Learn to Spot Cliché

A cliché is an idea or technique that when first invented was so good—so great, in fact—that people have recycled it again and again and again for decades. Knowledge of your art form’s history is a basic necessity; an eye that spots a cliché when you see one and, more important, when you write one is an artistic imperative. For example, the idea that beautiful, young jet-setters enjoying unlimited cocaine and sex are in fact depressed and miserable is not a revelation. Thousands of plays, films, novels, and lyrics have sung that tune. The emptiness of indulgence has been a cliché in both high art and pop culture ever since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy and Gatsby. If the rich are your subject matter, investigate the multitude of characters created not only by Fitzgerald but Evelyn Waugh, Noel Coward, Woody Allen, Whit Stillman, and Tina Fey, and all the films, plays, or television dramedies that featured songs by Cole Porter sung by Frank Sinatra, up to and including the HBO series Succession.

ROBERT McKEE