by Elton Gahr

Created on: May 19, 2009   Last Updated: May 20, 2009

Cliched characters are something that happens to even the best writers. Sometimes characters just feel like they have been done before and often we find more fault in that than is necessary. And, so we must consider two things, how to recognize a cliche and whether we need to change that character or leave them as there are.

The first thing you must know in order to avoid using cliche characters is the face of the genre. This means that if you want to write you need to have read the major books in the genre. This isn't as difficult as it might seem. There are thousands of books in any major genre but look on the internet and you can find several lists of the best. Find one that appears to have books you like and begin at the top. As you go through keep the concept of cliches in mind; any character you make that is too close to any of the characters in these books will be immediately recognized by fans of the genre.

Once you know the archetypes of characters in your writing it is time to think more carefully about your own characters. The easiest way to keep a character from being cliche is to make them personal. The closer you are to a character, the more real they are the less they will be a cardboard cutout of someone else's vision. One of the keys to this is creating flaws. Flaws are especially useful when avoiding cliche characters because it is rare that someone will pick out a flaw as the reason a character is similar to others. They also lay perfectly on top of characters in many cases and give your story far more to work with.

The next thing to consider is if there is a good reason to allow your character to be cliche. There are a couple reasons you may want to do this, but it is very important to always be careful when you do. The first is in the creation of background and minor characters.

Minor characters are the safest form of cliche characters, and the most useful. Creating a character that is immediately identifiable can save words on the page and since they have little to do they won't bother the reader as much. This is still not the ideal choice but it can be useful.

Another useful way to use cliche is as a form of misleading the reader. This situation is used when a character appears to be the stander cliche but turns out to be something different. This is another situation where understanding the cliche of the genre is vital to improving your writing. You can't do this unless you know what the writer will expect.

The true key to any form of writing is not to avoid doing something simply because someone else has, or to do it because it is the common idea, but to think it through for yourself. If the character you have created is the one that you want to talk about then use them and understand that sometime cliched characters exist because they are the type of characters people find interesting to hear stories about.

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