How do you avoid cliches when you're writing?

I mean, they say every story has already been told; so what happens when you've come to a point when you sit back and look at your work and think - 'this can go a number of diferent ways - how do I avoid a dum-dum-d-d-d-d-dum at the end of the first act?'.

I'm talking bigguns and little 'uns. Situations. Dialogue. Phrases. Directions. Characterisations.

Information, please....!

Let's get groovy with the share-o-rama!

Hello?

Echoes...

Tumbleweed trundles past...

Or does this mean that I'm the only person that's ever thought it? Wow! I've had an original thought. Ha ha ha. I don't think so, somehow...

So here's another question to throw into the pot - when is the use of cliches acceptable?

My tip (for what it is worth) give the audience the last thing they were expecting.

If it is a gentle play - why not have the lead violently mugged so he is about to die? If it's romantic, why should he end up with the female lead...

What keeps an audience engaged is your dialogue - but they come back to see the second act because of how you broke the rules of what 'they expect'.

Not a lot of help I guess, but it is what I do...

So, potentially, you could even start going with a cliche, and then turn it on its head?

quote:

you could even start going with a cliche, and then turn it on its head?

Isn't that the very point of theatre?

D'oh!

:blushes:

I was kind of going with the thought that you might lead the audience to expect a cliche, and then give 'em a whammy by, as you say, giving them NOT what they were expecting, as much as not giving them it from the very beginning...

Did that actually make sense?

I was thinking of those plays, which are supposedly new, 'refreshingly original' (to quote a couple of reviews) that one sees (full of hope) only to sit there for the entire two hours successfully second guessing the whole production, even down to the dialogue...