The Cliche Monster

Face it, we all fear and hate the Cliche Monster. All of us. It doesn't matter if you're a writer or not, no one wants to fall into a category. No one wants to be a cliche. At least, not post-high school. During high school, I think about 95% of people want to be a cliche of some sort or another. We even had a group of guys, yes, guys, in my high school that was referred to as the "dime-a-dozen" group. At some point, though, we pass through that stage into the stage where we all hold some inane belief of our own individuality: "We're all individuals!" Except this guy: "I'm not!"

Yes, I do believe it's inane. If it wasn't inane, marketing wouldn't work so well and there wouldn't be demographics. But, face it, most of us, nearly all of us, fall neatly into some demographic or another. A cliche.

It's kind of a funny story:
When my brother was in high school, he went through his "rebel" phase. It would make me laugh. He'd come into my room with his ripped jeans or whatever else and boast to me about how much of a rebel he was, because he was going to go to church like that. I tried to explain to him on more than one occasion that by doing his whole rebel thing, he was just fitting into the whole rebel mold and, therefore, was being the exact opposite of rebellious. He was just fitting the image of the rebel, and, when you're striving to fit an image, you can't be being a rebel. He never got it.

However, I think writers may fear the Cliche Monster more so than your average joe. I mean, there is no greater horror than to have your work labeled as cliche. Typical. Fitting the mold of your genre. Maybe that's why there are so many cross-genre works coming out right now... people trying new ways to not be cliche while falling into the trap of not being cliche in the same way that everyone else is trying to not be cliche. Just like my brother.

Let me just say, right now, that the Cliche Monster is not so fearsome as everyone thinks it is. He's not a ravening beast out to devour your soul and your creative work, but he's actually kind of cuddly. Sort of like Sully from Monsters, Inc. Sure, he can be all fearsome and stuff, but he doesn't have to be.

I see you all out there, right now, dropping your jaws at me and thinking that I'm crazy or that I've lost it. Don't get me wrong, I hate the whole cliche thing, too. Just like everyone else, I think I'm a pretty unique individual. Except, in my case, I know it's true. (heh) And I do it without even trying. (double heh) Which is the best way to be unique.
But, wait, if I'm going on about how unique I am, why am I saying it isn't so bad to fit in. To be a cog. To be a regular, old round peg in a regular, old round hole. Not like the not-even-square peg that I proclaim in the title of my blog?

Let me tell you a story:
When I was in 4th grade, I ran out of school. The problem was that there were still two more years to go in elementary school, but they had nothing left to teach me. It was an interesting situation, because there were three of us like that in the school, and we were all the same age, same class. They had to transfer us to a different school with special classes for smart kids. They called us "gifted and talented," and we got to be in a class full of other kids like us from all over the Parish (because that's what they call counties in Louisiana), and we had a brand, new sparkly teacher. I sort of think, now, that this was the first year they had done this sort of thing, because it was my teacher's first year being a "gifted" teacher, and it was a new program that was being tested (new to the whole country, not just Louisiana, which is a bit ironic considering that Louisiana was 49th in education at the time (but, maybe, they thought they had nothing to lose in Louisiana because of that)). She used to say to us all of the time that she was not a gifted teacher, as everyone called her, but just a normal teacher of the gifted.

She was wrong. She was a gifted teacher. We had her for 5th and 6th grades, and she, along with the science teacher they brought in for us for 6th grade (who worked part time for NASA (how cool is that? (in fact, he was one of the guys that was involved in setting up Space Camp (how even more cool is that?))), changed my life. Opened my eyes. Challenged me in ways that I had never been challenged. In fact, it was in this class that I really learned about reading. Not that I didn't read prior, because I did, but it was in this Gateway class that I really discovered the breadth and scope of books. Something I hadn't really known before as I was completely satisfied with my Hardy Boys books. But, really, that's beside the point.

Anyway... my teacher taught kindergarten when she first started teaching. She said she didn't want to be one of those cliche kindergarten teachers that had the same old, same old clowns and balloons and stuff on the walls year after year. She didn't want to be boring. She wanted her classroom to be unique and original. Not just in general but every year. So the first year she taught, she came up with a theme and decorated her room around that theme, and it was great! The second year, she thought of a new theme and re-did her classroom, and that was great!

After a few years of that, thinking of new themes became a challenge. Having something new and fresh became more and more of a challenge. And that's when she had an epiphany. Although having the same thing in the room year after year might get boring for her, it wouldn't be boring for her students. Every year, they were new students, and, therefore, it didn't matter how she decorated the room, because it was new to the students. Each year, it was their first time to experience it. Especially since she had kindergartners. Nothing she ever had in her room would be cliche to them, because it was a brand new experience every year. So it was clowns. And she left it that way.
[Actually, I don't remember that it was clowns, specifically, but I do remember clowns coming up in that conversation, so it's a good enough example. Don't anyone go all ballistic over the clowns.]

The lesson here is that she embraced the cliche and used it. Turned the ravening beast she'd been fighting into something cuddly. It's an important lesson, and it's stayed with me for three decades.

Let me give you another example:
My introduction to fantasy writing came through Piers Anthony. Not that he was the first fantasy I read, but it was Anthony that prompted me to delve into fantasy for the first time. Anthony lead me to David Eddings and The Belgariad. The Belgariad is one of the absolute best fantasy series I've ever read. Probably second only to Tolkien. The catch? It's completely cliche. Completely. And it was on purpose.

Setting out to write the adventures of Garion, Eddings decided he was going to do an experiment by writing what would be a conventional fantasy novel. Literally, he took all the conventions and worked them into his story. Here's a sample of a check list of the types of things he included:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.
There is a princess fated to the boy.
There is a party of adventurers. One of them is a scoundrel.

Do you see where that's going? Eddings looked at what was cliche about fantasy, and he embraced it, and he wrote one of the most magical fantasy stories ever. The characters are great. The writing and dialogue are superb. If you like fantasy, it's hard not to like The Belgariad. Even if you know going in that it's designed to encompass everything that's common to the fantasy genre. It is the definition of cliche, but Eddings made it work in a way that I've never seen done by anyone else, and I can't help but suspect it's because he did it on purpose.

Here's the thing: your story... it's not original. My story... it's not original either. No one's story is. Sure, sometimes, you get elements put together in new ways, but, really, none of the... stuff... none of the elements... are new. As Bono says, "Every artist is a thief."
I see people stressing all the time about finding out someone else has already written the story they have in their head or have halfway finished or, even, all the way finished. They find out someone else wrote something that is too close to their story for their comfort, so they shelve their story. Give up on it. "There's no way I can pursue this, because it's already been done." That... that is a mistake. Everything has already been done. If you let that stop you, you'll never write anything.

Take a look back up at that list. That's just a tiny bit of what could be a full list of conventions in fantasy writing, but how many of those apply to Harry Potter? Let's see:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.

I could even make a case about the party of adventurers with Fred and George being the scoundrels. Does anyone think of Rowling's work as being cliche? Not that I've ever heard. But, yet, there it is. Cliche. But she makes it work.

I'm not going to lie, there are some cliche elements in my book The House on the Corner. Some of them, I even chose on purpose. There are some very Narnia things, because I wanted it to have some very Narnia things. There is a sword not quite in a stone, because I wanted there to be a sword not quite in a stone. I wanted those elements in the book. I wanted something of the familiar there, the things that resonate with us and bring us back to our childhoods or awaken dreams in us as children.

Look... here's what I'm saying: stop stressing over being original. Things that are really original don't come along very often, and they usually don't happen because someone is trying to be original. They usually just happen. Acknowledge that the story you have has been told in some form before. Acknowledge it, and do it anyway. Just because that story's already been told, doesn't mean you can't write a great story. If Rowling had looked at her Potter story and said, "oh, geez, that's been done before" and just given up...? Well... can you imagine, now, a world without Potter?

Tell your story. Tell it the best way you know how. Don't worry about whether it's been done before. It has. Go ahead and do it anyway.