: Help! I have no 'cheese-meter'! Over the past few years, it has come to my attention that I lack the ability to identify cheese. And by cheese, I mean cheesy things in movies/books. I simply

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One thing I feel has always contributed to aesthetic "cheese" is the un-self-aware over-reliance upon contemporary tropes and catchphrases, coupled with poor technique in the execution of those tropes. The lack of self awareness is really essential to this. Sometimes it can come across as innocent, sincere, or even sickly sweet, but usually it falls flat on its face.

Consider for instance including smartphones gags and reddit memes in a screenplay or novel not to critique contemporary culture or to observe nuanced aspects of it but merely to shamelessly lift the sort of humor seen in that social scene for free "brownie" points with the "hip, young audience." It reeks of the sort of thing an out-of-touch producer with no creative talent would do after searching on google trends for "what's hot" for about ten minutes.

"Oh, dank is a common buzzword on the internet. I better make these characters say it every five seconds!"

Michael Scott from the US version of the office is an expertly-written deliberately "cheesy" character. His ill-informed yet insanely sincere attempts at connecting with his workers make for awkward laughter. If you can properly write a character who's cheesy, you can avoid being that character.

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For someone who doesn't understand cheese, the easiest gauge is probably to ask yourself the following:

"Why is this happening?"

If you can answer this question from every angle (logic, science, plot, plot development) then it probably won't come off as incredibly cheesy, even if it's an overused trope.
For example, amnesia is often overused, and is usually cheesy when it happens.

Ask yourself why a character got amnesia:

Science: "Because he got hit on the head." -- Iffy, because it is highly improbable for someone to get amnesia from a random head injury

Logic: "Another character didn't like him and attacked him." -- This may be true, but it's a reason for him to get injured, not for him to get amnesia.

Plot: "Because I wanted him to forget the female character to create conflict" -- And this is the crux of the problem. This didn't happen because it made sense in the context of your characters and your story, it happened because you pulled it out of nowhere and used it as a plot device to keep your characters at odds with one another.

Amnesia can, occasionally, make sense in the context of the story. For example, if your story centered around a pair of scientists that successfully transferred someone's consciousness into a computer, however, the memories didn't transfer over correctly. In this story, one could explore not only whether the memories make the person, but whether the "soul" actually got transmitted into the computer. The character would be fretting over whether or not they died.

Cheese will happen. Tropes will happen.

But a good writer can select a trope and craft it so well that there isn't the faintest smell of cheese.

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Keep in mind that you don't have to reach everybody. There are plenty of readers, like you, who don't notice cheese in a bad way, and others who actually like it.

With that said, "cheese" generally refers to inauthentic, unearned or disproportionate sentiment, or to failed attempts at being cool. Cheese is usually a symptom of an excess of enthusiasm --the antidote is a dose of emotional detachment.

But as I said, it might be better to embrace it than avoid it.

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Definition

I think a good definition of cheesy is this:

Something that is low quality, amateur, but is trying really hard to be good.

It's a hard word to define for sure.

Avoidance

Beta Readers!

They're the holy grail. You should get beta readers to check your work, however, there are a number of measures you can take to help avoid cheesiness:

See what is cheesy. Look online to see what is seen as 'cheesy' and identify patterns. See if those show in your own work.
Avoid writing low-quality material with very basic ideas around them. Rather, try to create something more professional with greater depth and intrigue.

For example, something I read recently was about a wolf which could turn into a human. It was the most unprofessional, cheesy thing I had ever read and it was so cringeworthy I was fortunate not to have died. It was just so amateur, informal, and basic.

Conclusion

To be honest, I think that to increase your ability to detect cheese, the best advice is my first point. By looking at patterns of cheese and trying to notice them, you'll be able to identify what actually is cheesy.

I tasted cheese in my mouth while I wrote this answer.

I hope this helped you!!

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