Clichés that Only Appear in Fiction

By: Andrea :)

If you have read enough books, you will probably start to see patterns with scenarios that only seem to happen to main characters of fictional novels and never in real life. Here are a few that I’ve noticed: 

The generation-old secret discovered in an ancient home 

You’ve definitely seen this one in a mystery book with a gang of kids as the main characters. They probably found the first clue by accident, on a boring summer’s afternoon or a cozy, snowy winter’s morning. Whether it’s a mysterious map, wrinkled letter, antique object, it was hidden in a secret trapdoor or a messy basement. There’s spiderwebs everywhere, dust covers the shelves, and the house features creaky old wooden floors. This secret has been hidden for generations, and it’s a mystery unsolved — until the main characters find it of course. The kids go and decode the message and follow the clues, to ultimately discover a big secret about the house. 

There’s nothing wrong with this cliché, and I actually enjoy reading mystery books like this. I definitely think it makes the story more interesting when this cliché is not the main plot, rather a small piece of the bigger, more original and complex plot. There are a lot of variations of the way this scenario goes, which makes it less overused and boring. I personally find this unrealistic; I’m sure you and your friends have tried to look for codes and find secret clues and dig for messages, but you have probably never found anything. And even when you do, it usually does not have a perfect mystery trail for you to follow and get to it. Still, without coincidences there would be no story. 

The local hang out spot where secret group meetings are conducted

This one always is at a local, old-fashioned diner or ice cream shop that everyone in the small town goes to. The group of main characters know the owner, who somehow gives them free food after school, every single day. The characters probably order the same thing every time, so the owner has it memorized. This is the location of all secret group meetings and everyone bikes there after school. 

I am jealous of all the people who did something like this. I remember always wanting to copy the main characters and do this with my friends. This cliché isn’t even that impossible to make happen in real life… except for all the practicality issues. In a world where cars are the main method of transportation, my friend and I could never find a spot that is close enough to all of our houses and school to be convenient enough to bike there alone. Our parents would never agree to driving us somewhere that meets the local diner requirements every day. Furthermore, when we were young enough to always have free time after school, organizing a hang out was a huge effort by the parents. When we were old enough to be left alone, everyone had time commitments that wouldn’t fit with our secret meetings. Our lives were not interesting enough to even have a topic for our secret meetings to be about. However, I like this cliché and think it is really cool when the main characters make it work. 

The narrator’s fancy description of how people smell 

“He smelled of fresh mint on a summer’s evening.” This cliché is the worst, because it romanticizes the way a person smells. The smell itself is always written with complex imagery and doesn’t make sense — what does fresh mint on a summer’s evening smell like in particular? In real life, the way someone smells comes from the products they use, like shampoo, perfume/cologne, and lotion, or if they came from cooking an aromatic meal. I have nothing against describing that they smelled like the cinnamon after making cinnamon buns. Still, I feel like even when the narrator describes the scent of someone’s shampoo, it is always some exotic fruit, like strawberries. 

There is nothing wrong with describing the way someone smells, especially when it particularly stands out in a certain scene. But, I think it is unnecessary to describe a fancy scent and go into describing a peaceful scene in nature, and say that is how a character smells, because it sets unrealistic expectations in real life. 

The main character is a prodigy at their skill and immediately understands everything after one lesson

It can be a skill, a sport, an instrument, fighting, a profession. Whatever it is, the main character is a prodigy who is probably self taught at first. They find an unlikely mentor somewhere on their journey, who refuses to accept them at first and the two characters do not get along. The mentor takes them on an adventure that has nothing to do with the particular skill at all, and the main character learns a specific lesson and symbolically connects that to the skill they are learning. Within the span of an extremely short amount of time, the main character becomes the world champion, the greatest expert. 

 

This is a cliché journey that happens in a lot of series, and again something that would never happen in real life. There are extremely talented players in every sport who can improve extremely fast, but there is so much that goes into becoming the best aside from one symbolic lesson on something completely unrelated. It takes a lot of hard work and practice, which is skipped over in books when the main character picks things up so easily. It takes perseverance and experience. Someone who is talented has potential to become the best through a lot of hard work and practice. It does not mean they automatically know everything after trying it once. I think showing a character’s progression at a skill and then their end result would be much more inspiring and realistic. 

In the end, it is important to understand that clichés come from somewhere and will continue to last, and there is nothing wrong with having clichés. Sometimes, these clichés have evolved to become much dramatic and described in such a way that they seem far from the way things work in real life, setting high expectations for the reader. But, there is a reason the books are written as fiction, and without coincidences and unlikely scenarios, there would not be a compelling story.