‘Twas a Dark and Stormy Cliché…

And just like that, I lost half my readers.

Clichés. We’re told to avoid them like the plague (yes, that’s one right there). They’re the worn-out shoes of storytelling—too familiar, too predictable, too lazy. “Show, don’t tell.” “Don’t start with weather.” Writers are conditioned to flinch at them. Readers? They smell them from a mile away and roll their eyes before turning the page.

But here’s the twist: most bestselling stories are clichés—at least structurally. The hero’s journey, the love triangle, the underdog triumph, the redemptive arc. We dress them in fresher clothes, but they’re still old bones.

So what gives?

Maybe the secret to smart writing isn’t avoiding clichés altogether—it’s in dodging the obvious ones, dancing just out of reach of the eye-roll. It’s not what happens, but how it happens. A clever writer doesn’t reinvent the wheel. They reinvent its shadow.

The audience wants what it already knows—it just wants to feel like it discovered something new. So I say, go ahead and use the stormy night. But make the thunder lie. Make the darkness whisper. Then twist the knife somewhere unexpected.

The cliché isn’t the villain. Laziness is.

And that’s a plot twist we all should write.

–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)