What Is a Cliche in Writing?
Quick answer: A cliche in writing is a phrase, image or plot device so overused it has lost all force. How cliches happen, how to find them, and what to write instead.
A cliche is a phrase, image, character or plot device that has been used so often it no longer produces any effect: cold as ice, the heart skipping a beat, the detective who plays by his own rules, the it-was-all-a-dream ending. The first writer to compare a hard stare to steel made an image; the ten-thousandth made a cliche. The words remain grammatical; what has died is their power to make a reader see or feel anything.
Cliches matter because they are invisible to the writer producing them. They arrive fluently, feel natural, even feel good, precisely because the brain has heard them so often. Hunting them is therefore a learned discipline, not an instinct.
Why cliches happen to intelligent people
Cliches are the brain's cache. When you reach for a description under drafting pressure, memory serves the most frequently encountered phrase first, and the most frequently encountered phrase is by definition the most worn. This is why first drafts are legitimately full of cliches: fluency and freshness pull in opposite directions, and drafting rightly favours fluency.
The term itself comes from printing: a cliche was a stereotype plate, a block of type cast as one piece because the phrase was set so often that casting it whole saved labour. That etymology is the whole diagnosis. A cliche is language that arrives pre-assembled, which means no thinking happened at the moment of writing, and readers can feel the absence.
The three levels: phrase, character, plot
Phrase-level cliches are the famous ones: avoid like the plague, dead of night, heart of gold. Character-level cliches are pre-assembled people: the hooker with a heart of gold, the gruff mentor, the cheerleader mean girl; they are cliches because they come with all decisions already made. Plot-level cliches are pre-assembled events: the love triangle resolved by one suitor conveniently dying, the villain pausing to explain, the final it was all a dream.
Even the opening line has its graveyard. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins it was a dark and stormy night, a sentence now so notorious that an annual contest awards deliberately bad opening sentences in its name. Nothing is wrong with dark or storms; what is dead is the assembled unit.
Finding and replacing them in your drafts
In revision, run a suspicion pass: any phrase you have heard before, in exactly that form, gets flagged. The test is brutal but fast: could this phrase be printed on a mug? Then replace not with a fancier phrase but with an observation, something noticed from the actual scene in front of your imagination. Instead of her heart pounded, what does this character do with her hands?
Cliche at the character and plot level needs a different tool: the second answer rule. Your first idea for a character or a turn is usually the cached one; write it down, refuse it, and take your second or third answer instead. Contest judges and slush readers, who meet the same cached phrases dozens of times in a single reading session, reward the writer whose language shows evidence of first-hand noticing, and the difference is visible within a paragraph.
Common mistakes and misconceptions
The overcorrection is real: writers so terrified of common phrases that they contort every sentence into strangeness, producing prose that is fresh the way a sprained ankle is flexible. Idiom is not cliche; people do say hello and make coffee, and functional language should stay functional. The target is only the phrase pretending to be vivid while being dead.
Two misconceptions: first, that cliches are banned in dialogue, when in fact characters may speak in cliches to great effect, since real people do, and a character's cliches characterise them. Second, that avoiding cliche is a matter of vocabulary. It is a matter of attention: cliches are what you write when you describe the idea of a thing instead of the thing. Look harder at the imagined scene and the fresh phrase is usually just sitting there.
What poets can take from this
- Draft freely, cliches included; hunt them in revision, not while inventing.
- Apply the mug test to any phrase that arrived a little too smoothly.
- Replace dead phrases with things noticed, not with thesaurus upgrades.
- Take your second or third idea for characters and plot turns.
- Let characters speak in cliches when it reveals them; keep the narration clean.
Try it yourself
Write a 300-word scene of a storm at sea using none of these: howling wind, crashing waves, driving rain, mountainous seas, teeth of the gale. Every description must come from one sailor's specific, physical experience.
Questions
What is the difference between a cliche and a trope?
A trope is a recognisable pattern that still works; a cliche is a pattern or phrase worn past working. Tropes carry expectation a writer can use; cliches carry only the reader's fatigue. The same device can be one or the other depending on handling.
Are cliches ever acceptable in fiction?
In dialogue and close narration, yes: people think and speak in stock phrases, and a character's cliches are characterisation. In the author's own narration they are almost always a missed chance to make the reader see something.
How do I know if my writing is full of cliches?
Let a draft cool for a few weeks, then read it aloud; phrases you have heard elsewhere announce themselves. Honest readers help too. Ask them to underline anything they could have predicted before reading it.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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