Tone deaf

[ksmith]

This post in janni's LJ triggered something that has bothered me off and on for years. I wonder if I'm tone deaf to cliched writing, or would know a cliche if it reared up and picked my pocket.

Is cliched writing in the eye of the reader? If you read a lot, and in many genres, do you have a more difficult time finding prose that strikes you as evocative or that moves you in some way? Are there cliches that are genre-specific--the romance images of heaving bosom and throbbing manhood come to mind.

If you have a sentence handy that you find cliched, could you please post it in this thread, along with the reason you feel it's a cliche?

Update: The character describing themselves while looking in a mirror or any other type of reflection--I've seen enough complaints about that one, although I admit to having used it before I had heard it was a cliche. Now I make a conscious effort to avoid doing it.

Comments

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

This little posting is interesting because the most recent review of my book claimed that some of the plot was cliched . . . mentioning that it's obvious from the first page that there was something big in store for the main character and that that was the cliche.

My response was . . . of course there's something big in store for the main character! If not, she wouldn't have been the main character! (The book is in the first person.)

But I mainly wanted to address the "person looking in the mirror" cliche. It's extremely hard not to do this when the book is in first person, as rolanni says. To get around this in my book, at one point I had someone staring at the main character after she'd stolen something, catching her in the act sort of. I had the main character think "what must this person see?" and then say what she thought he'd see, sort of describing herself.

But then later on in the book I had her see her reflection in water, so I don't know if that cancelled the first one out or not. *grin*

In the current book, same character, still first person, I had her find a picture of herself that someone she's romantically interested in had drawn. Again, seeing how someone else sees her.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I've had Jani described by other viewpoint characters. I;ve had her describe herself in comparison with others. As [Unknown site tag] writes, Jani's appearance serves as a benchmark for her hybridization, and is something she monitors. It makes sense that she would gauge and compare. Look at herself in the mirror, and wonder at what she sees.

This little posting is interesting because the most recent review of my book claimed that some of the plot was cliched . . . mentioning that it's obvious from the first page that there was something big in store for the main character and that that was the cliche.

When it comes to plot, I think one reader's cliche is another reader's comfort read is another reader's only-type-of-story-I-like. Some folks would call Quest Fantasy a cliche. The Strange Coming to Grips with Her Strangeness (a fave of mine). I mean, pick any story arc, and someone will say they've already seen it a thousand times and they never want to see it again.

Add to that the fact that we write in genres where people read a lot of books over the course of a year. The most debilitating feedback I received about my fantasy came from a first reader who had just finished serving on a novel jury, She had read it all one hundred times over the course, and she was pretty merciless.