Stereotypes: What They Are and How to Avoid Them

Stereotypes. Ah.. where to begin? We have the Strong Female, the Love Triangle, the Fated Mates, and the oh-so-common Mentor Who Dies. And what’s wrong with these stereotypes, these.. cliches? What are they, and why must we avoid them? Defining Stereotypes A cliche is defined as “a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.” So, what’s wrong with cliches? First of all, they’re downright annoying. Our readers groan and chastise our lack of originality, our predictability. Cliches make our writing seem lazy, overused, and unoriginal. (Example: “It was a dark and stormy night…”) But cliches aren’t always bad. If used in the right way, they can be helpful, but only if they bring a unique new twist. In my books, I find so many overused cliches. The one I find myself using the most is the Strong Female. I want my main female character to have that inner strength that I don’t. I want her to be powerful and cunning, with a wall that never falls. But this isn’t true of all females, and it has been overused today. As an author, we must make hard decisions, and one of those is destroying our unoriginal cliches. Even when it seems hard, we need to make that choice. With that in mind…what stereotypes is your book hiding? Seek and Destroy In order to destroy our cliches, we must first find them.We need fresh eyes on our writing, a new perspective. Sometimes, we may need to call a friend in and ask for help in identifying these relentless patterns in our writing. Take a break from writing if you need to. Analyze your writing, searching specifically for stereotypes. Stereotyping can be found by the obvious main stereotypical character, but also in overused phrasing. For example, “ A gruff character with a soft spot for — .” Instead, destroy stereotypes. Instead of making the gruff character always have a soft spot, make him have a weakness that no one knows about.. Or perhaps create a weak character with a lot of inner strength. Add interesting correlations and subtle hints to deepen character depth. In order to find our cliches, we need to think like our protagonist. We need to consider how they would perceive the world; see how their background and life experiences should help dictate how they describe the situation. Remember Fred? Fred is an example from an earlier blog post (Cleaning Out the Closet: How To Portray the Death Of a Character Effectively) of a cliched character. Fred represented the overused cliche of “Superman.” First, Fred fell off a cliff, but survived by landing in the icy water and swimming to safety. Then he gets stabbed by a serial killer, but a kind stranger rescues him. Then he gets a gut feeling he shouldn’t get on his flight… and guess what? The plane goes down. You get the idea.. Fred is the perfect example of a cliche. While the stereotypes in his story are grotesquely obvious, ours aren’t always so clear. Sometimes we don’t realize them at all. But our readers will. It takes less time to read the book than to write it, so they can catch things that we don’t. Don’t rush through editing. Read carefully, analyze your book. After we find cliches, we need to destroy them.. If they can’t be redeemed, they need to go. If they are redeemable, you need to make it unique. Make their reaction to whatever’s going on unexpected. Give them rich emotions playing into their backstory. Maybe he feels fear about a mentally ill mother who shows up on his doorstep because he was beaten by his mother. Maybe your protagonist doesn’t trust men because she was abused by her brother in the past. Let the ordinary, plain girl prevail for once instead of the dazzling, sparkling Queen. Show your readers that you are different, that your story is different. Show them that the world you have created is unlike any other. Because if it’s unique, it’s no longer cliche. It’s no longer a stereotype. But it may be hard to do this because we often find ourselves liking the cliches. We like the way they fit into our story. We like how natural they feel. But our readers don’t want to read a book if they’ve read a dozen others like it. No matter how much we like what another author did, our stories should be ours. They should be unique to us. A cliche gone too far could even be considered plagiarism. This is why we must be so careful with our writing. Our words really matter. They should glorify God. Application Just like our book has these hidden, annoying patterns, our lives do too. They may not always be cliches, but they could be sin. Jesus calls us to glorify him with our words, and if our words are constantly tearing people down instead of building them up, then we aren’t following Jesus. I know this might seem random and totally unrelated to what we’re talking about, but in reality, it’s not so different. Out of politeness, we ask someone how they are. They respond with ‘Fine, how are you?’ and we leave it at that. Not really caring how they are, just looking for a conversation starter. When in reality, that person needs our help. They could need someone to point them to God during a dark time. Or if someone doesn’t know Jesus, but we are too scared to share him with them. Jesus wouldn’t be scared. Neither should we. 1 Peter 4:11- Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Thank you guys for reading! ✨~Billie