We have watched more than 60 episodes of "Jane the Virgin" on Netflix. At some of the earlier shows, I wondered if I would get tired of the super-excitement and plot twists. I haven't. Last night, I saw a plot twist that grabbed my imagination.
Jane has had many ups and downs, often quite a few within a single day. She is working on becoming a writer, has taken writing instruction and just had her first book published. As an ardent writer, she works at avoiding cliches and tired language. Jane's father is a soap opera ("telenovela") star in Hispanic Miami.
Some of his male co-stars are as super egotistical and emotional as he is. One of them asked Jane, as a professional writer, to write a short history of his professional life. She sweats over the writing but finally has what she thinks is a truly well-written document. She reads it aloud to the male performer. He is very disappointed in what she has written. She is downcast but picks up a clue in a bit of his reaction. She re-writes the piece, filling it with clichés. Each one rings the actor's bell! Each one is a hit. As the two walk happily out of the scene, he says to her, "As you so beautifully put it, haste makes waste."
Well, sure! Words and phrases get reused when they are useful, clever, memorable. I looked up "cliché" and found that when French printers had to set the same phrase in their printing frame repeatedly, they cast the whole expression in a single block, which reportedly made a clicking sound when loaded into the printing frame.
The word cliché is borrowed from French, where it is a past passive participle of clicher, 'to click', used a noun; cliché is attested from 1825 and originated in the printing trades. ... Through this onomatopoeia, cliché came to mean a ready-made, oft-repeated phrase.
Cliché - Wikipedia
Some examples from a Google search:
Let's touch base.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
I'm like a kid in a candy store.
I lost track of time.
Roses are red, violets are blue…
Time heals all wounds.
We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you.
