Clichés: The Great Ear Closers

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > CONTENT > CHARACTERS > LANGUAGE > CLICHÉS

'. . . when you've got a bunch of actors and you're listening to them try to play the scene, and the actor can't say your words, you had better change the words if you can't change actors. Because actors are . . . the instruments through which you are expressing yourself, and you'd better make it as creative and fruitful for them to work with your language as you possibly can.'

-- Frank Pierson

Audiences have ear-lids as well as eyelids. And nothing closes those ear-lids quicker than clichés. Especially dialogue that behaves as though clichés really mean anything. Characters can be clichés and plots can be clichés and occasionally you can get away with these. But clichés in dialogue don't even buy you death on the installment plan. Use them and it's over.

These things are phrases, sayings, and aphorisms that have become so overused that they have virtually lost all significant meaning. We know them too well. And as a result, they have no impact on us. As language, they're like grandma's old clock clacking away in the living room. After a while, you don't "hear" the ticking. The sound is there, but it's so familiar, your brain doesn't even bother to register it anymore. Here's why . . .

Your mind moves much faster than sound. So audiences flash to the end of a cliché phrase long before this awful thing has cleared the performer's teeth. And that means the audience ends up hearing these blobs twice: first as their minds complete the phrase. And second, when the sound of the performer's voice reaches their ears.

It's one thing to hear something really interesting twice. We'll put up with that -- within limits. But to hear something really boring twice . . . that's in a class with water-torture. Or Musak.

As a gentle reminder, here's what these things look like on the page. The words in bold face are what the audience leaps to long before their ears register the noise . . .

Let's run it up the flagpole.
... strong as an ox.
... pretty as a picture.
... dead as a door nail.
In for a penny, in for a pound.

You can use clichés to advantage, but only under very controlled circumstances . . .

Make them a real vocal trait of a character.
If a character continually uses clichés -- and is the only one who does so-- you'll quickly establish that we're dealing with an air-head.
Twist the ends of clichés so they don't land like a marshmallow.
And so what we hear is no longer a cliché, even though it starts out that way . . .
- Wow, you look like a million. becomes. . .
- Wow, you look like twenty-five cents.

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