Clichés - Good, Bad, or the Only Option

by Gabriel Putnam

Unfortunately, its hard to make a blanket statement that everybody hate’s clichés. Somewhere, there has to be a group of people who enjoy playing games and interacting with the same basic stories through a hundred different mediums. They like to be able to call out the villains from a mile away, to see plot hooks coming two chapters ahead, and to know the ending before the first footstep leaves the door. In fact, just discussing the topic, its easy to see the appeal that this type of game-play would have. There’s a sense of security, a knowledge that every time you spend your money you’ll be satisfied with the outcome. There may not be the thrill of discovery, but at the same time, you never have to feel that your time was wasted or suffer the crush of disappointment as unexpected plot points turn the story on its head.

For the rest of us though, clichés are something akin to the bane of a satisfying game experience. They suck the life from our stories and leave us tired and dead through the title screen onward. In polar opposite to the prior arguments, what’s the point in playing a game where you know what’s going to happen, who’s going to live, who’s going to die, and what shape the world’s going to be in when its all said and done? There’s no mystery to the experience and without this ingredient, the entire concoction loses its magic. Instead of gripping dialogue between two embittered foes or lovers, where you’re never sure how the dice are going to fall, you’re left with something like a Mystery Science Theater production. Everyone knows that he’ll backstab you, or that she’s going to fall for your best friend, and the only emotion the player is left with is amusement at the comedy of it all, rather than the sadness or shock writers were looking for.

The problem with this setup though, and one which many an astute reader may have already picked up on, is that sometimes there really are positions where a cliché seems like the best or only choice. Taking the above example of a traitorous best friend as a starting point, how unbelievable really is the entire scenario? Do friends sometimes part ways, and every once in a while do so in a sudden or violent way? Of course they do. The shifting and dynamic nature of human interaction is one of the main reasons why the cliché itself sprung into existence in the first place and why it still resonates true with so many people millennia after it first came about. In addition, there are numerous other options for how the above scenario could play out, but how many of them are truly gripping and worthy of the storyteller’s effort? Sure, your friend could apologize, hand over the keys to the secret death station under construction, and make reparations to all the folks that were hurt, but the lack of drama would kill such an idea before it left the table. In many cases, there are simply choices which every viewer knows they would make, and anything else has the ring of falsehood. In these cases, and many others, designers simply resign themselves to the fact that a cliché concept seems to be all that’s left and go about embellishing it to make it the most entertaining version of that retelling a viewer has ever seen.

Unfortunately, however, writers take this option out of their difficulties far too often. In particular, a theme which runs rampant throughout our culture is the idea that whatever just earned ratings or sales must be applied to the current project to reach those same figures. Instead of working to find creative and innovative new ways to mold and shape the storytelling process, creation becomes more of an exercise in fitting in the newest innovation or hook and working the story to accommodate it. Mini rant aside, though, nearly every situation in a story, no matter the arguments to the contrary, can be made to accommodate a seldom used, if not entirely new, path or flow. Take the above example once more. Perhaps it could eventually fall out that your friend is in fact a force for good in the universe. Their choices and motivations are all driven by a sincere care for the life around them, and although they hate to abandon you, they can see that you are blinded by devotion, duty, or simply a lack of sight to the truth around you. Its been done before in some form or another, but how often is it actually seen? Would it feel new to this next generation of players who have been raised on a particular fare of drama, probably. Such a simple tact of turning a concept on its head to make it new is easy in theory, yet it is seen so little in real application. As was mentioned in the forums last week, such tired concepts as rigid and monolithic evils are used far more than their worth would imply. Heroes motives are only rarely questioned, Lancelot is still stealing Guiniviere across space and time, and Tokyo will forever be constructed almost entirely from Plastique. All of which are ideas that could always use a shake now and again.