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

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

It's when you get into the nitty gritty like what color hair does the character have. If it's important or somehow part of character (all the Weasleys have red hair), then yes, the author needs to say it

On one side of the discussion, I recall the author of one write-that-bestseller book advising writers to keep the description of the protagonist to a minimum in order to allow the reader to project whatever appearance they preferred onto that character. It supposedly helped the reader bond that much more to the book.

That being said, I like some description. I'm a describer myself, very tuned in to features and appearance.