Skip to content
TrackPodcasts
artsMay 4, 202328:29pending

174. Avoid Verbal and Narrative Clichés in Your Writing

About this episode

Send us Fan Mail

I talk about these two types of clichés to avoid. I use "verbal cliché" to mean hackneyed phrases and worn-out imagery that may have been imaginative and fresh at some time in the history of the language now, but has since gone stale. I use "narrative cliché" to mean the use of familiar tropes and situations in the story you are telling. This episode mostly is about fiction and film.

Garner's Modern English Usage
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/garners-modern-english-usage-9780197599020

Imagining and Knowing: The Shape of Fiction, by Gregory Currie
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199656615.001.0001

Get every episode summarized

Each time Writing and Editing publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.

Email me new episodes

Free for 3 shows. No card needed.

Hosts & guests

No transcript yet

This episode has not been transcribed. Request it and it moves to the front of the queue.

174. Avoid Verbal and Narrative Clichés in Your Writing

Writing and Editing

0:00
28:29

More episodes

More from Writing and Editing

View all episodes →