Writing Clichés to Eliminate From Your Drafts
Clichés are signs that your thinking stopped before your writing did. Here are the worst offenders and fresher alternatives.
What a Cliché Actually Is
A cliché is a phrase that has been used so often it has stopped meaning anything. The reader recognizes it instantly and skips over it, the way you skip a billboard you have driven past a hundred times. Recognition replaces reading.
The problem is not bad taste. The problem is that clichés signal your thinking stopped. When you reach for a stock phrase, you are handing the reader a pre-packaged idea instead of one you actually had. Cutting clichés forces you to notice what you really mean.
Why They Sneak In
Clichés sneak in because they are easy. They arrive first in your draft because they are the closest words to your fingertips. The first version of a sentence is often full of them. That is fine for a draft. The trouble starts when they survive into the final piece.
They also sneak in through imitation. You read a phrase in a memo or a blog post, it sounded smooth, and it lodged in your ear. Now you reach for it without thinking. The fix is not to feel guilty. The fix is to read your draft back and ask whether each phrase is yours or borrowed.
Tired Phrases and Fresher Moves
| Cliché | What to do instead |
|---|---|
| at the end of the day | name the specific outcome you mean |
| think outside the box | describe the actual unusual approach |
| perfect storm | list the real factors that lined up |
| in today's fast-paced world | cut the whole sentence, it adds nothing |
| moving forward | delete it, the future tense already says it |
| when all is said and done | say what the result actually is |
| the elephant in the room | name the awkward thing directly |
How to Hunt Them Down
- 1Read the draft aloud
Your ear catches stock phrases your eye slides past. If a sentence rolls off the tongue without any effort, it may be because you have heard it a thousand times before.
- 2Question any smooth phrase
When a phrase feels too easy, ask yourself what you were actually trying to say. Write that raw version down, even if it is clunky, then polish the clunk.
- 3Push for one specific detail
Most clichés are vague. Replace each one with one concrete fact, number, or image. Specifics cannot be clichés because no one else has your exact detail.
If you cannot think of a fresh phrase, do not hunt for one. Drop a specific detail in instead. A single real number or named example does more work than a polished metaphor ever could.
Openers and Closers Are the Worst
Openings and endings collect the most clichés because writers panic at the start and coast at the finish. In today's world, since the dawn of time, and it goes without saying all cluster at the top. When all is said and done and the rest is history cluster at the bottom.
Cut the first sentence of your draft entirely and see if the second sentence works as an opener. It usually does, and it is usually fresher. Do the same at the end. The last line you wrote may just be a polite bow. The line before it is often the real ending.
Red Flags to Search For
- Any phrase you have read in three other pieces this month
- Openers that begin with in today's or since the dawn of
- Metaphors about storms, lightning, or silver linings
- Closers that summarize what you already said
- Any sentence that could appear in any article on any topic
If your sentence could appear unchanged in a hundred other articles, it does not belong in yours.
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