Are Cliches Always The Thin End Of The Wedge? By Sally Quilford

One of the participants on my Online Pocket Novel Workshop said that she hoped to learn to write happy endings that weren’t clichéd.

My first bit of advice was to accept that romances, by their very nature, are clichés. Until you accept that, it will be impossible for you to write them because you’ll be trying to break a mould that does not need to be broken. When readers pick up a romance they expect certain things. They expect a heroine they'll root for, a hero they'll fancy and a Happy Ever After that brings the two together.

A traditional romance, even if it’s updated a la Bridget Jones’s Diary, is always going to be some variation of girl-meets-boy, girl-loses-boy, girl-gets-boy back again. Happy endings in themselves are clichés. After some big misunderstanding or other conflict (without which you wouldn’t have a story worth reading), the hero and heroine get back together, kiss and then (either metaphorically or literally) go off into the sunset together.

Oh for a happy ending with Colin!

If you’re scoffing at this, then you’d probably also scoff at the readership who enjoy and expect these sort of endings. Mills and Boon are still going strong after 100 years by giving readers what they want. My Weekly Pocket Novels and The People’s Friend pocket novels still fly off the shelves every fortnight because the editors (and writers) are giving readers what they want. It’s a rose-coloured world that probably has never existed in real life, but it’s what makes them happy for however many hours it takes them to read the novels. They close the books feeling, if only for a short time, that all is well with the world. They might not have much to smile about in the real world, but they’ve been able to escape it for a while into a world where everything happens exactly as it should happen.

So don’t underestimate the power of clichés. Clichés are comforting, like putting on an old jumper that might be a bit baggy and years out of fashion, but is still the most comfortable piece of clothing you have ever owned.

So knowing all this, can you still make your stories less hackneyed? I think you can. In a novella I’ve just had accepted by Siren, the hero and heroine literally do ride off into the sunset together on a horse. But when you figure in that my heroine is terrified of horses, as shown earlier in the story, it takes on a whole different meaning. It’s a way of showing that she feels safe with the hero and trusts him not to let any harm come to her. So perhaps not so hackneyed after all. At least that was my intention when I wrote it. Whether readers will think ‘God that's corny' is another matter.

If it's good enough for Indiana Jones...

And this is perhaps one way of making sure a story and the happy ending that ensues isn’t clichéd or hackneyed. It will always have to fit in with what’s gone before, so pick one nugget of your story that may have just been used to show character development, and base the happy ending around that. Do remember that the ending must always come from the story, and not be suddenly tagged on because you’ve remembered you have to get the hero and heroine together by the end.

One of my least favourite types of romance is where the hero is absolutely awful to the heroine thoughout the story, then suddenly realises he loves her, apologises and, more astoundingly, is forgiven, regardless of what has gone before. But apparently this goes down well with some readers in parts of the world. A hero can be downright evil to the heroine all the way through, as long as he has the epiphany at the end and becomes a nicer person because of his love for her. If I were the heroine in that story, I’d need more than an apology to make me realise that this abusive man is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Maybe this is why I like writing pocket novels. Such a hero or ending would never be permitted. Yes, they might be clichéd, and like that comfy old jumper, but that’s what keeps me writing them, and what keeps readers reading them.

I end by advising you to check out the TV Tropes page, which affectionately lists all the tropes (or cliches) used in fiction, film and televison, and also proves that romance writing isn't the only type of fiction that has cliches. It's a great way of learning what's gone before and finding out how you can play with those ideas for your own story.

Original Clichés

Now there’s an oxymoron ‘if ever I saw one’ – and, hey, would you believe it, I’ve used a cliché already. As any author will tell you, the damn things sneak in everywhere.

I have never understood why Bill Gates didn’t include a cliché finder in his Word package – and I have never understood why editors hate them so much. Clichés are part of the English language and most of us use them without even noticing. It has been ‘drummed into us’ that our writing should be original, but every word we use has been used by someone else.

Some time ago I tried to think up new phrases for old clichés. A task that is almost impossible and exceedingly frustrating. I did manage to come up with ‘about as useful as a knitted bucket’, ‘bleeding like a motorway rabbit’, and ‘the deep breath before the scream’ but I doubt they will ‘go down in history’.

The Internet can turn an original phrase into a cliché in a matter of seconds, so even if an author is clever enough to think up a brilliant new descriptive expression, it will probably be a cliché by the time the book is published.

Some new clichés (is that another oxymoron?) have already earned their place in the reference books. ‘The elephant in the room’ is one of my favourites – but, of course, I can never use it because it is now a cliché. One of the best I came across recently, and one I hadn’t heard before, was ‘as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs’. But you can’t use that either because I’ve just told you about it.

What would the thriller writer do if he couldn’t arm his hero ‘to the teeth’ before ‘all hell breaks loose’? The romance writer’s hero is often ‘blown away’ by his first sight of the heroine, while she thinks he has a smile ‘to die for’. Most of us know exactly what these phrases mean and don’t mind them a bit. In our novellas the lovers have to get together before the end or our readers would kill us, and sometimes a predictable ‘happy ending’ is as comforting as a warm blanket, even if it is a cliché.

Clichés are fine in conversation, because that’s the way people talk, but when writing a descriptive passage we have to use our imagination – not someone else’s.

All my books are available in the libraries and on line at Amazon, but please don’t look for clichés. I am sure you’ll find a lot of them. 

Fay Cunningham