In Defense Of The Obvious

Here’s something that took me a long time to admit.

I really like cliches.

Over decades of writing, I came to the conclusion that sometimes… not all the times… but sometimes… the most obvious, boring, unadorned things can be the most absurdly comical things.

I like big gags. I like the audience (or Marisol) knowing a little too much and still missing the completely obvious. I like going into a situation or assignment that feels way too familiar.

Most writers are taught to stay away from cliches. I was taught that too. Be original. Surprise people. Never do the expected thing.

And for a long time I believed it. But somewhere in all those years at the desk, I noticed something. The stories that made me laugh the hardest, the ones I remembered, were usually built on the oldest, simplest ideas. A genie out of the bottle. A missing key. A losing sports team. The stuff everybody already knows.

I think that’s actually why they work.

When a reader already knows the setup, they can relax. There’s nothing to figure out. They get to just sit back and watch what happens. And in Marisol’s case, what happens is a tired 900-year-old witch and her cat wandering into a story the reader understands better than she does.

That gap became my favorite thing to write. The reader sees it coming. Marisol doesn’t. Tibby maybe does, but he’s not telling.

Writing 18 of these books, that was the part I looked forward to every single time. Taking some old familiar idea and asking myself, alright, how do these two handle this one?

Here are a few of my favorites:

Getting the genie back in its bottle. Everybody knows the wish story. Nobody talks about the cleanup. Read it here.

A missing key no one can find. Just about the oldest mystery there is. That’s exactly why I wanted to write it. Read it here.

A baseball team on a massive losing streak. You know this story. Marisol doesn’t, and she is not happy about learning it. Read it here.

Sleeping giants. Sometimes the old saying turns out to be literal. Read it here.

A chicken trying to cross the road. Yes, that one. I wrote it and I’d do it again. Read it here.

They’re all based on cliches. But they’re all uniquely Marisol stories.

I guess what I’ve learned is that a cliche is really just a story people love so much they never stopped telling it. There’s nothing wrong with that. The trick is caring enough to tell it your own way.

If one of those setups made you smile, that’s probably the book for you.

Much Love,
Dennis