“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.
