Creating the Monster

Use clichés intentionally and with purpose to avoid a meaningless mess

A cliché doesn’t start as a cliché. It starts as a surprising, new method that becomes convention, like Shakespeare’s rose. Eventually, the reference becomes so overused that it loses impact, the comparison becoming lost on readers who are no longer jarred into thinking about what it means. The convention then becomes meaningless and trite. That is when cliché is born.

And from cliché, writing rules to avoid them—ones created by teachers who have grown frustrated by novice writing students relying on clichés over hard, creative work—are born, as well.

Take, for example, the ‘rule,’ Do not use the dream device, which often ends, “And then they woke up—it was all a dream!” Well, why not use it, if Lewis Carroll did? For one, that ending might have been a novel plot twist when Carroll did it in 1865. Now, it’s a cheat, a short cut, a way out for a writer who doesn’t know how to write an ending. The bigger problem lies in the fact that dreams are largely meaningless for readers (see my Substack on dreams in writing), as ‘it was all a dream’ endings tend to negate every event leading up to them. Dreams do not have real-world consequences, and thus stories about dreams have no consequences, either (unless you’re in Nightmare on Elm Street—then, dreams are deadly*). If the story is of no consequence for the protagonist who will not actually suffer any repercussions of his mistakes, the reader, who—having invested hours they will not get back—will feel toyed with and cheated. None of what they read means anything to anyone.

*If you’re looking for an engaging and brilliant novel about how dreams have real-world impact, read my friend Jody Wenner’s Well, Well, Well.

Carroll got away with using the dream device because Alice in Wonderland needed it (as did The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, from the same era). Because the Victorians wrote and read realistic fiction about their staid, rule-bound lives, the dream plot provided a loophole from which to examine the boundaries of that reality without breaking acceptable convention (the dream doesn’t break realism, as the character is still governed by the rules of the real world to which they wake). In many ways, their dream stories questioned how awake any of us really is. But, we modern readers have already asked that question dozens of times, in many forms. We have seen The Matrix and hundreds of stories like it, and thus the dream plot feels too easy; it doesn’t challenge us, at all.

A similar writing rule to Do not end a book with a character waking is, Do not start a book with a character waking, which probably exists for the same reasons. Having taught writing for decades, I have witnessed the novice writer’s tendency to start a story ‘at the beginning,’ which they assume means daybreak of the first day. They write a character waking from sleep, brushing his teeth, having breakfast…when the real story begins six hours into that character’s police shift, his partner complaining that he never wants to answer the calls, that someday he will need to get back up on that horse and investigate, please just this once, let’s answer this one, and the character almost goes—for the first time actually considering it—but doesn’t, instead heading downstairs for a cup of 7-11 coffee, when bam!, a group of masked people hold up that store, and he is forced to deal with it, without his partner.

But Kafka started a famous novel with a character waking up, you protest. Sure, only his character did so having found “himself transformed into a giant insect.” Not exactly normal, boring, or cliché, right? Besides twisting the wake-up start into something unique, Kafka, much like Carroll, used it to create a surrealistic mood, forcing us to question whether Gregor Samsa is still dreaming, urging us further to question our own realities, asking ourselves, are we human, or are we pests? Where is the line between the two? Is the line only our perception, a dream?

I am currently reading Rachel Khong’s newest novel, Real Americans, a Read with Jenna pick. Because I loved Khong’s first book, Goodbye, Vitamin, and had heard great things about this one, I was surprised to read its first line, “My alarm rang at seven…” The story starts with the main character Lily (wait for it)…waking up! Brushing her teeth! Eating toast! Ugh, how cliche! How boring! Not exactly.

In Khong’s first lines, Lily doesn’t feel quite awake, even as she brushes her teeth and goes downstairs. Time even glitches at one point, as though she might still be sleeping, as though she is not in this world with others, at all. That one detail, along with my being a Khong fan (and because I had chosen this book for my book club), urged me to read on, looking for what that glitching meant—why would Khong start with a character waking and performing mundane tasks?

(MINIATURE SPOILER OF BEGINNING ONLY) I found my answer at the chapter’s end: Lily is someone for whom luck, random occurences, or serendipity do not happen. She doesn’t win raffles, doesn’t get asked out spontaneously, doesn’t talk to strangers…so, when, at an office party, a handsome stranger gives her a television and invites her to Paris, she says yes, acting as though her actions have no consequences. She might be still sleeping, after all. She is glitching, like she did that morning, time not real but something of a dream.

Still, (though Lily might be existentially sleepwalking through life) we suspect she is not actually asleep, and thus we know consequences of her actions are inevitable. This dramatic irony creates tension. We, as readers, think through that situation more deeply. Suddenly, Khong is a genius again. Yay! Because of that glitching line, and because Jenna is the character she is, the cliché, rule-breaking opening creates greater impact than if Khong had started the novel at the party, just before meeting the stranger, when a more novice writer might assume the story actually starts.

The lesson here about using conventions/tropes/clichés is to do so purposefully and with conviction. Use them to create meaning rather than to undermine it. Writing is about making choices. You are the creator, so do not create without thought or intention, as Frankenstein did with his poor monster. Do not piece together a bunch of used parts and call it a day. Think through the almost limitless words and options available; make them each work toward a specific effect, and own that effect until the end.

Then nothing about your story will be like the rest.