The lovely Julie from Blogger Hearts Books (also a critique partner, fellow blogger, and awesome friend!) is here as part of
Breaking Up Reading Week
to talk about.....
A cliché is a trite or overused expression or idea. Clichés are in every book we read, but sometimes we don’t mind them. It all comes down to two factors.
A cliché is a cliché for a reason, we all know that. At one point it was an original idea and became popular and everyone loved seeing it. But today we see it and go “…Really? Really, AGAIN?” Other times, we don’t even notice it.
We could look at Twilight for example. It’s not an original idea, yet Stephenie did take a unique twist with it. I mean, who had ever seen a sparkling vampire? Now any vampire book is considered over done and worn out. But this process didn’t happen overnight. Several vampire books came out around the same time and also became extremely popular. But the vampire books I’ve read since Twilight, I don’t consider cliché because they were all well written and had very different plots (Vampire Academy, Blue Bloods, etc.). Not everyone feels the same way.
Then there’s the whole romance aspect. The supernatural creature that can’t be with their human lover but they do it anyway. It’s a plot some people complain about. It’s a cliché. Yet, there have been a couple books recently where I look at them and think “This is Twilight if Twilight had been written better.” And we come back to the execution completely changing my thoughts on a cliché. But not everyone feels the same way I do about them.
Yet other times, it doesn’t work. Another book I read recently had the book as a manwhore and the girl who just moved and they have an instant attraction but she doesn’t want to date a player and the mean girls convince her to play him. It worked in John Tucker Must Die. But the characters and writing just annoyed me to the point where I couldn’t even finish the book. Yet others loved this book.
A cliché is a cliché for a reason, yes. But whether it’s a good cliché or not depends on both the execution and the reader of the book.
-Julie *hides*
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