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Originally Posted by wandering_spirit
Still... what would be a good way to break the 'clich?s'?
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Ooh, that's a hard one.
Clich?s aren't bad in and of themselves. They're actually really useful to authors, since they build audience expectations, which can then be more easily fulfilled or subverted. Plus, going too far outside of clich? can leave an audience feeling confused, or worse, feeling that each event in the story came out of nowhere as a deus ex machina.
On the other hand, the problem with overusing clich? is that the audience feels they're seeing nothing new.
That's what Dragon found with your story, I believe. The idea of using forced prostitution as a punishment for abusing women has been done a lot, so there has to be something added to the mix that fits just as well as the clich?, but is nonetheless interesting to the reader.
Every writer is an individual, of course, so there's no one-size-fits all approach, but I'd reccomend finding another way of playing with the reader's expectations than fulfilling them.
In your story, for instance, you could could even use the same clich? as before - but written from a different perspective that makes the reader react to it with interest and emotion, rather than thinking 'Oh, another postitute vengence transformation.'