How to Avoid Cliches in Your Writing
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Whether you’re writing an article, a creative writing piece, or even an academic essay, it’s easy to slip into cliches. We all do it.
But when you want your writing to be unique and engaging it’s a good idea to try to avoid these cliches, especially if you find yourself using too many of them.
It’s not true that good writing is free of cliches. Cliches in writing exist for a reason; people connect with them. That said, you want to keep them few and far between when it comes to academic writing, stories, personal essays, and poems.
Not sure how? We’re here to help. Keep reading to learn a few top tips on how you can avoid excess cliches in your next paper.
Use Authenticity
When we’re writing authentically from real-life experiences or thoughts, it’s less likely that we’re going to dip into cliches.
There are several kinds of cliches. One of the most common is the situational cliche. This means that your writing is repeating a situation or plot that’s common within that genre.
All plots have a similar basic structure. Either you’re working with a pyramid with the climax at the center or you’re working with a zig-zag with multiple climax events spread throughout.
Where things go wrong is when you’re falling into common plotlines. For example, how many shows, movies, or books have you encountered that have a male hero rescue a helpless female character as the climax moment?
Sometimes you can get away from this. You can subvert the trope to make it more interesting to the reader, you can make it into satire, or you can dip into it in a self-aware way. If you leave it as-is, though, it comes off as lazy writing.
When you write from an authentic place, you can’t fall into these cliches. While tropes and cliches are often based on real-life, the majority of our lives aren’t so cookie-cutter that they mimic the cliches exactly.
This doesn’t just apply to creative writing. Consider writing for advertisements or marketing. Do you want your writing to sound like a bad early 2000s infomercial?
While amusing, those infomercials are full of cliches.
Have Someone Else Read It
We’re often blind to our own writing. We’re biased towards it because we wrote it (and because we’ve had our eyes on it for days). Having someone else read your work can help you learn if there are cliches within it that you wouldn’t have otherwise identified.
If you’re working on your paper in school, this is a great way to use your peer review time. Peer reviews aren’t only for fixing simple mistakes, they’re also for trying to figure out any serious plot, argument, or writing problems within your piece.
Have your writing partner underline things that they think are cliches and talk about how you can fix them.
If you’re not working on this in class, find a friend who’s written a similar piece of writing before or ask a tutor for help.
Have Someone Read It Outloud
Sometimes it’s not enough to have someone read your writing to themselves. In addition to that, ask them to read it out loud to you.
This can be embarrassing if you’ve never done it before, but it’s helpful. Not only will this help you identify cliches, but it will also help you figure out where there are strange wording or syntax problems.
This is a particularly good idea if you’re writing dialogue in a creative writing piece. Sometimes we write dialogue that mimics what we’ve seen or heard in other pieces of media. This makes it sound unnatural because it’s full of cliches.
When you hear these things said by a real person, you can find the spots that sound “weird” and fix them to make them sound natural.
Get Away from Borrowed Phrases
A borrowed phrase, in the context of writing cliches, is a phrase that’s said often. It sometimes seems like a catchphrase, and sometimes these phrases are called cliches as well.
It’s normal to include them in writing, but if you’re aiming for something completely unique, try to find ways to reword them. A lot of these phrases happen when you’re trying to be more creative or flowery with your writing.
For example, instead of saying “He entered the room with a guilty look,” you might say “He came in with his tail between his legs.”
The second sounds more creative, right? It isn’t because it’s a commonly-used phrase. Sometimes less flowery language is better.
Leave Time for Revision
No matter what you’re writing, you always need to give yourself room to revise. It’s common for students to wait until the last minute to write their papers, and this means that they’re not spending time looking for cliches or other bad writing habits before they turn them in.
Keep in mind that revision isn’t all about surface-level edits. It’s also a way for you to see your paper with new eyes. Leave yourself at least a day between finishing the paper and looking at it again. This lets you see things that you were blind to before.
When you read over it later, you’re more likely to catch things that seem too familiar. These are cliches.
Try to Avoid Cliches in Writing
When you’re trying to be clear and concise, cliches in writing are a bad habit. While using them every now and again is fine (after all, they exist for a reason), it’s best to make the bulk of your writing as original as possible.
Use these tips when you’re writing your next paper to cut down on your cliches.
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