Trope or Cliché?

Today's New York Times Book Review has a fascinating article on using computers to analyze what words and phrases turn up most often in different kinds of text. Ben Zimmer, author of the article, argues that the fact that phrases like "bolt upright" appear eight times more frequently in fiction than in magazines, newspapers, or spoken speech means that we still have a "literary style" that is different from other kinds of written and spoken communication.

Well, of course. But doesn't the frequent appearance of "bolt upright" suggest that we may also be talking about a cliché? Where did "bolt upright" come from? What's "bolt" got to do with sitting? Do we use the phrase so much because we're too lazy or unimaginative to find another way of describing someone sitting straight? Or is this a legitimate shorthand, no different, really, from saying "sandwich" instead of "two slices of bread with something tasty in between"?

The article raises other questions. It notes that fiction uses many more verbs of facial expression (such as "grimaced," "scowled," and "grunted") than other forms of writing. the article states,

Creative writers are clearly drawn to descriptive idioms that allow their characters to register emotional responses through telling bits of physical action....The conventions of modern storytelling dictate that fictional characters react to their worlds in certain stock ways and that the storytellers use stock expressions to describe those reactions. Readers might not think of such idioms as literary clichés....

My editor and I have heated discussions about the issue of when something is an acceptable trope, a bit of figurative shorthand, and when it's a cliché that should be purged even from children's literature. I picked one of the purged expression and decided to investigate it using the Corpus of Contemporary English database referenced in the article.

My offending phrase was "burst into tears." It appears 391 times per 100 million words of fiction--more often even than "bolt upright." Hmm. Sounds like it might be a cliché. Not surprisingly, "she" bursts into tears four times as often as "he" does. Apparently, however, in the past twenty years people have "dissolved into tears" much less often than they've burst into tears, and dissolving occurs primarily in magazines.

More gender-related findings: Fictional women bite their lips more than twice as often as men. (They're probably trying to keep from bursting into tears.) In the past twenty years, fictional men gritted their teeth only slightly more often than women, but they ground their teeth more than three times as often. Perhaps the men are suppressing outbursts of anger while their womenfolk suppress tears.

I'm not sure the corpus can answer my question about when a trope slips into a cliché, but it does raise an issue I think about sometimes: the tyranny of "Show, don't tell." Purists of this dictum argue that instead of labeling our characters emotions', we should always and only show them. So instead of saying "I was frightened", we say "my breath caught in my throat." According to the corpus, "caught" and "breath" show up nearby each other pretty darn often in fiction. Instead of saying, "There was something about his face I didn't trust," we write of narrow eyes or a unibrow or a curl to the lip--something the reader will recognize as an accepted trope, which means in fact that it's a convention, a cliché instead of a fresh observation. In the real world, what makes me mistrust a face may be something very subtle, hard to put my finger on, and in fact not a feature others would necessarily know to react to in the same way. Thus the stricture against telling may lead to weary conventions and stereotypes.

The boundary between convenient trope and stereotype is subtle, and so is the right place to set the balance between showing and telling. We are not, after all, creatures only of facial expression and bodily sensations: we don't spend all our time with our hearts pounding, feeling the blood rush to our faces, gulping, shuddering, grimacing, fidgeting, clenching our fists and biting our lips. Sometimes we reflect on the world, label emotions, or recognize others' intentions from cues too subtle to name. Sometimes our characters should, too.

More Rules for Writers: Killing the Cliché

Janet Fitch's third rule for writers is to kill the cliché. I struggle with this one. After all, who gets to decide what's a cliché and what isn't? In Lost in Lexicon a Cliché is a crevice that opens at the Mistress of Metaphor's feet when she starts using expressions that are stale and over-used. She falls into the Cliché and has to struggle out again, sweaty and panting, with dirt under her fingernails. That's how I feel fighting clichés when I'm writing.

Fitch gives an awfully inclusive definition of a cliché: "When you’re writing, anything you’ve ever heard or read before is a cliché." Surely not. For example, I've heard "surely not" before. I've heard "anything you've ever heard" before. Some expressions are just a natural, even necessary, accepted trope of language. What makes other expressions clichés?

I think the clichéd expressions that bother us are those that are meant to be sparkling shortcuts. They're shorthand for something we want the reader to experience or understand, but they also draw attention to themselves for their cleverness. Some examples: smoldering gaze, strong as an ox, with an expression like a whipped puppy. Like dusty dresses pulled from the costume trunk, these expressions were probably once fresh and colorful, but now they're worn and slightly faded. On close examination they don't even seem to fit very well.

The problem is recognizing these old rags in the midst of writing. When I'm casting about in my mind for some catchy image, how can I be certain that my glimmer of imagination isn't really just a glimpse of memory? Sometimes I think I'm being original when really I'm just drawing on bits and pieces I've read or heard. For that reason, I'm glad to have an editor to go through and draw a red line through every weary expressios. I may protest, but usually I can find another way of saying what I meant.

(Characters, on the other hand, are allowed to use all the clichés they want. That's part of the great freedom of speech they have as characters. They can use poor grammar, stutter, swear, make illogical leaps, misuse words, talk nonsense, or speak entirely in clichés, all with impunity. The reader might judge them, but no one's taking a red pencil to them.)

Fitch mentions also clichéd objects, such as fuzzy dice. Usually these are shorthand signals meant to induce snap judgments about a character. I would add that there are situations which have become clichés, situations we've read about so many times we're tired of them. For me one example is a kid getting bullied/beat up on the first day in a new school. Does this really happen so very often? Even if it does, hasn't this been... used? How about the gang of kids tying a can to the tail of a stray dog: is this something the author has observed or only read about? Aren't there more original ways to show cruelty?

Ian Leask, editor and writing coach, tells me to "break open the cliché." Get at the core of it. What did I mean to convey? What really happened here? What did the characters actually do? What could an observer see? Act it out.

Painfully, full of resentment-- it wasn't a cliché; I liked that line; what's he talking about?-- I rewrite the expression. It takes a few tries before I get it clean and fresh. Then I go skipping on through the manuscript, no doubt blithely scattering in my wake clichés galore. The battle continues. And that's probably a cliché, too.