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When all hell breaks loose, does it smell like rotten eggs? It must, because of the brimstone. All that sulphur, ick. But who knows? No one ever talks about it, or mentions what it sounds like (an earthquake on Dolby?), or feels like (the inside of a blender?). The visuals must be amazing—all those damned souls flying around—wait a minute, was that Hitler who just went by?
Okay, end of writing exercise. I started thinking about it because I had one of those jangled, phone-ringing mornings, and the phrase popped up in my mind. But it also occurred to me that Elmore Leonard said “never say ‘all hell broke loose.’” So naturally I went from there to why not and…well, sometimes it’s better to just put your imagination back in the teapot. Elmore (although I think his intimates call him Dutch) also said never say “suddenly.” We all have our little peeves. Feeling masochistic? Here's a couple more:
- “Visibly shaken”. Isn’t just “shaken” enough? I mean if you can tell I’m shaken, it must be because you’re seeing something. I’m pale, is that it? Why didn’t you say so? I think we can blame this one on reporters—nobody wants to read “pale” in a newspaper. It’s just too wimpy.
- “Yummy”. (To describe an attractive person of the opposite sex.) Well, actually a man. No man would describe a woman that way; that would be sexist. YOU know who does this— lazy romance writers.
- “Made my mouth water”. Ewwwwwww. Same thing, only worse.
- “I did just that.” You did not, you did “it.” Isn’t “it” the same as “that” and isn’t “that” the same as “just that”? And doesn’t it sound a lot better?
- “And then it happened.” Nobody really writes that. Do they? You wish.
I confess in the past I was a "yummer" Till my Aunt Julie told me people are not food.
ReplyDeleteAt least you didn't condemn all cliches. I confess, sometimes they just fit the bill-
ReplyDeleteOne of the wonderful things about cliches in writing: if you put them in the mouth of someone else you can nail them (my pet cliche). I used to do it with coaches when I was a sports writer and I wanted to convey that the coach was full of himself (actually it was like shooting fish in a barrel). Sports people live in a world as defined by cliches as it is by rules and in-bounds lines. I knew a sportswriter who was so attuned to the cliche set of the coaches he covered he sometimes wrote his story and then asked them if the quotes he used were OK (he was fired when this shortcut came to the editor's attention). You can learn an awful lot about a person by the cliches used. For instance only an egomaniac uses, "there is no I in team" (unstated, "except for me").
ReplyDeleteI once worked for a boss who said over and over, "There is no indispensable man," usually after he said, "I am the only person in the company who can't be fired," but God proved the efficacy of the first cliche and the fallacy of the second by visiting said boss with a fatal stroke.