How to Make a Cliché Work for You

In middle grade novels, do you know what gets my goat? Stories riddled with clichés.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: cliches often come across as lazy writing. Cliches can make dialog as flat as a pancake and cause your labor of love to become as dull as dishwater. Worse, an ill-fitting cliché can throw the reader out of the story world you’ve created. Mark my words, your writing will improve if you weed out these overused sayings. But how?

Once upon a blue moon (and for a different website), I wrote a longer article detailing six ways to deal with this issue. But here, I’d like to focus on just one tried and true method that works especially well for middle grade stories. Consider it my “two-cents worth” approach because it adds humor to your story and gives you more bang for your buck.

Are you ready for this tip? It’s “Run with the cliché.”

I can explain it best like this: Take an old phrase and give it a middle grade twist by adding onto the end of it. The result may tickle your funny bone.

Look at my examples and then try this method for yourself.  

• That problem was as old as time… but not nearly as old as the Twinkie Mom packed in my lunch today.

• Sweet Sally. She’s always bending over backwards for people. Literally. She’s a gymnast.

• I was left with one burning question. I guess that’s what happens when you set your homework on fire and your best friend douses the flames at the last second.

• In my homeroom, finding a friendly face used to be a dime a dozen. Not with today’s inflation.

• It’s hard for grandma to jog her memory. It’s more like a crawl.

• If the shoe fits, it’s probably not on sale.

• It takes two to tangle. Unless you’re my mom, and then you’re too exhausted to do anything.

• You can’t hold candle to a good book. Well, you can, but it will burn.

• Sometimes I feel like I’m all thumbs. Which comes in handy when you’re playing video games but not so much when picking your nose.

Now it’s your turn.

Go out on a limb. Think outside the box. Put the pedal to the medal. Take your favorite cliché and run with it. I’d love to hear what you come up with. Post it in the comments. I’m all ears.

Teacher and author Lori Z. Scott writes fiction because she’s like an atom. She makes everything up. She also has two quirky habits: chronic doodling and lame joke telling. Neither one impresses her boss, but they still somehow inspired Lori to accidentally create a ten-title bestselling children’s book series and on purpose write over 175 other publications. She continues penning stories as an excuse to not fold her laundry. Find her silly drawings, poems, and whatnot on Instagram @Lori.Z.Scott and look for her debut YA novel Inside the Ten-Foot Line coming October 2022.