Stay away from these...

Here's a tidbit from Mayhem in the Midlands that I picked up in the What Authors Get Wrong panel. One of the speakers (at first I thought it was Michael Black, but I have been corrected: it was none other than Margaret Grace, aka Camille Minichino) recited lines of dialogue oft heard in TV crime drama shows—deathless questions, comments, statements, that should be retired. Here are the few I scribbled down:

• "Let's go, let's go, let's go!" (said with increasing intensity)
• "I never meant for this to happen." (bloody corpse lying at the feet of the speaker)
• "What do you mean by that?" (well, duh)
• "Are you okay?" (said to someone who has 1. been hit over the head, 2. caught in a tornado, 3. survived an explosion, 4. received a paper cut, 5. ...)

I wish I'd captured more of these, but alas! I'll have to admit, I've used a couple of these myself on occasion (no, don't go looking for them now!). I think, perhaps, it's a case of "lazy writing," and also of being raised on television back in the days of yore. When the stories roll out like a movie in my mind, those lines just automatically pop up in certain circumstances.

And, just for fun (because it is the weekend) here's some other (non-Mayhem) sites to visit that discuss dialogue and situation cliches in movies and TV.

• The Movie Cliches List
• Roger Ebert's Glossary List (lots of good ones here!)
• The Definitive List of Cliche Dialogue (by Kevin Lehane)
• ScreenwriterGuy's Top 10 Worst Cliche Lines of Dialogue
  
• TV Tropes in Dialogue (Technically, a trope is not a cliche, but hey, "Beam me up, Scotty!" and take a gander at these)

Wander on through them and see what catches your fancy or sounds familiar. And then vow not use them in your own writing. There's always another way to say it!