Above is a well known cliche in the world of weddings, but I also think it's a viable approach to writing. There are countless other approaches out there, but some might find this helpful.
Something old:
Know your genre. There are few truly new genres that come out, so most of us can read what has been written and published, particularly with publishers in which you might be interested. It's the familiar advice: read what you want to write. Know the forms and the requirements of your genre and publisher. Several publishers have specific word counts, fonts, etc. For this, you can go to their websites or the old, trusty "Writer's Market" either online or in book form. Know the industry. Do your research.
Something new:
Once you know the genre and how it's usually written, you can vary it up a bit. Try a new approach to differentiate yourself from all the other voices clamoring for attention. Most romance novels are told from the woman's perspective, either in first or third person. In my books, I'm trying a method I've seen done on rare occasions, most notably in The Help. I'm writing first person from the male and the female perspective. It helps that I have a husband and other friends and family who can help me capture the male voice. It also helps that I was raised among the boys, so I often identify more with the male voice and male characters, anyway. A good percentage of the dreams I can remember feature me as a male character.
Why not speak with a voice that others haven't used as much? One thing I notice about romance novels is that they're often about beautiful, perfect, white women [or occasionally men] who lack disabilities. The same goes for much of the fantasy I've read. This seems to be the ideal, the perspective considered the norm. Yet there is a wide array of readers who don't identify with this idyllic fiction, so many voices not heard. Readers like a character with whom they can identify, yet how can one identify with perfection? Most protagonists in books and novels have at least one minor problem or flaw, but other than that one little flaw, the characters are often perfect.
Yet there's an increasing number of popular stories that have begun to buck the norm of perfection. Look at "Shrek." I think one reason for this series' popularity is that it dares to go where no other pretty fairy tale has gone, into the world of overweight main characters who are physically imperfect, namely green. One of my protagonists in the first book is a Latino who deals with prejudice. Both of my protagonists are overweight and have physical and health problems. One popular series of books I really like is the Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan. To me, part of the charm of the series is the main characters have disabilities, namely dyslexia and ADD. My main characters of After the Dream both have mental disabilities, he depression and she PTSD, both of which are more common than most people believe. In my next book, Pigs Fly, I have a protagonist with ADD and one with the autoimmune disorders Hashimoto's and Fibromyalgia. I think about the indie movie "Blind Dating" about a blind man who struggles to get a date simply because he's blind and start to wonder where else this kind of exploration of alternative voices can take me.
Something Borrowed: These next two are after for primarily after a rough draft is produced. Writers don't write in a vacuum, or the good ones don't. It's always a good idea to seek eyes outside your own head to review your writings. Find writing groups, so you can borrow their brains for alternative approaches and ideas. No matter how wonderful something sounds to your own brain, chances are it could be made better with the help of others. And don't be afraid to let them come at your writing with a big red marker. Sometimes, it hurts, but one cannot improve as a writer as long as one is doing the same thing over and over.
Something Blue: There are two ways I can take this, both of them in the revising stage: blue as a descriptive word and blue as an emotion. When I'm drafting, I just write and leave the editor at the door, or I can't get anywhere. It's in the revising form that I really work on description, making sure to carefully look over my language to make sure it is descriptive enough to transport the reader into my world and yet not so descriptive as to choke the forward progress of the story. I'll cover this in more detail in a later post. As noted, blue can also be about emotion. When I'm writing, I mostly want to get parts of the story down. It's after the fact that I can go back and beef up the emotional strength of the story.
This whole blog post shows yet another aspect of good writing, which is not taking a cliche at face value but rather turning it on its ear. During the second draft, one can also go back and check for cliches that remain something familiar, something the reader has seen so many other places that they've lost count. Cliches can occur in characterization, in turns of phrase, in every aspect of writing. If you let your writing remain a cliche, why write? Say something new, something meaningful and you will truly make your mark in the field of writing.
I know for a lot of experienced writers, much of this will be obvious. To novices, much of it may be new. Regardless, it can sometimes help to see things from a different perspective, a new way of seeing something we already know.
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