The Storyteller's Art: Metaphorically Speaking

     “Avoid clichés like the plague!” – a well known “Fumblerule.”

     This one is for the aspiring writers in the Liberty’s Torch audience. It concerns a subspecies of reader with which most writers are familiar: the critic that’s determined, for whatever reason, to pick apart individual sentences and phrases within a sentence for judgment. There are plenty of them, and not all of them work at publishing houses or in university departments of “literature.”

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I can’t help but remember a high-school teacher I had who possessed a fetching way with words. As he taught European history, it was incumbent upon him to season the factual material with segments on “culture.” I think he enjoyed them, but every so often he would say something to the opposite effect. On one particularly memorable occasion, he came up with the following:

     “I can’t help it. When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I think of things in those little Petri dishes.”

     Indeed, culture as a grab-bag term for the aggregate of a people’s efforts in the arts does derive its application from the “Petri-dish culture” of microorganisms. Metaphorically, it expresses what is happening to that people as it grows: that is, as it becomes ever more prosperous and therefore ever more able to afford for some of its members to devote themselves to the arts rather than to “practical” activities.

     (A digression: Persons who use the word culture to refer to the practices of some savage tribe are departing from the foundation of the metaphor. Savages’ “cultures” are largely propelled by superstition. They’re attempts to propitiate unseen powers: “We’ve sacrificed to you and done as you wished. Please don’t harm us.” That distinguishes them from the arts as civilized peoples practice them: efforts to express themes and motifs that are significant and inspiring to themselves. End of digression. Back to metaphors and clichés.)

     As I’ve written before, a cliché is a dead metaphor: that is, a metaphor which, due to overuse, no longer evokes its original foundation. “Avoid it like the plague” derived its original metaphorical effect from the horrors evoked by the Black Death, one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Mankind. But people no longer react to the mention of the Black Death in horror. It’s too far back in time, and anyway, no one alive today has had any contact with it. So the metaphor is dead. Rest in peace.

     As a general matter, the avoidance of clichés in your writing is a good idea. But it must be said that that “rule,” like all the other “rules” of good writing, can be superseded by a higher rule. One higher rule was best expressed by George Orwell:

     Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

     Now, in the cited essay, Orwell was principally concerned with nonfiction writing, especially exposition and opinion about public matters. As he put it, he was addressing “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.” But when we come to fiction, the rules, such as they are, don’t bind nearly as firmly.

     The storyteller’s agenda is a different one. He writes about people under conditions that stress them. Such conditions compel them to confront needs that demand change. Sometimes, as in the speculative genres, those conditions depart radically from what men alive today would call “reality.” (Never mind that reality is a term insusceptible to definition.)

     The storyteller isn’t there to teach physics, or economics, or – God help us all – the rules of prescriptive English grammar. His aim is to evoke emotion in the reader. Rules are only relevant if they serve that end.

     The significance of that distinction is most obvious when writing dialogue. People use clichés frequently in spoken English. Indeed, the English language depends so heavily on metaphorical constructions that one could argue that without clichés, speaking English would be impossible. An attempt to evict all clichés and similar phrases from one’s speech would effectively silence him.

     But there’s also non-dialogue matter, isn’t there? And the “literati” are so fond of picking at one’s sentences! So we must ask whether clichés in narrative and descriptive passages are ever acceptable.

     I claim the answer is yes.

     As I’ve already written, the determinant is the storyteller’s agenda. Does he want the reader to proceed slowly, pausing to savor individual images and expressions? If you’re Vladimir Nabokov, you might aim at that; at least, the beauty of his prose is the only conceivable reason to read Lolita. Or does he want the reader to move swiftly, absorbing the tale at a speed possible only if he needn’t stop repeatedly to ask “What’s the BLEEP!ing author trying to tell me here?” Most thriller writers would seek to impose that pace on their prose.

     The aim is prior and superior to the tool. The tool must serve the aim. The cliché is just a tool. If immediate recognition and swift forward motion is the storyteller’s aim, clichés can sometimes serve that aim.

     This is not an argument for or against clichés. It’s an exhortation to the storyteller: Know what you’re trying to do. If you have a particular aim, tools that serve that aim are entirely justified, even if the “literati” should quibble. Unless you’re one of the benighted forelock-tuggers more concerned with what some prize jury will think of your style than whether the reader enjoys your story, approves of it, and is willing to recommend it to his friends, use clichés if and when they serve your purposes. You have my blessing, for what that’s worth.