So, who wants to be a New York Times No. 1 best-selling author?
Me!
Who wants to be compared to the likes of Dickens, Hemingway, Tolstoy, or any of the classic authors and write a story that is a literary treasure?
Me, too!
Shall the twain ever meet?
Here’s the rub. If you want to make a living out of writing, you need to write at least one or two books a year, have them become ‘must-reads’ like those of James Patterson or Clive Cussler.
That’s writing to a formula and taking the populist path. It is much easier, to a certain degree, to write a novel like a romance, a war story, a spy story, or a period piece like the Regency romances.
It is a lot more difficult to write a definitive literary novel. I keep thinking that one day I will, and I even started one about forty years ago.
I happened to read several novels by the author R.F. Delderfield, and one in particular, A Horseman Riding By. To me, at the time, it was the modern era equivalent of those classics by Dickens or Eliot.
It was a three-volume life history, and it captivated my imagination. At the time, I was working for a company whose history went back to the late 1800s and had a great many old records of how things were done, particularly mining on a remote island in the Pacific and a shipping line that carried the ore and passengers, stores and supplies.
That first volume ran from the 1930s to the start of the Second World War, and I spent a lot of time studying the people and processes of the time itself. It was as far as I got, but I still harbour the notion I will get it written.
We’ve reached the point where it’s time to take Worthington’s desire for revenge and turn it into a homicidal obsession, particularly after the last ‘easy’ exercise of killing her at the railway station failed so spectacularly.
Worthington is about to become a ‘by any means necessary’ person who will use anyone or anything at his disposal, and is about to use the one person John will least expect to appear on his horizon, one who will make him think twice about keeping Zoe from him.
However, our intrepid trio of Sebastian, Isobel, and Rupert is also on the trail, who, when leaving the airport, just happened to see Worthington with this particular person, and realised what was about to happen. Sebastian also discovers why he is being sidelined and is not determined to stop Worthington.
Oblivious to all of this is John, who has hired a car and is heading to Lucern, where he is going to rendezvous with Zoe and hopefully get a briefing on what she intends to do next.
Needless to say, no matter what she says, he will ignore all that good advice and do his usual arrival in a nick of time to rescue the damsel in distress.
Of course, there are only so many times he can do this before he is actually killed for real.
The Golden Mask Dynasty Show was located at the OCT Theatre in Beijing’s Happy Valley.
The theatre was quite full and the seats we had were directly behind the VIP area; as our guide told us, we had the best seats in the house.
The play has 20 different dance scenes that depict war, royal banquets, and romance. There are eight chapters and over 200 actors, and throughout the performance we were entertained by dancers, acrobats, costumes, lighting, and acoustics.
The story:
It is of romantic legend and historical memories, the Golden Mask Queen leads her army in defeating the invading Blue Mask King’s army, and afterwards the lands return to a leisurely pastoral life until the Queen forges a ‘mysterious tree’. When the tree has grown, the Queen has a grand celebration, and releases the captured Blue soldiers, much to the admiration of the Blue Mask King. This is followed by monstrous floods, and to save her people, and on the advice from the ‘mysterious tree’, the Queen sacrifices herself to save her people. The Queen then turns into a golden sunbird flying in the sky blessing the people and that of the dynasty.
Billed as the best live show in China, described as a large scale dramatic musical, “The Golden Mask Dynasty” it lived up to its reputation and was thoroughly enjoyed by all.
It was not just singing dancing and acrobatics, it had a story and it was told so that language and cultural issues aside, it worked. There was a narration of the story running beside the stage, but it was hard to divide attention between what was happening, and what was being related.
Then came the peacock dance, with live peacocks
And this was followed by a waterfall, well, I don’t think anyone in that audience could believe what they were seeing.
I know I was both astonished and in awe of the performance.
What a way to finish off our first day in Beijing.
Oh, sorry, that high was dented slightly when we had to go back to our room.
The first stop is at a Jade Museum to learn the history of jade. In Chinese, jade is pronounced as “Yu” and it has a history in China of at least four thousand years. On the way there, we are given a story about one of the guide’s relatives who had a jade bracelet, and how it has saved her from countless catastrophes.It is, quite literally ‘the’ good luck charm. Chinese gamblers are known to have small pieces of jade in their hands when visiting the casinos, for good luck. I’m not sure anything could provide a gambler with any sort of luck given how the odds are always slanted towards the house.
At any rate, this is neither the time of the place to debunk a ‘well-known fact’.
On arrival, our guide hands us over to a local guide, a real staff member, and she begins with a discussion on jade while we watch a single worker working on an intricate piece, what looks to be a globe within a globe, sorry, there are two workers, and the second is working on a dragon.
At the end of the passage that passes by the workers, and before you enter the main showroom, you are dazzled by the ship and is nothing short of magnificent.
Then it’s into a small room just off the main showroom where we are taken through the colors, and the carving process in the various stages, without really being told how the magic happens.
Then it’s out into the main showroom where the sales are made, and before dispersing to look at the jade collection, she briefly tells us how to tell real and fake jade, and she does the usual trick of getting one of the tour group to model a piece.
Looks good, let’s move on. To bigger and better examples.
What interested me, other than the small zodiac signs and other smallish pieces on the ‘promotion’ table, was the jade bangle our tour guide told us about on the bus. If anyone needs one, it is my other half, with all the medical issues and her sometimes clumsiness, two particular maladies this object is supposed to prevent. Jade to the Chinese is Diamonds to westerners, and the jade bangle is often handed down to the females of the family from generation to generation, often as an engagement present, to be worn on the left hand, the one closest to the heart.
There are literally thousands of them, but, they have to be specially fitted to your wrist because if it’s too large, you might lose it if it slips off and I didn’t think it could be too small. Nor is it cheap, and needing a larger size, it is reasonably expensive. But it is jadeite, the more expensive of the types of jade, and it can only appreciate in value, not that we are interested in the monetary value, it’s more the good luck aspect.
We could use some of that.
But, just to touch on something that can be the bugbear of traveling overseas, is the subject of happy houses, a better name for toilets, and has become a recurrent theme on this tour. It’s better than blurting out the word toilet and it seems there can be some not so happy houses given that the toilets in China are usually squat rather than sit, even for women. And apparently, everyone has an unhappy house story, particularly the women, and generally in having to squat over a pit. Why is this a discussion point, it seems the jade factory had what we have come to call happy, happy houses which have more proper toilets, and a stop here before going on the great wall was recommended, as the ‘happy house’ at the wall is deemed to be not such a happy house.
Not even this dragon was within my price range. Thank heaven they had smaller more affordable models. The object of having a dragon, large or small, is that it should be placed inside the main door to the house so that money can come in.
It also seems that stuffing the dragon’s mouth with money is also good luck. We passed on doing that.
After spending a small fortune, there was a bonus, free Chinese tea. Apparently, we will be coming back, after the Great Wall visit, to have lunch upstairs.
What starts as a search for a missing husband soon develops into an unbelievable story of treachery, lies, and incredible riches.
…
It was meant to remain buried long enough for the dust to settle on what was once an unpalatable truth, when enough time had passed, and those who had been willing to wait could reap the rewards.
The problem was, no one knew where that treasure was hidden or the location of the logbook that held the secret.
At stake, billions of dollars’ worth of stolen Nazi loot brought to the United States in an anonymous tramp steamer and hidden in a specially constructed vault under a specifically owned plot of land on the once docklands of New York.
It may have remained hidden and unknown to only a few, if it had not been for a mere obscure detail being overheard …
… by our intrepid, newly minted private detective, Harry Walthenson …
… and it would have remained buried.
Now, through a series of unrelated events, or are they, that well-kept secret is out there, and Harry will not stop until the whole truth is uncovered.
We’ve reached the point where it’s time to take Worthington’s desire for revenge and turn it into a homicidal obsession, particularly after the last ‘easy’ exercise of killing her at the railway station failed so spectacularly.
Worthington is about to become a ‘by any means necessary’ person who will use anyone or anything at his disposal, and is about to use the one person John will least expect to appear on his horizon, one who will make him think twice about keeping Zoe from him.
However, our intrepid trio of Sebastian, Isobel, and Rupert is also on the trail, who, when leaving the airport, just happened to see Worthington with this particular person, and realised what was about to happen. Sebastian also discovers why he is being sidelined and is not determined to stop Worthington.
Oblivious to all of this is John, who has hired a car and is heading to Lucern, where he is going to rendezvous with Zoe and hopefully get a briefing on what she intends to do next.
Needless to say, no matter what she says, he will ignore all that good advice and do his usual arrival in a nick of time to rescue the damsel in distress.
Of course, there are only so many times he can do this before he is actually killed for real.
When I was much younger, and life was very difficult, my imagination needed to take my mind off that dark world around me, and fired up and fueled a great many stories.
The pre-teen years were not those in which I wrote anything beyond those school assignments, but I remember the desire to read and, in doing so, imagine it could inhabit those idyllic worlds.
When I was old enough and in the first years of secondary school, the subjects we learned helped expand that imagination; some wanted to be someone different, to be somewhere else, anywhere but home.
I remember reading books about boarding school in England and somehow thought that would be better than what I had here. That notion of self-sufficiency and navigating those younger years in such an environment would be fun.
Of course, later on, I realised the reality of that sort of life, and it was just as horrible as I had already.
It didn’t stop me from wanting to be in a rich family living in a large house and having a whole estate to play in. It didn’t matter that it might not be the truth, just that it was different.
As I transitioned out of school, now having discovered I could write and translate those dreams into stories, I embarked on a university degree that majored in Narrative, which was writing, and journalism, which, in combining the two, provided three years of writing experience.
In other words, from an early age, I used writing as a means of survival and later as a channel for my creative whim. I never expected that I would write a book, not in those early years, just that the scribbles on paper would eventually become something.
Yes, I wanted to have a perfect relationship, but I soon realised that there really isn’t one. Writing about it and trying to create perfection, I discovered a lot of interesting lessons and everything that can go wrong, as usual.
Yes, I wanted to be a spy, and watched, ready and studied as much as I could, and discovered that Spies don’t live a charmed life; they are always teetering on the edge of life and death.
Yes, I wanted to be a billionaire and live a charmed and successful life, but it mostly didn’t happen, and the newspaper pages are littered with the death and ruination of a great many privileged souls.
Others struggle. My father always said life wasn’t meant to be easy. I soon learned that in my imagination and my stories, it could.
Beyond the Cliché: How to Refresh Your Writing and Ditch the Tired Tropes
We’ve all been there. You’re deep into a draft, the ideas are flowing, and suddenly, you hit a wall. You need a phrase to describe a messy situation, a strong promise, or an aggressive reaction. Your brain reaches into its mental filing cabinet and pulls out the usual suspects: “can of worms,” “mark my words,” and “feeding frenzy.”
They’re comfortable. They’re recognisable. But are they good writing?
Cliches aren’t inherently evil; they are shorthand. They exist because they were originally clever, punchy, and effective. The problem is that they’ve been used so often that they’ve lost their impact. They are the “white noise” of the literary world. When a reader sees a cliché, their brain glosses over it because they’ve already encountered it a thousand times.
If you want your writing to stand out, you have to be willing to do the extra work of finding a fresher way to say what you mean. Let’s break down three common cliches and look at how to replace them with something that actually bites.
1. The “Can of Worms”
The cliche: “Opening this investigation will just open a whole can of worms.” The problem: It’s become so cartoonish that it evokes a literal fishing trip rather than a complex bureaucratic nightmare.
The Strategy: Focus on the consequence of the action. What kind of trouble are we talking about?
Try these instead:
“Opening this investigation will trigger a cascade of unforeseen fallout.”
“This will unearth a hornet’s nest of complications.”
“If we pull this thread, the entire tapestry of our agreement starts to unravel.”
“This is a Pandora’s box we aren’t prepared to manage.”
2. “Mark My Words”
The cliche: “Mark my words, this company will be bankrupt within a year.” The problem: It sounds like the dialogue from a mid-century detective movie. It carries a sense of performative drama that often rings hollow.
The Strategy: Don’t demand that the reader “mark” your words—simply state your conviction with enough strength that they have no choice but to believe you.
Try these instead:
“I’d bet my reputation that this company will be bankrupt within a year.”
“History suggests that this company is headed for bankruptcy.”
“Write it down: this company is on a collision course with bankruptcy.”
“Make no mistake: this company is folding.”
3. “Feeding Frenzy”
The cliche: “The press went into a feeding frenzy over the scandal.” The problem: It dehumanises the subjects and relies on a biological metaphor that has been used until it’s transparent.
The Strategy: Describe the action of the group. Are they frantic? Are they ruthless? Are they opportunistic?
Try these instead:
“The press swarmed the scandal with predatory zeal.”
“The scandal triggered a vicious, rapid-fire cycle of speculation.”
“Once the news broke, the media circled like vultures.”
“The scandal sparked a competitive scramble for every shred of information.”
How to Stamp Out Cliches in Your Own Work
You don’t have to get rid of every single cliché on your first draft. That’s what editing is for. Here is a simple workflow to sharpen your prose:
Read Aloud: When you read your draft, cliches stand out like sore thumbs. Your tongue will stumble or your brain will feel a “ping” of familiarity.
Ask “What do I actually mean?”: If you want to say something is a “can of worms,” ask yourself: What is the specific danger? Is it chaos? Is it legal liability? Is it a mountain of paperwork? Be specific.
Use the Thesaurus as a Guide, Not a Crutch: Look up the core words of your cliché, but don’t just pick a synonym. Use the thesaurus to trigger a new way of visualising the concept.
Embrace the “Plain Language” Rule: Sometimes, the best alternative to a cliche is simply stating the truth plainly. Instead of “a feeding frenzy,” just say “relentless media scrutiny.” Plain, direct language is often more powerful than any metaphor.
The Bottom Line: Great writing isn’t about using the biggest words or the most complex metaphors; it’s about choosing language that feels earned. By ditching the tired tropes, you show your readers that you value their time—and that you have an original voice worth listening to.
The first stop is at a Jade Museum to learn the history of jade. In Chinese, jade is pronounced as “Yu” and it has a history in China of at least four thousand years. On the way there, we are given a story about one of the guide’s relatives who had a jade bracelet, and how it has saved her from countless catastrophes.It is, quite literally ‘the’ good luck charm. Chinese gamblers are known to have small pieces of jade in their hands when visiting the casinos, for good luck. I’m not sure anything could provide a gambler with any sort of luck given how the odds are always slanted towards the house.
At any rate, this is neither the time of the place to debunk a ‘well-known fact’.
On arrival, our guide hands us over to a local guide, a real staff member, and she begins with a discussion on jade while we watch a single worker working on an intricate piece, what looks to be a globe within a globe, sorry, there are two workers, and the second is working on a dragon.
At the end of the passage that passes by the workers, and before you enter the main showroom, you are dazzled by the ship and is nothing short of magnificent.
Then it’s into a small room just off the main showroom where we are taken through the colors, and the carving process in the various stages, without really being told how the magic happens.
Then it’s out into the main showroom where the sales are made, and before dispersing to look at the jade collection, she briefly tells us how to tell real and fake jade, and she does the usual trick of getting one of the tour group to model a piece.
Looks good, let’s move on. To bigger and better examples.
What interested me, other than the small zodiac signs and other smallish pieces on the ‘promotion’ table, was the jade bangle our tour guide told us about on the bus. If anyone needs one, it is my other half, with all the medical issues and her sometimes clumsiness, two particular maladies this object is supposed to prevent. Jade to the Chinese is Diamonds to westerners, and the jade bangle is often handed down to the females of the family from generation to generation, often as an engagement present, to be worn on the left hand, the one closest to the heart.
There are literally thousands of them, but, they have to be specially fitted to your wrist because if it’s too large, you might lose it if it slips off and I didn’t think it could be too small. Nor is it cheap, and needing a larger size, it is reasonably expensive. But it is jadeite, the more expensive of the types of jade, and it can only appreciate in value, not that we are interested in the monetary value, it’s more the good luck aspect.
We could use some of that.
But, just to touch on something that can be the bugbear of traveling overseas, is the subject of happy houses, a better name for toilets, and has become a recurrent theme on this tour. It’s better than blurting out the word toilet and it seems there can be some not so happy houses given that the toilets in China are usually squat rather than sit, even for women. And apparently, everyone has an unhappy house story, particularly the women, and generally in having to squat over a pit. Why is this a discussion point, it seems the jade factory had what we have come to call happy, happy houses which have more proper toilets, and a stop here before going on the great wall was recommended, as the ‘happy house’ at the wall is deemed to be not such a happy house.
Not even this dragon was within my price range. Thank heaven they had smaller more affordable models. The object of having a dragon, large or small, is that it should be placed inside the main door to the house so that money can come in.
It also seems that stuffing the dragon’s mouth with money is also good luck. We passed on doing that.
After spending a small fortune, there was a bonus, free Chinese tea. Apparently, we will be coming back, after the Great Wall visit, to have lunch upstairs.
Beyond the Cliché: How to Refresh Your Writing and Ditch the Tired Tropes
We’ve all been there. You’re deep into a draft, the ideas are flowing, and suddenly, you hit a wall. You need a phrase to describe a messy situation, a strong promise, or an aggressive reaction. Your brain reaches into its mental filing cabinet and pulls out the usual suspects: “can of worms,” “mark my words,” and “feeding frenzy.”
They’re comfortable. They’re recognisable. But are they good writing?
Cliches aren’t inherently evil; they are shorthand. They exist because they were originally clever, punchy, and effective. The problem is that they’ve been used so often that they’ve lost their impact. They are the “white noise” of the literary world. When a reader sees a cliché, their brain glosses over it because they’ve already encountered it a thousand times.
If you want your writing to stand out, you have to be willing to do the extra work of finding a fresher way to say what you mean. Let’s break down three common cliches and look at how to replace them with something that actually bites.
1. The “Can of Worms”
The cliche: “Opening this investigation will just open a whole can of worms.” The problem: It’s become so cartoonish that it evokes a literal fishing trip rather than a complex bureaucratic nightmare.
The Strategy: Focus on the consequence of the action. What kind of trouble are we talking about?
Try these instead:
“Opening this investigation will trigger a cascade of unforeseen fallout.”
“This will unearth a hornet’s nest of complications.”
“If we pull this thread, the entire tapestry of our agreement starts to unravel.”
“This is a Pandora’s box we aren’t prepared to manage.”
2. “Mark My Words”
The cliche: “Mark my words, this company will be bankrupt within a year.” The problem: It sounds like the dialogue from a mid-century detective movie. It carries a sense of performative drama that often rings hollow.
The Strategy: Don’t demand that the reader “mark” your words—simply state your conviction with enough strength that they have no choice but to believe you.
Try these instead:
“I’d bet my reputation that this company will be bankrupt within a year.”
“History suggests that this company is headed for bankruptcy.”
“Write it down: this company is on a collision course with bankruptcy.”
“Make no mistake: this company is folding.”
3. “Feeding Frenzy”
The cliche: “The press went into a feeding frenzy over the scandal.” The problem: It dehumanises the subjects and relies on a biological metaphor that has been used until it’s transparent.
The Strategy: Describe the action of the group. Are they frantic? Are they ruthless? Are they opportunistic?
Try these instead:
“The press swarmed the scandal with predatory zeal.”
“The scandal triggered a vicious, rapid-fire cycle of speculation.”
“Once the news broke, the media circled like vultures.”
“The scandal sparked a competitive scramble for every shred of information.”
How to Stamp Out Cliches in Your Own Work
You don’t have to get rid of every single cliché on your first draft. That’s what editing is for. Here is a simple workflow to sharpen your prose:
Read Aloud: When you read your draft, cliches stand out like sore thumbs. Your tongue will stumble or your brain will feel a “ping” of familiarity.
Ask “What do I actually mean?”: If you want to say something is a “can of worms,” ask yourself: What is the specific danger? Is it chaos? Is it legal liability? Is it a mountain of paperwork? Be specific.
Use the Thesaurus as a Guide, Not a Crutch: Look up the core words of your cliché, but don’t just pick a synonym. Use the thesaurus to trigger a new way of visualising the concept.
Embrace the “Plain Language” Rule: Sometimes, the best alternative to a cliche is simply stating the truth plainly. Instead of “a feeding frenzy,” just say “relentless media scrutiny.” Plain, direct language is often more powerful than any metaphor.
The Bottom Line: Great writing isn’t about using the biggest words or the most complex metaphors; it’s about choosing language that feels earned. By ditching the tired tropes, you show your readers that you value their time—and that you have an original voice worth listening to.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 