A question on cliches (for the Mods mainly)

[Scotty]

Hi everyone,
have downloaded several of the helpful hints into a handy reference and I'm still on a steep learning curve as I discover everything I didn't know about trochees, iambs, etc but I'm really curious about the use of cliches.
It would seem from everything I've read that the use of cliches is akin to stepping into a poetic minefield and I wonder why they are treated with such disdain. Don't get me wrong, I fully realise that overuse, specifically, is gonna get you lambasted from a technical point of view but is there ever a time when the use of say, a single cliche, if used cleverly, would be acceptable (particularly if the rest of the piece is extremely well-written) or does the fact that the author has inserted said cliche into his/her otherwise well-written piece cast aspersions on their ability to write a truly wonderful and inspiring piece of work?
Given the limited number of words that can be used to describe another word (same-same for phrases too I suppose), won't there come a time when there is no other way to describe what a writer is attempting to describe without resorting to cliche? (after all possible combinations of words/phrases have been used). How long will it take to use all those combinations - I'm sure I don't know but it would probably make an interesting thesis for somebody, sometime, somewhere.
Take, for example, 'rolling green hills' - how many different ways are there (given the current range of words in the English vocabulary) to describe that phrase differently - 'axially perambulatory verdant sward' perhaps, as one example? It sure beats the original cliche I suppose but at what point as writers (and readers for that matter), do we want to expand into a verbose phrase like that just in order to avoid a cliche? And aren't we just as likely to get critiqued for that verbosity on occasion?
I'd appreciate some thoughts on this one.
Regards to all,
Scotty

[Harry Rutherford]

Hi Scotty.

The first thing is that 'cliché' doesn't just mean 'combination of words I've seen before' - it's a pejorative term. 'He used a cliché cleverly' is like saying 'he tripped and fell down the stairs stylishly'.

Clichés serve a useful purpose in normal speech and perhaps for journalists working to a tight deadline - they don't require any thought, so they enable you to say what you mean at speed.

But that, in the end, is the root of the problem - they don't require any thought from the writer, and they don't provoke any thought in the reader.

For example, the only reason 'rolling green hills' even seems like a natural way to describe them is because you've heard it so often. Hills don't actually roll. But it pops into your head, you say it and the listener doesn't even question it.

There is always a new way to say something; and if there isn't maybe you need to find fresher subject matter.

But the key is thought. If you've really put thought in when you write something, and considered lots of different ways of saying it, and looked for the best one, and considered how a reader will respond to it, the perennial question of 'how to recognise a cliché' largely disappears. Clichés are ultimately the result of laziness and habit, not incompetence.

Harry

[Clive2]

What Harry said, plus, avoiding a cliche doesn't mean just reaching for the thesaurus to find alternate words to those in the cliche, as you have done in your example. It means - among other things - saying what you want to say through the use of such established devices as simile and metaphor.

Again, using your example, rather than saying "rolling green hills", maybe you would need to consider exactly how those hills looked. What sort of shapes did they form against the sky? What was on those hills? Were they actually green? Is there a way of suggesting hills without even mentioning them? Or suggesting greenness or rollingness without mentioning hills? Do you see my point?

Of course, an accomplished poet could make good use of a cliche in the same way he or she could make good use of an abstraction or maybe even an inversion. But anyone who isn't Seamus Heaney should avoid, avoid,avoid.

[Harry Rutherford]

Perhaps this will help to explain. It’s an extract from a Michael Frayn novel, The Tin Men. Goldwasser has the job of producing a automated system for writing accounts of Royal occasions (in the days before mass computing).

He opened the filing cabinet and picked out the first card in the set. Traditionally, it read. Now there was a random choice between cards reading coronations, engagements, funerals, weddings, comings of age, births, deaths, or the churching of women. The day before he had picked funerals, and been directed on to a card reading with simple perfection are occasions for mourning. Today he closed his eyes, drew weddings, and was signposted on to are occasions for rejoicing.

The wedding of X and Y followed in logical sequence, and brought him a choice between is no exception and is a case in point. Either way there followed indeed. Indeed, whichever occasion one had started off with, whether coronations, deaths, or births, Goldwasser saw with intense mathematical pleasure, one now reached this same elegant bottleneck. He paused on indeed, then drew in quick succession it is a particularly happy occasion, rarely, and can there have been a more popular young couple.

From the next selection, Goldwasser drew X has won himself/ herself a special place in the nation's affections, which forced him to go on to and the British people have clearly taken Y to their hearts already.

Goldwasser was surprised, and a little disturbed, to realise that the word "fitting" had still not come up. But he drew it with the next card— it is especially fitting that.

This gave him the bride/bridegroom should be, and an open choice between of such a noble and illustrious line, a commoner in these democratic times, from a nation with which this country has long enjoyed a particularly close and cordial relationship, and from a nation with which this country's relations have not in the past been always happy.

Feeling that he had done particularly well with "fitting" last time, Goldwasser now deliberately selected it again. It is also fitting that, read the card, to be quickly followed by we should remember, and X and Y are not merely symbols – they are a lively young man and a very lovely young woman.

Goldwasser shut his eyes to draw the next card. It turned out to read In these days when he pondered whether to select it is fashionable to scoff at the traditional morality of marriage and family life or it is no longer fashionable to scoff at the traditional morality of marriage and family life. The latter had more of the form’s authentic baroque splendour, he decided.

If you can guess what’s coming next, it’s a cliché. If you could write a computer program to write your poems for you, they’re clichés. It would certainly be possible to produce a simple love-poem-writing application that would generate endless new versions of the sort of poetry that fills up Love.

Harry

[Scotty]

Thanks guys,
I think my problem was that I was too locked in on the 'word substitution' thing regarding cliches and your comments have helped see things from a different angle. Thanks for taking the time to help me out on that one.
Regards,
Scotty (who is surprised that Harry has never seen someone trip and fall down stairs stylishly, hehe)

[Luna Zephistarae]

Wow, I've never even thought about cliche's that way, thanks now they are shed in a diffrent light and I see why they are so bad. I have chiche's in ALOT of my writings, and in formal essays and things like that at school it is something I get major deductions for. And know I know how to get around one. I too was considering just using a thesuarus to substitue the words in a cliche, but now I know a better method. Wonderful advice, and thanks!