Now That's Cliche

You’ve heard the expression: “That’s cliché.” Certainly you’ve been advised as writers, by your mentors, through correspondence courses or creative writing classes, to avoid clichés. Sometimes that can be difficult, especially when you are writing in a genre that is in itself somewhat cliché, like romance or mystery.

An editor recently pulled a sentence out of my latest manuscript One Hot January and suggested that it was somewhat cliché. I have to admit, out of context, he was right. But my character is a cross between Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer and an indignant Humphrey Bogart, so within the context of the entire text, it works. In short, it can be an effective technique, if used sparingly.

Keeping in line with this month’s Valentine’s theme I’d like to discuss writing a love scene. Love is a universal theme, but because it’s been done countless times writing a cliché free love scene is difficult if not impossible. Often we must settle for an original variation of a cliché.

Let’s start with physical descriptions of our lovers. Whether a woman is beautiful or a man handsome is highly subjective. Get specific and stay away from superlatives related to perfection. No one is perfect in reality so why should they be in literature? Don’t cop out by allowing the reader to see only their own concept of beauty — show us what your character sees, and make it real! Look at your spouse or lover. Certainly there are flaws in their features that endear them to you: the tiny scar in the right eyebrow, the mole on the left cheek, the dimpled chin, the gray hair at the temples. Complexion can be porcelain or Mediterranean bronze, but give it some flaw to make it real — freckles or a birth mark

One of the early chapters in One Hot January takes place in a New York nightclub. My protagonist is taken by the buxom blonde across the table from him. Her low-cut sweater reveals a tiny mole on the inside of one of her breasts, and throughout the chapter he keeps coming back to that tiny mole — he watches it kiss the other breast as she leans forward, elbows on the table, to listen to him. Eventually that tiny mole beckons to him, he begins to fantasize, and he tries to imagine if she might have any other similar moles in more secluded places.

Within the context of the chapter as a whole that mole plays a very small part, but it goes a long way toward building the character of my protagonist and it does so in a way that isn’t cliché, although the sexual tension between the two is something we’ve all experienced at one time or another, and while that tension itself can be described as cliché, how the scene plays out is an original variation.

As for love scenes, unless you’re writing erotica, I always advise that less is more. Stay away from sappy narrative and describing body parts and positions that leave the reader wondering, “Huh? Is that even possible?”

Here is a fine example of a good love scene, from Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series:

Eventually I came to resent Jolenta’s sleep. I abandoned the oar and knelt beside her on the cushions. There was a purity in her sleeping face, however artificial, that I had never observed when she was awake. I kissed her, and her large eyes, hardly open, seemed almost Agia’s long eyes, as her red-gold hair appeared almost brown. I loosened her clothing. She seemed half drugged, whether by some soporific in the heaped cushions or merely by the fatigue induced by our walk in the open and the burden of so great a quantity of voluptuous flesh. I freed her breasts, each nearly as large as her own head, and those wide thighs, which seemed to hold a new-hatched chick between them.

That’s the end of the scene. Notice its simplicity — how much is said with so few words, and how much what is left unsaid contributes to the scene. Again: an original variation on an old cliché.

One final bit of advice to keep in mind: the more descriptive the scene, the more erotic, the more difficult it becomes to remain cliché free. As I wrote earlier, sometimes less is more, as evidenced by Wolfe’s short excerpt above.

J. Conrad Guest’s writing credentials include January’s Paradigm, first published in 1998 by Minerva Press, London, England. As a contributing writer to Encore magazine in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he writes about the people and businesses in the Kalamazoo area; two of his articles have been featured on the cover. He has written theatrical reviews for a Detroit area newspaper, two murder mysteries that have been successfully produced, and several short stories that have appeared on Internet e-zines. J. Conrad Guest also provides manuscript evaluation and editorial services at j.c.guest@att.net.