: Romance without cliche? My school is doing a romance writing competition and there is no cliche allowed. But that is the only way I know how to write romance. I mean, I haven't read a single

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My suggestion would be, write the romance first, pick out as many phrases from it as you can, and search them up. If you receive many results, especially from excerpts or in a list of clichés, then it probably is a cliché.

The definition of cliché can be loose. One person may think it a cliché, while another doesn't. Most metaphors and similes are considered clichés, so you may want to avoid them, unless you came up with them yourself and cannot find a search result for them.

A plot form can also be a cliché. If you can't find an original plot idea, you are perfectly allowed to take a clichéd one, then twist it. Reinventing can be just as fun as inventing.

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A good way to avoid cliche in romance is to choose unusual characters as participants in the romance.

The love poetry shared between a pair of nuclear physicists could be very romantic without being at all cliche.
Escaped prisoners on the run from the Law might fall in love during a high tension cat-and-mouse pursuit, leading to frenzied encounters peppered with the risk of capture and betrayal.
There is no rule that says that romance needs to involve humans. Try writing a canine or feline (or god-forbid, a mixed canine feline) relationship.

Breaking from traditional two person pairings and three person love-triangles can also be useful for avoiding cliche. A happy quintet would be ripe with odd geometries and opportunities for entertaining miscommunication.

Simply stated, if you don't want it to be cliche, make it strange.

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Given that you haven't given us a lot of the givens...

Not every romance is cliché. There are formulas, to be sure (c.f. Harlequin, Nicholas Sparks, Lifetime), but just because the tropes are heavily used doesn't mean you have to use them, or that they have to feel worn.

So: Pick up the nearest romance book and start making a list of the clichés. I don't have one to hand, so I'm just going to start riffing off the top of my head. These won't all necessarily be in the same story:

Man and woman
Meet cute
Love at first sight
Hate at first sight
Mistaken identity
Pretend relationship for the benefit of a third party
Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back
Physical Mary Sue characteristics (heart-shaped face, vividly colored
eyes, perfect physique [particularly without any effort like constant
dieting or exercise], flowing/tousled hair)
Person A is normally eloquent and intelligent but gets stupidly
tongue-tied in the presence of Love Interest Person B
Sassy Black/Gay Best Friend

You get the idea. So write down everything you can see in this romance in your hand.

Then make an effort to write something which avoids as many of those as possible. Make it a same-sex slow burn. Have no jealous exes or disapproving parents. Create normal, rounded friends. Describe ordinary-looking people. And so on. Brokeback Mountain is a heartbreakingly beautiful romance which I wouldn't describe as clichéd, even if it has "love at first sight" and "disapproving society" because it's fresh and uniquely done.

If you're worried about clichés, don't write them.

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