Writing Tips and Clichés to Avoid

cliché #5

Minty Oreo was unlike all the other girls in school; sure she dressed like the stereotypical white girl with her yoga pants and fandom T-shirt but don't you dare compare her to them because there's something about her that no other person can relate to. Her parents passed away in a seriously tragic anime back story and she deserves your sympathy.

God I want to join the parents just writing that. So ScaryShipper requested this cliché.

This cliché being that the parents of the OC/Reader/MC are dead and have been for quite a long time. This type of cliché is most predominant in Fanfictions and I myself have dipped my little foot in this little pond of cliché already and I'm still doing it regretfully. This will actually tie into a separate chapter about how to make a good character that is actually intriguing and not frustrating to read about.

Now we've all heard the term 'Mary Sue' and if you haven't, you've been living under a rock my dear. A Mary Sue is a character often times made by a young author (12-15) who is perfect in every way shape or form but they've got 'baggage' that makes them 'severely' flawed. Usually it's a sad and tragic back story of the parents dying in some car crash that MC/Reader/OC was either witness to or was informed of it so I'm going to be telling you about how to use this cliché properly and when to ditch it.

Basically, if you're writing fan fiction, just don't use this cliché unless it actually impacts the character in a negative way (here comes another example from my own works because I like tooting my own horn).

Allura in my fan fiction witnessed her parents die in a car crash and it traumatized her to the point where she developed a form of depression called dysthymia that makes the person feel a strong sense of guilt. Because of this, whenever something goes wrong in her life whether it be something as small as screwing up the student council's budget to causing her significant other pain unintentionally, she blames herself for it and finds ways to make everything relate back to her. This cliché sort of works for this fic because she doesn't go around telling people

"My parents died and it's my fault lel!!1!"

like most fanfictions have, Allura struggles with the thoughts of coming out to her friends with this and makes her doubt that her friends would still even love her after she tells them. Because of the entire situation it had led to her making terrible life choices that will make her character go through serve development.

Now, if you're using the cliché for a fanfiction and the deaths of the family doesn't impact the character's future somehow then you should probably ditch this cliché OR fix your plot so that it ties in neatly instead of using it to romanticise depression because that is a giant NO. NEVER, I repeat, NEVER romanticise a mental illness like depression because that's a horrible thing to do especially if you don't even portray the illness correctly.

If you're using this cliché in a novel then the same things from above apply to to your novel, the cliché has to impact your MC somehow where things don't get romanticised and where the character is aware of how the issues changed them.

Now, going into the parent's death ordeal, there are two main ways people enjoy doing this; car crash and plane crash. These two ways of death have honestly run their course and have become more of a joke rather than anything else because they're so overused and boring. There are more creative ways to kill off characters WITHOUT gore. Here are some ideas;

Death by;
-childbirth
-drowning
-fire
-suicide (if you choose this you must not try to glorify/romanticise suicide because this is a touchy subject for some and you must be aware of that while writing)
-work accident
-natural causes (illness/age/etc)
-Drugs/Alcoholism (again, another touchy subject you must be careful with)

The list goes on honestly, there are so many ways to deal with an MC's parent's deaths and if you choose to use this cliché you need to be aware of how to make it work or when it shouldn't be used.

If you have more requests leave them in the comments, have a nice day :)

-Anri