If you’re a poet, novelist, or other creative writer, you’ve probably heard that you should steer clear of clichés—overused figures of speech like “steer clear”—if you want to be published or win competitions. But why? What’s wrong with them?
Why writers should avoid clichés
Clichés are lame
Clichéd descriptions like “her heaving breast” and “his heart skipped a beat” are the Dad jokes of literature: they’re lazy, they’re lame, they make us groan. They make discerning readers of poetry or fiction—like publishers, editors, and competition judges—say “Aagh! Not again! Life’s too short!” and throw the manuscript in the No pile, if not out the window.
Clichés don’t give the reader a clear picture
Because clichés are so familiar, readers will skip quickly past them without getting a clear picture of what we’re describing. Think about what happens if I write:
The child in the corner was as quiet as a mouse.
Because you’ve heard the simile “as quiet as a mouse” so many times, you probably don’t bother to actually imagine a mouse, so the simile adds nothing. But what if I write this?
The child in the corner was quieter than a cockroach.
That’s much more likely to get your attention. You’re probably visualising a cockroach and considering how quiet it would be—or at least wondering why my narrator is thinking of one.
Clichés make our writing “meh”
Particularly in poetry and personal essays, but also in literary fiction, readers are looking for an “ah” feeling, a change of consciousness—what Inez Baranay called “a freshness in the mind”.1 Old-hat language isn’t likely to give them that (unless we’re obviously using it deliberately to satirise or subvert it).
How to identify and avoid clichés
1. Read!
Read classic and contemporary material, especially in your chosen genre, and read books and articles about your kind of writing. (Listening and viewing can also be useful, of course.) That will help you learn which expressions have become clichés through overuse.
Reading is vital if we’re not just writing for therapy—if we want a readership or an audience. If you don’t enjoy reading a particular kind of writing and learning about it, why try to write it for others? Do something else instead, something that’s fun for you. A “poet” who doesn’t read poetry is like a “musician” who never listens to music: their output is … how can I put this politely? … unlikely to be well received.
2. Draft without worrying about clichés, then check your writing meticulously
When we write, we don’t want to be stopping all the time to wonder if something’s a cliché. That’s not conducive to a creative flow of words and ideas. It’s usually better to get something down quickly without trying to choose perfect words, then go over the text later, checking every description for clichés, unwarranted abstractions and other problems. Successful writers edit and redraft, often many times, until they’re satisfied that their work is as strong as possible.
3. Get feedback
Successful writers also learn to handle constructive criticism without getting defensive (or at least without showing it!). One of the best ways to debug your writing is to get feedback from other writers in your genre, the more experienced and well read—and nitpicky—the better. How to find them? Well, you could try asking the people typing on laptops in libraries if they’re writers—if you want to position yourself as a total pain in the … neck (there’s another cliché). Seriously: join a national or state writers association and a local writers group and attend their in-person or online readings, meetings, and workshops.
Another option is to pay an expert to provide feedback and suggestions. If you’re interested in that, get in touch (that phrase is another cliché). As a trained, experienced editor and writing teacher, I love helping people polish their writing, and my rates are very reasonable.
4. If you’re not sure, google or ask “AI”
If you’re not sure if a phrase is a cliché, google for it, putting it in “double quotes”, to see where it’s been used before. You might find a bunch of interesting new things to read!
You could also try asking an “AI” chatbot. These bots, at least at the moment, are not intelligent in the sense of being able to think like people.2 But they have access to huge amounts of information and can quickly tell you whether something is a cliché or not. However, their advice must be taken with a pinch of salt (that’s a cliché!).
Me: Is wine-dark sea a cliché?
Meta AI: “Wine-dark sea” is a famous phrase that originates from Homer’s ancient Greek epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. It has since been used to describe the Mediterranean Sea and has become a literary trope. While it’s still used to evoke a sense of history and classical culture, it’s indeed considered a cliché in modern writing, as it’s been used many times.
So far, so good (to use another cliché). However, the bot continues:
However, it’s still a beautiful and evocative phrase that can be effective in certain contexts, like historical fiction or poetry.
Apparently the bot has “read” somewhere that it’s okay to use old-fashioned clichés when writing poetry or historical fiction, but that’s misleadingly simplistic. Unless expressions like “wine-dark sea” are used by a character who has some reason to talk like that (quoting Homer? composing bad poetry?), then, even in a historical fantasy novel, and certainly in a contemporary poem, they’re as lame and boring as Dad jokes.
- Baranay, Inez. ‘Freshening the mind: an account of teaching a three-week creative writing course in Chennai, India’. In Nigel Krauth & Tess Brady (editors), Creative writing: theory beyond practice. Post Pressed, 2006. ↩︎
- Johnson, Carolyn Y. ‘Is that chatbot smarter than a 4-year-old? Experts put it to the test.’ Washington Post, 12 June 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/06/12/how-smart-ai-chatgpt-intelligent-child/ ↩︎
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