Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
I do think that you can go too far out of your way to avoid clichés. A lot of what gets derided as cliché is just how people speak, or is just the type of stories that people have told and enjoyed throughout history. You can attempt to break clichés, but you have to recognize that you might just break your story instead. In trying too much for original characters, you can create characters that readers simply won't recognize.
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The literary types always look down at fiction writers.
And the more popular they are, the more they frown upon them; you can't be any real good if the masses understand you.
One of the traditional put-downs of Edgar Rice Burroughs is that he wrote in the vernacular of the times.
Really? He wrote popular adventure fiction set in his times and had characters talk like the common people of the times? How dare he!
Never mind that he invented half the narrative conventions of modern action and adventure stories, both print and in video.
Odds are folks will still be enjoying his stories and characters long after the works of the "literary" crowd are forgotten.