Writing Advice: Avoid All Clichés?

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I’m sure you’ve heard this writing advice before, but it always bears repeating: you should really avoid clichés  I’m certain that if you have ever taken a Creative Writing course, participated in a writing group or workshop, or even done some research on writing, you have heard about clichés  For those of you who don’t know, clichés are overused tropes and story techniques that sound hackneyed in your writing. There are many writing clichés that writers are advised to avoid at all costs, but someone has now compiled the Top Ten Storytelling Clichés you should avoid.

Yes, the website Lit Reactor has written a fabulous article about these clichés that we’ve all heard about. There are clichés regarding character descriptions, having a character be ‘the chosen one,’ and even knocking your characters unconscious simply for plot advancement. But my favorite cliché listed here is “broadcasting an upcoming plot twist.” Basically, this cliché means that you’re announcing to your readers that something big is going to happen. The example that Lit Reactor uses is The Da Vinci Code, where a passage says something to the effect of “Little did he know that he’d soon turn the tables.” Just reading that sentence makes my toes curl, honestly. You should definitely avoid broad, transparent statements like this in your writing.

Even as I write this post, though, I wonder whether “avoid” is the correct word to use here. Sure, all of these so-called clichés listed in Lit Reactor’s post would make for some pretty bad writing, especially if they were all combined in one story. But I don’t know if you should necessarily avoid them altogether.

I think some better advice would be to make these clichés your own. Use one of these clichés if you absolutely must. But add so much of yourself and your personal writing style that it’s no longer recognizable as a cliché. After all, I think we’ve all read some books that contain the “chosen one” trope that have been lauded for their engaging writing (ahem — Harry Potter — ahem). I challenge you to make these clichés your own!

– Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan

Editor’s Notes #122

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Welcome, blog readers! This week was another quiet one here at the blog as our bloggers begin to enjoy their summer holidays. But I’d still like to do a wrap-up of what posts we featured here. Firstly, though, let’s talk about The Jet Fuel Review. In case you didn’t know, the Spring 2013 issue of the Jet Fuel Review has arrived! The issue looks wonderful and we have featured amazingly talented writers and artists. This year we’re offering a new way for you to read the Review — an eBook version. Now you can view the Review on your Kindle or other eReader. Be sure to check out the Jet Fuel Review’s Spring 2013 issue!

The week began with a Writing Advice post all about ignoring the passage of time. Yes, according to John Steinbeck, one of the best ways to make progress on your writing is to ignore time, page counts, and word counts. Just lose yourself in the work and enjoy what you’re working on. Disagree? Leave your thoughts in the comments! This week’s Discussion Post talked about the issue of gender and book covers. Following a challenge set forth by Young Adult author Maureen Johnson, people all over the internet flipped covers to cater to the opposite gender’s stereotype. The results were eye-opening and sparked a discussion regarding covers that pander to one specific gender. Check out the post and let’s talk about this interesting “coverflip” project.

This week’s Poem from Slate was How to Steal the Laptop of Your Childhood Nemesis, written by Eric McHenry. And, finally, the week ended with the tenth and final part of Linda’s Sherlock Holmes serial story. Check it out!

Thanks for reading the Jet Fuel blog this week. We look forward to posting more interesting content this week!

– Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan

Sunday Serial: Sherlock Holmes “A Case of Identity and Zombies”

Part Ten – The End

As we walked to the stools again, Sherlock picked up another blade and held it to the flames. Cleaning the air of the cold-blooded-scoundrel’s aroma with the stench of rotting flesh as he watched the flames, he took his time reaching for his cleaning rag and setting to work on another blade.

“I cannot now entirely see the steps of you reasoning,” I remarked, “As I know you to be the best judge, I would not question you in front of the guilty. Kindly explain sir.”

The steam again rose to cover his face. As the steam cleared he began, “Of course it is obvious from the first that this Master Hosmer Angel must have some strong object for his curious conduct,” Sherlock said as he tempered the steel.

Poem from Slate: “How to Steal the Laptop of Your Childhood Nemesis”

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This week’s poem from Slate is entitled, rather interestingly, How to Steal the Laptop of Your Childhood Nemesis, and it is written by poet Eric McHenry. As always, you can click the poem title there and hear Eric McHenry read his poem aloud, which I think is a really awesome thing. If you have a spare moment today, do check this out and add a little poetry to your day.

According to a website about Kansas poets, Eric McHenry is the author of Potscrubber Lullabies (Waywiser Press, 2006), a poetry collection that won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poetry has appeared in The New Republic, Harvard Review, Northwest Review, Orion and Agni.  He currently teaches at Washburn University. At that website, you can also find some more examples of McHenry’s poems.

How to Steal the Laptop of Your Childhood Nemesis, by Eric McHenry

Discuss: Gender & Book Covers

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Recently the Young Adult author Maureen Johnson launched this amazing challenge on her Tumblr. The challenge was called “Coverflip” and it centered on messages she sometimes gets from young men that say, roughly, “please change the cover of your book so that I can read it.” Now, firstly, these young men are laboring under the delusion that they are only “allowed” to read books that have “manly” covers. This is patently untrue and no one is making them avoid these books. But just the fact that they clued in on something as specific as the book’s cover suggests that there is an endemic gendering of book covers that’s taking place.

Maureen Johnson’s “Coverflip” challenge was to see if her followers could change up covers of her books and some classic books to “fit” the other gender’s marketing stereotype. She wrote a really amazing article on The Huffington Post in which she said many brilliant things, one of which I will quote here.

So, we’re thinking about boys and girls and what they read. The assumption, as I understand it, is that females are flexible and accepting creatures who can read absolutely anything. We’re like acrobats. We can tie our legs over our heads. Bring it on. There is nothing we cannot handle.

Boys, on the other hand, are much more delicately balanced. To ask them to read “girl” stories (whatever those might be) will cause the whole venture to fall apart. They are finely tuned, like Formula One cars, which require preheated fluids and warmed tires in order to operate — as opposed to girls, who are like pickup trucks or big, family-style SUVs. We can go anywhere, through anything, on any old literary fuel you put in us.

Largely because we have little choice in the matter.

I have seen this gender disconnect in many areas of life, not only books. People tend to assume that women can very easily dress like men, read about men, and consume media created for men. But could men do those same things and be accepted by society? Goodness gracious, no! Why, though? Why can these gender stereotypes flip one way, but not the other? In addition, Johnson notes that so-called “girly” covers are often equated with stories that are “trashy” or “fluff.” This is very often not true about the words past those covers, so why are publishers saddling books by female authors with covers that will give them an incorrect reputation?

Accompanying Johnson’s article is a slideshow of responses that she received to her “Coverflip” challenge. The results are really amazing. The flip of Game of Thrones, for instance, is particularly striking. Would a boy want to pick up a book with that new, “girly” cover on it? Probably not. And yet the content inside is exactly the same as the edition with the covers we already know. In example after example, the font has been changed, the colors have been altered, and the main image has been switched to something more traditionally female. As you scroll through them, do the altered covers change your perception of what the book might be about? That’s not surprising since covers are the first impression we get about new books while browsing bookstores. Though we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, we very often do. In the cases of many female Young Adult authors, then, their books are presenting a false first impression because of their gendered book cover.

I’m not really sure what the result of all of this should be, but it has made me realize just how divided the literary world is along gender lines. What do you guys think about this? What’s up with specifically gendered book covers? Why can’t boys pick up books with girls on the cover? And what does this all mean for society and gender at large? Share your thoughts in the comments!

– Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan

Writing Advice: Lose Track of Time

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At times, writing can be an all-consuming practice. Hours can disappear quite easily if you’re working hard on a passage and don’t stop to eat or say hello to family members. Those are the good times, at least they are in my opinion. Those times when you don’t realize how much time is passing, how many words you’re putting down, how many pages are flying by — yes, those are the good times. But they can’t last forever. And eventually you’ll find yourself blocked, unable to continue, and unsure that you’ll ever see the end of your project. How do you get back to those days when time meant nothing to you and progress was smooth?

I believe that some words of wisdom from the writer John Steinbeck can help here. This piece of advice comes from the Brainpickings post, John Steinbeck’s Six Tips on Writing.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

Personally, I think this is great advice to take into consideration. Think about it this way — if you never expect to finish, you won’t be constantly frustrated if you’re not progressing as quickly as you’d like. And when you do reach the end of your story, you’ll be so pleasantly surprised that it will be like the time flew right by you.

I also really like the idea of writing just one page per day. If you do that for a month, you’ll have thirty pages finished. Eventually those numbers will add up and you’ll get more and more done. In addition, setting a goal like one-page-per-day for yourself helps your momentum get started. You’ll probably find that on a typical day, you write more than one page simply because you keep on going with your story. But beginning with the guideline of just one page is a good way to get started. Hope this helps!

– Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan

Editor’s Notes #121

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Hello, blog readers, and welcome to this week’s round-up of posts on the Jet Fuel blog! Firstly, I’d like to remind you all about the Spring 2013 issue of the Jet Fuel Review! The issue looks fantastic and we have featured such talented writers and artists. This year we’re offering a new way for you to read the Review — an eBook version. Now you can view the Review on your Kindle or other eReader. Be sure to check out the Jet Fuel Review’s Spring 2013 issue!

The week began with a Writing Advice post about being different when writing. It’s not prescribed that you follow any particular formula when writing your story. Try writing without paragraphs or chapters and see what happens! The Discussion post this week covered different shelving techniques for your book collection. How do you organize your bookshelves? Do you have any secret methods? Share them in the comments!

This weeks’s featured poem from Slate was Tomorrow Night, Shake Me by Terri Witek. In his film corner this week, Lucas discusses Baxter, which he has branded the “anti-dog” movie. Liz’s News of the Books this week touched on the topic of retractions and why they’ve been occurring more and more often in the world of literature and journalism. Finally, we posted the ninth installment of Linda’s serial story, Sherlock Holmes: A Case of Identity and Zombies.

Thanks for reading all of our posts this week. Stay tuned for more!

– Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan