You might also consider hiring a sensitivity reader to ensure you aren’t relying on tired cliches or stereotypes. You can avoid potentially harmful tropes by deeply developing your characters, making sure everyone in your story has their own fully formed backstory, motivations, goals, and flaws. (If you’re not careful, that’s an easy trap to fall into with sidekick characters who are really just there to revolve around your main protagonist). For example, the “sassy gay best friend” trope can reduce LGBTQ+ characters to flat, one-dimensional roles. Some cliches are not cool because they make sweeping generalizations about entire groups of people. Obviously, she has been wildly successful writing stories that follow these familiar patterns - but why? Studying how other authors successfully use writing tropes to their advantage can help you do the same in your own writing. People We Meet on Vacation is a classic friends-to-lovers story, while Beach Read is an enemies-to-lovers page-turner. Not to pick on one genre, but romance author Emily Henry rocks the hell out of some classic tropes. You can study the tropes that work - and learn from the ones that don’t. Is everybody kind of over werewolf-vampire-human love triangles right now? Maybe an alien-ghost-human love triangle would be a better bet. This doesn’t mean that you can’t write a love triangle story, but you should be aware of what’s been done to death and what readers are still interested in. If you write romance, then you should know that the whole love-triangle thing has been done 100,000 times - and that some love triangles work better than others. You should be aware of what other authors are doing. There are two big reasons to read and study the common writing tropes in your genre: Be aware of common & overused tropes in your genre. In other words, deeply develop your characters, and then let them lead the way - if you’ve succeeded in making them original, well-developed individuals, they will help you avoid doing something that’s already been done before. Make sure their decisions and actions are specific to them and to your story. Get specific about their flaws, values, and beliefs. Take the time to really work out your characters’ motivations and backstories. You can avoid cliché characters by fully developing them and making sure they are multi-dimensional. Often, characters feel cliché when they are too general - the girl next door, the bad boy, the dumb jock. Developing your own style can go a long way in helping you avoid cliches in your writing, no matter what tropes it might include. While this alone may not be enough to make your writing feel completely original, it’s an important first step. Even if your plot follows some familiar patterns or revolves around a familiar type of protagonist, you can make sure your story feels original by doing it in your own way.įocus on finding and honing your writing voice. Remember, no one can tell your specific story except for you. That’s okay! There are a few surefire things you can do to avoid the worst offenders - and keep those tropes you do end up using from feeling like the same-old, same-old. Maybe your entire plot really does need to revolve around a tough-as-nails detective avenging a personal trauma. So, how can you avoid writing cliches? Sometimes, it just feels right to sprinkle certain tropes into your story. And below, we have six tips for just that - how to avoid cliches in writing and flip tropes on their head to make them feel fresh and new. If you can find a way to put an original twist on a classic trope, you can keep your story from feeling tired. Since readers have seen these tropes a thousand times already, using them can make your story predictable - which means that emotional climax or plot twist won’t pack the punch you want it to have. Relying on overdone tropes and cliches can make your writing seem boring and lazy. In general, it’s best to steer clear of writing clichés when you can.Ĭliches are cliché because they’re unoriginal - a word you really don’t want to be associated with your writing. We’ll get into all of that in more detail below! Why Should You Avoid Using Cliches in Your Writing? But there are ways to use them in a fresh, original way - and there are also certain writing tropes to avoid if you want your story to keep readers engaged and turning the page. It would be impossible to write a story without a single writing trope. And these cliché tropes can quickly make your writing seem lazy, boring, and predictable… leading readers to roll their eyes and, even worse, set your book down. It’s important to understand that there’s nothing inherently wrong with using tropes in writing - it’s just that there are some overused book tropes that have become cliché over time. Meanwhile, we can define a trope in writing as a situation or plot that is widely used in fiction.
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