When It’s Actually OK to Use a Cliché

 

I’ve spent two posts screaming at clichés like they keyed my car, and for the most part, I stand by it. They’re tired. They’re hollow. They make your writing sound like it was stitched together in a factory where all the workers are half-asleep.

But clichés exist because they work. They’re shortcuts. They’re cultural glue. They’re the shared campfire stories of language. They're not evil. They’re just lazy. And like anything lazy, they can occasionally be charming in small, carefully monitored doses.

Sometimes, dropping a cliché isn’t the end of creativity. Sometimes, it’s the setup to a joke, the hinge on which a clever twist swings. The trick is not to lean on them like a crutch—it’s to weaponize them.

Here’s when clichés are actually fair game:

1. When You Twist the Knife
   Take “the grass is always greener.” Add: …until you realize it’s just spray paint on AstroTurf. Boom. Instant humor. The reader thinks that brown liquid is iced tea, and you’ve serve ‘em whiskey.
   
   
2. When You Break It Mid-Sentence
   Start with the cliché, then derail it. “Plenty of fish in the sea…but most of them are catfish or already on someone else’s hook.”
   
   
3. When speed matters more than sparkle
   Sometimes you’re not crafting the great American novel, you’re just trying to move the scene along. Dropping in “the tip of the iceberg” might save you from a paragraph of over-explaining. Just don’t make it your whole toolbox
   
   
4. When you want to sound human
   People speak in clichés. Go to any bar, coffee shop, or dentist’s waiting room and you’ll hear at least three of them before the hygienist calls your name. Using one in dialogue can make a character feel real. And, if your character is supposed to sound generic, predictable, or out of their depth, clichés can reveal that. Just don’t let them hijack your voice.

Clichés are like hot sauce. A dash wakes things up; dumping the whole bottle makes people cry and regret knowing you.

So go ahead. Use them sparingly and twist them mercilessly. But don’t build your house out of them. Readers will forgive a clever wink. What they won’t forgive is writing that feels like it was photocopied straight out of a motivational poster.

Because at the end of the day, what matters isn’t the cliché. It’s what you do with it.

So go ahead and use clichés. But twist them, mock them, or melt them down and recast them into something jagged and shiny. The point isn’t to avoid clichés like the plague (apologies). The point is to make them serve you instead of the other way around.

Now that’s the real writing on the wall. (sorry, I’ll let myself out).

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Series Complete: You made it. Three posts, zero excuses. Now go write something that doesn’t sound like it belongs on a motivational poster.”

← Back to Part 1 Why Writers Should Avoid Using Clichés

Start at the beginning if you want to hear me rant about why clichés are literary twaddle.” 

← Back to Part 2 10 Clichés That Need to Die Already

Revisit the list of repeat offenders before you see how to occasionally give one a pass.”

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Some additional perspective from Master Copywriter Eddie Shleyner:

They say cliches will make your writing feel tired and tacky, unoriginal. Avoid them, they say.

Well I promise you they’re referring to literary or journalistic writing. Novels, news articles, magazine columns. Not direct-response marketing designed to compel action.

Some proof:

A copywriter named Richard Dennis once analyzed every sales letter by the late, great Gary Halbert, the “Prince of Print” — one of the most original direct-response minds of the 20th century — and he found these cliches and idioms used again and again:

- “easy as pie”

- “sacred cow”

- “the real McCoy”

- “needed as a pen”

- “speak of the devil”

- “naked as a jaybird”

- “open and shut case”

- “in the heat of battle”

- “let sleeping dogs lie”

- “red carpet treatment”

- “out of sight, out of mind”

- “make a clean breast of it”

- “blood is thicker than water”

- “every Tom, Dick, and Harry”

- “work your fingers to the bone.”

- “a picture is worth a thousand words”

- “kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

- “as common as sawdust around a sawmill.”

Halbert used cliches and idioms constantly.

But he rarely used clever turns of phrase. Because why risk it? Why risk making The Reader stop and think, even if only for a second? Every time The Reader stops to “get it” you could lose her attention forever.

Unlike clever writing, colloquial expressions build a bridge to comprehension by making your copy more efficient, by helping you use fewer words to make a clear point.

Cliches and idioms are tools for solving a specific communication problem.

Use them as necessary, I say.