I originally posted this over at The Cult, but was recommended to post it here instead, following that advice:
English is not my native language and not the one I use in my writing, so please excuse my poor grammar and phrasing.
I have some questions for those of you who write. In all my writing I try to avoid common phrasings, common metaphors, trite figures of speech, and in general over-used phrasings.
Why? Because I find using those set patterns of text makes for boring prose, as if made by a machine. I also "subscribe" to some writing advice from Orwell that basically says that using these beat-up phrases will leave your prose less concrete and more abstract. It can quickly lose its meaning.
I agree with a lot of his sentiments on writing, and most of them were also my sentiments before I even read his essay on writing.
But I have a few issues with these "rules". I am sure many of you who write deal with these things as well, how do you keep a balance between original prose and the fact that everyone, at least everyone I have met, talk using almost nothing but hackneyed phrases.
Do you just not care that your characters uses phrasing that can't be considered realistic, or natural, or believable?
Or do you only write about characters that are so original and larger than life (*trite phrasing*) that it is believable for them to use original phrasing?
Maybe I'm just being stupid and over-thinking this. But I'd like to hear some thoughts on it, I don't know any other writers, so I never talk to anyone about writing.
People can have a normal conversation without filling it with cliches.
I only use cliches and trite phrasing when I want to show the speaker in a particular light. Usually, it's a negative light. People use cliches everyday, I do as well, but fuck it; if I'm writing dialog, I adealize it a bit, just for fun. If everyone wrote only what actually happens, we would have never had Ass Goblins of Auschwitz.
A character using a cliche might indicate they're not really engaged by the conversation / situation. Of course, unless you're trying to depress the reader, you don't want too much disengagement.
If one character uses a cliche (as people in real life often do,) you can always have the other character or the narrator make fun of them for it, or resist the urge to scoff, or something else.
Like Jeffrey said. I use it frequently in dialogue to illuminate character. But I try as much as possible to keep it out of my own narrative.
You get more leniency in dialogue than you do in narrative. As long as it sounds real, it doesn't bother people much when a character says it. People talk in incomplete sentences, they interrupt each other, they say unimportant things. It doesn't bother the reader as longas it sounds true.
Your narrative, on the otherhand, they expect to be original and grammatically sound.
Not sure how true this is, but it seems that breaking almost any rule is okay as long as the writing flows so well that most readers don't notice.
My rule for breaking rules: If there's a good reason for it, break it.
Also, your English is outstanding.
If you peole notice you proably shouldn't have broken it.
