THE GRIEF CLICHÉ: a rant

“I left because every time I looked at your face, I saw our little boy/girl/dog/whatever…”

The next time I hear that line I’m gonna scream. It’s one of the most overused and least talked about clichés in fiction and film.

Today, I’m calling you out, GRIEF CLICHÉ.

I think we have all experienced grief at some point in our lives. We deal with that grief in our own way. Some of us get angry. Others withdraw. Some become self-destructive. Most of us find a way to move on, to build ourselves back up again, and live. 

So why do storytellers routinely return to this sad cliché of human emotion? Short answer: it’s easier. But let’s look into it for a second.

Fiction is often meant as an escape from the world. So perhaps this cliché is comforting, as we have seen and heard it before, and therefore we know it’s safe. It’s lazy fiction.  It’s not going to break our heart the same as real, organic DEEP HURTING grown on the farm of human pain and loss.

Do we not want to know the character’s grief in any singular way? Do we prefer the safety net that such clichés grant us? I think the cliché offers some distance between the story and its readers. Maybe that’s a necessary thing when the goal is not to bring people down. 

But maybe I’m giving a lazy cliché too much thought. Too much credit. TOO MUCH WORDS.

How I see it. . .

The “every time I looked at your face, I saw…” basically requires the characters to push away from each other, often times resulting in the destruction of the family unit. It puts the characters into a tailspin until (usually) they find a way to love each other again.

Fucking BLARGH. The line is so overused that I no longer believe in the situation or the characters—especially not their reconciliation. 

A single line of recycled dialogue does not make for believable character development. Maybe it used to, back when the cliché was young, but not anymore.

One of the obvious requirements of fiction is that you create conflict for your characters. And then maybe, just maybe, they find a way to put their lives back together before the Epilogue runs out of ink.Chances are that your characters are going to experience grief or loss in some way. Maybe you don’t have the sort of story where the topic cliché would even apply. But regardless, you should find your own way of detailing their inner conflict. 

Give us tragedy or give us comedy, I do not care. But goddammit, please give us originality!

Grief ain’t easy, folks. There may be some truth to the topic cliche, but still. It’s not the sort of thing that should be explained away with a single line of dialogue and left at that. Give us more.

Listen: No one sees the world the way that you do. It’s what makes you valuable as a writer. Indeed, it’s what makes every person on the planet a potential storyteller in the making. So give us your version of things—your TRUTH. Don’t regurgitate what’s been done before because it’s safe and easy. That’s no fun. Build your sandcastle your own way, step on it however you please, and we will rejoice.