| Bullet Magnet |
12-01-2012 05:48 PM |
Alliteration is fine if it's poetry, or you're deliberately straying into poetry from prose for a moment (though this can be done poorly). Ending with propositions and splitting infinitives is the sort of thing that only fascistic English teachers do, who have decided that at long last the English language as developed as much as it needs to and that their version is the correct and final one. They are the Muslims of English, in other words. Reworking a sentence to avoid such things can sound contrite and unnatural, though this may also be the intent.
Avoiding clichés, however. Always, always always. Fine for when characters are speaking, since real people use them all the time (most people make really bad writers because most speech sounds like really bad writing). But it's basically plagiarism. If you can't say what you want to say without using your own words then you have no business being a writer.
Having realised this, the hardest thing is unlearning the habit. A lot of the time you don't even realise that you're doing it.
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