes and one can do a great deal with them, avoiding the dreaded clichés.

Of course it may be a sign of encroaching insanity but I am being brought almost to the point of being unable to actually finish a novel due to the number of cliches in evidence in almost every one i pick up. Am i alone in finding this absolutely unforgivable?* Every wind 'howls,' every shadow 'dances,' every look 'cuts like a knife.' And these aren't to be found in mere pap either, that i could understand, but in highly regarded novels, some of which are thought to be amongst the greatest ever written. I just cannot comprehend how someone can be deemed to be a novelist and yet resort to such laziness or incompetence. I write myself (don't worry this isn't a plug - it's unlikely i will ever finish my book and even more unlikely anyone on here would want to read it) and can literally spend half an hour grinding my teeth, fists clenched, trying to improve a sentence, so how can published writers be content to let such drivel bear their name?

*It is worth pointing out that i understand that there are sometimes legitimate uses of cliche such as when a novel is written in the first person or when used during conversation between characters. Furthermore, i am more forgiving of it when found in translation as one assumes that the original may not have contained that exact phrase. I would be interested in this regard to hear from anyone who has read any novels both in the original and in translation.