Clichés

Honestly, I think everything can be considered as cliche. It's just that there are some cliches that are more obvious than others. Someone may have a brilliant, mind blowing idea, but chances are that another person on the opposite side of the planet had that exact idea just 10 days before you. There is only a handful of people who actually come up with something utterly new, but things catch on so quickly that before the person can be given credit for their idea, it's already become the latest thing and someone snatched the credit right out the palm of their hand.

Imagine it this way. It's like a contest or a race. Everything's already been done, we're just trying to outdo the person before us. It's like we're all trying to make it into the Guiness Book of World Records. Since we can't be the first, we'll just be the best, the one to break the world record.

Whoa. I understand everything I typed, but to others it may sound like I strayed off topic. Basically, what I'm trying to say is everything's cliche. The only thing we can do is try to accept it and put as much of ourselves into it so it's not as cliche as it once was. If you get what I trying to say.

@ CementFeatheredBird
I completely agree with this. It's hard to find a concept these days that is completely new, because I feel like with almost all stories you can see the 'cliche' plotline in it that's been slightly altered to make said story stand out.

I think clichés are just something that's unavoidable, and I think people put far too much effort in trying to make sure that their story has no clichés whatsoever when it's just a lost cause. Even if you feel like you're the first to write about something, odds are, you probably aren't.

I feel like most clichés become clichés for a reason: because they're topics that are relatively popular and common in real life. I don't think having clichés in stories is necessarily a bad thing as long as there's something in the story that's still your own that makes it at least somewhat different from all the other similar stories out there like it. I also feel like, in promotion, clichés are only really detrimental if that cliché is what you use to "sell" your story. I see so many summaries on the main page that automatically "give away" the cliché, and I feel like I would be more inclined to read the story if the selling point and what the writer focused on was what made their story different.

For example, if I see "student/teacher story," I would rather have a clue as to what makes this student/teacher romance stand out from all the other student/teacher romances and why I should read this student/teacher story as opposed to someone else's.

I don't think cliches are always a bad thing. I mean, with as many things that are written nowadays, it's almost impossible not to be cliche. And what's cliche to one person isn't always cliche to another. I read a story the other day that wasnt like nything I had ever read before, but other people had called it cliche