Don’t devalue your characters by using cliches and stereotypes. This will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in categories. As short-hand ways of writing and speaking, they reflect ready-made thoughts and adversely affect the ways we relate to our families and friends as unique individuals.

Cliches and Stereotypes

Don’t devalue your characters by using cliches and stereotypes. This will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in categories. As short-hand ways of writing and speaking, they reflect ready-made thoughts and adversely affect the ways we relate to our families and friends as unique individuals.

• “She was a mother-hen; You know how mothers are!”
• “My father had a heart of gold.”
• “Those were beautiful days when we were happy.”

These examples of cliches and stereotypes reflect ways of thinking that get in the way of seeing people as individuals and events as unique. If you think of your mother in generic terms as “a mother,” you will be weighed with all the sentimental good and bad that second-rate movies, novels, and songs sell us. Instead, strive to see her as a unique person, a woman who met the challenges of mothering as successfully as she did or could. Do the same with your father—and everyone.

And that goes for “youth” and “love” and “family” and everything else that can get sentimental really fast.

1) Beware of words and phrases that have the ring of having been heard elsewhere.

If you sense that a phrase you use is not your own original pairing of two or more words and that you may have “borrowed” it, chances are you have cliches or stereotypes dripping off the end of your pen—or popping up on the computer screen—to embarrass you later!

2) Create a language that is as fresh as you are.

The challenge of writing is to have your words reflect you and your story, not someone else’s version of you and your story. By using cliches and stereotypes, you slip into someone else’s version and away from your truth.

If you are to present believable—and truthful—portraits of the people in your life, it is essential that you dispense with cliches and stereotypes and generalizations of any sort and instead focus on individual merits and traits.

3) Stick to the facts.

By writing into your story the facts over your opinions, you will lessen possibilities of slipping into cliches and stereotypes.

Good luck with your memoir writing.