Lilith Saintcrow

I’m thinking Tuesday will become my errands day. The crowds have gone down and a lot of the Monday shoppers have gotten what they need.

My friends tell me I need to meet more people. It’s not like I live under a rock, it’s just that I’m a single mom and dealing with a lot of stuff. The Universe seems to agree with my friends, because all of a sudden people I didn’t know were interested are all saying, “We want to spend some time with you. Come and do X with us, or something else?” It’s nice to feel wanted. Considering I’ve spent most of my life feeling unwanted, it’s a good and glorious change.

I sent off the first round of revisions for the third Strange Angels last night. Working through the recent upheaval has been…enlightening. It’s vaguely ironic–no, I take that back. It’s massively ironic that my own advice about working through upheaval has come back to me like this. I search my own weblog for how I dealt with stuff like this at other times, and it’s helpful to sometimes look back through that and remember that I’ve felt like this before, and it too shall pass.

Lots of changes. I need a holding pattern for a while, my flexibility is becoming a bit strained.

And with that, adieu. Off I go to get another day done.

Feeling absolutely looneytunes lonely and down today, after a restless night.

This is when writing is so very important. It catches me when I fall. Writing has never, ever let me down.

I’m sometimes asked how I write when I’m upset or depressed. My feeling is, this is the time it’s most critical to write. The act of creation flies in the face of everyday (or even Big Major) Life Crap. It also helps restore perspective or provide a little distance from whatever’s bugging you.

So today, it’s the work that’s got to carry me. That and sending up the bat-signal to my friends. And listing the things I’m grateful for. That should help.

But at the end of the day it’s just going to be me and those words on the page. My most faithful friends, my helpers, my most long-term of lovers and helpful of assistants. I need that magic today, and writing never fails to deliver, thank God.

One more thing to be grateful for.

Happy Friday, everyone! I started out today feeling ultra-lame because I didn’t even have a ghost of an idea about the regular Friday post. But I’ve got news, so we’ll get to that first. To the left you’ll see the cover for Death’s Excellent Vacation, an anthology coming out in August 2010. There’s a ton of awesome authors in it–LA Banks, Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, and Jeaniene Frost, to name a few. My story, The Heart Is Always Right, focuses on a gargoyle who wants to visit Fiji.

I’m also doing #askawriter tonight on Twitter, from 7-7:30PM. When I do schedule #askawriter and other chats, they will be on my Event Calender.

So I mentioned I was having trouble getting a subject for the Friday post, and Devon Monk piped up that a Deadline Dames reader had asked about cliches in fiction–when it’s OK, when it’s too much, so on, so forth.

My, what a meaty subject.

From Wikipedia:

A cliché (US: /klɪˈʃeɪ/ UK: /ˈkliːʃeɪ/, from French), is a saying, expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, rendering it a stereotype, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. The term is frequently used in modern culture for an action or idea which is expected or predictable, based on a prior event. It is likely to be used pejoratively. A cliché may sometimes be used in a work of fiction for comedic effect.

I have mixed feelings on the subject of cliches. Expressions that were once popular and have achieved the status of cliche usually have some kernel of truth to them. They can be useful in small doses, especially when you’re fleshing out a character through dialogue. The type of cliche a character picks in certain situations is, ahem, a window to the soul.

Cliches are like exclamation points or Dave’s Insanity Sauce. You don’t want to use more than a little bit to add some spice and heat. It’s very easy to add too much and descend into inedible bathos.

For me, the problem of cliche is similar to the problem of metaphor and simile. On the one hand, the poetic comparison of metaphor and simile gives writing a lot of its savor. On the other, it’s possible to choke the other important parts–description, movement, le mot juste, et cetera.

So. How much cliche is OK?

We get into dangerous waters here (ha) because writing is so incredibly subjective. If I gave any metric–say, seven cliches per book–immediately someone can find a classic (satire or otherwise) or an incredibly popular book that breaks that rule. Some books are nothing but stock characters and cliche (hello, most Westerns and and the technical manuals of Clancy, the Mack Bolan series–need I go on?) and still manage to do quite well because they are fulfilling reader expectations. I don’t think it’s possible to have a cliche-free book, because human beings use cliches on a daily basis.

When I worked retail and customer service, cliches were stock-in-trade. You take refuge in verbal cliches day after day to smooth social interaction and provide the “service” people expect. It’s social lubricant. If you interact with people on a daily basis, cliche will come along every day, because it’s safe and easy communication.

In writing, cliches can be safe and easy sometimes. They can even be useful. You can have cliche dialogue, cliche description, or cliche plot. Let’s take them one at a time.

* Cliche dialogue: This is by far the most effective use of cliche. To have a character choose a particular cliche in a situation is a golden opportunity to show more about that person. Let’s pick a cliche. “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Simple, huh?

“But who’ll take care of me?” he whined.

Mrs. Edison shrugged, gathering up her pocketbook. “I don’t know, Herb. All I know’s I ain’t gonna no more.”

“But–”

“For years you were that rollin stone, gatherin no moss. If you’d'a gathered some moss here maybe I coulda lived on that and stayed. You can wash you own damn underwear now.” And with that, she headed for the door. She stepped outside into the fragrance of blossoming jasmine, and sighed. Sliding her purse onto her shoulder, Mrs. Edison took the first three steps into the rest of her life.

Now, let’s have another character use this cliche.

“Saving your ass, kid.” He ducked down, and dug in the bag at his feet. His eyes sparkled, cheeks flushed, and he looked like he was having a hell of a time. “Whooo-ee. They really want you dead.”

Holly’s jaw dropped as he came up with three grenades. He tugged the pin out of the first, lobbed it, and had the second in the air a second later. The third went too, and before she even thought of moving he had grabbed her, shoving her toward the floor. The explosions made the ground quiver, and Holly’s scream was lost in the concrete, his weight pressing all the air out of her.

Then he was up again, his hand bruising-tight around her arm. “Time to go. Rolling stone gathers no moss.”

“You’re insane.” Her ears rang. Her legs were noodles. But he picked up his bag and dragged her anyway.

Different characters use the cliche for different reasons, and each time it says something different about the character.

* Cliche description: Strong as a horse. Mean as a rattlesnake. Papa was a rolling stone. A cliche description can be used to add piquancy, but you must be absolutely certain you are using it for spice instead of laziness. It’s like the word “that”–nine times out of ten it’s not necessary, and you should make very sure of the tenth time too. Cliche description is most often a function of cliche storytelling–i.e., stock characters and stock situations.

* Cliche storytelling: The wacky gay best friend. The sidekick. The hero in the white hat. The villain playing dead and rising up for one last grab at the hero. The love scene right after the fight scene, one-third of the way through the movie. These are all examples of stock characters and stock situations. We’ve grown to expect them, and they have been with us since people started telling stories.

These things are useful shorthand, telling a reader what to expect. They are forms and strictures, and any form or stricture is useful to help a piece of art hold its shape. Otherwise it’s just a huge blob, like a body without a skeleton or skin. Without the framework and boundaries, all you’ve got is quivering Jell-O.

But the real fun comes in subverting the forms and strictures. Cliches and stock storytelling are useful training wheels for writers. They teach us expectations, story pacing, and what the reader expects. You absolutely must know and use them for a while before you know enough to break them effectively, to subvert and play with them, stand them on their head and change them up. Within the forms and strictures is a type of absolute freedom that is the paradox of art.

When are cliches too much? When you’re using them unconsciously, or out of laziness. You must be as vigilant about cliche as you are about the passive voice. If you spot a cliche in your work, you really have to stop and think. Ask yourself these questions:

* Does it move the story along?
* Does it show something about this character that I can’t show in another way, or that I don’t want to show in another way? Why?
* Is this how someone would behave in real life, or is this how they would behave in a movie? And which do I want here for the purposes of this book/short story?
* Does this set up an expectation I am going to fulfill or deny? Why?
* Is there another way to do this?
* What would happen if the character did/said Something Else, something diametrically opposed to or just slightly different than what I’ve got here now?

These are all valuable questions that will start the process of deciding whether the cliche is necessary and an artistic decision instead of a lazy piece o’prop. And of course, your beta and editor, not to mention your readers, will have their own ideas of what’s cliche, how much is too much, and whether the character is behaving the way Someone Like That would behave. It’s a balancing act, like so much about this art. The older I get, the more I think everything is a balancing act, stacking things against each other and holding the tightwire middle course.

What, you thought I’d have a hard and fast rule?

Perish the thought.

Note: No cliches were harmed in the making of this post. A number of electrons were horribly inconvenienced and a few grammatical rules were assaulted, but everyone agreed it was for the best.

Why is it that when people ask you questions, they often don’t want an answer, they just want support? It’s getting to where I have to stop and look at people and ask, “Why did you ask if you did not want to know what I thought? If you want support, tell me you want support, but don’t waylay me with a question and then downplay what I say because you’ve made up your mind you want something specific–something else.”

I can read minds–I’m a mum, for Chrissake. But I don’t like to. It’s impolite.

This concludes my circuitous bitching about some of the stuff happening lately. *makes face*

The last couple days have been crazy. Not in a bad way, more in a “is it a full moon because I’m seeing utter weirdness” sort of way. The weirdness factor has just been through the roof. Tomorrow I’ll focus on correspondence, I swear I will. Today I’m just going to recover. (Assuming we’ve seen the high tide of weirdness, which is not always a fair assumption.)

I’ve also been watching movies at night. Wolverine was…meh. All the complexity and rage of a wonderful character, reduced to flavorless stock footage. Granted, the actors really, really tried–Liev Schreiber is a good Sabertooth, but then I’ve had a thing for him ever since A Walk On The Moon. I could also look at Sweaty!Jackman all day, but that’s just me. I just felt like the actors were struggling with a script that would not do anything but play dead. The Deadpool moments were awesome, though. I love me some Deadpool. I would have loved to see more Gambit, an extended Gambit fight scene, etc.

The other recent movie was Eastern Promises, which is another Cronenberg-Mortensen thang. Cronenberg definitely has a thing for blonde, super-thin, kitten-faced leading ladies (Maria Bello in A History of Violence, which I liked, and Naomi Watts in this movie.) I liked it a great deal, even though Kirill the Psycho Gangster (played by a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek and nutzoid Vincent Cassel) has his Moment of Epiphany a little too late in the movie to really have the ending make sense. Still, Cronenberg didn’t take the easy way out, and Mortensen turns in a scorching, beautiful performance as a sort of decent antihero in an indecent world. This is pretty much his stock in trade, King of Men notwithstanding. Plus, the DVD extras about the tattoos in Russian prisons were pretty awesome, and musecrack to the max. All in all, extraordinarily enjoyable.

Half of today is already gone and I still have mountains to climb. So, a I bid you a civil adieu. Revisions wait for no woman.

Dumped out 3.5K, both in revisions and a new scene, yesterday. It feels good to have, as Ellen Foster would say, my fire back in me.

I’ve been dealing with so much personal stuff that some days it’s all I can do to open up a file and look at the words, read a couple scenes, and tweak. There have been some 200-word days, which is about as fun as opening another hole in my head and dousing it with napalm. slogging through is a matter of sheer bloodymindedness. Some days I doubt even my stubbornness is equal to the task.

Today is another new scene, shoehorned in. The book is gaining new complexity, which always happens in the first draft after the editor sees it. It’s fun to dig a little deeper, show a little more, lift the curtain on this new world.

See you on the other side.