List of clichés found in literature

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In literary fiction, clichés often take the form of predictable characters or situations. For example the stereotypical pirate might have a pegleg, an eyepatch, a hook for a hand, and a parrot on his shoulder, and be searching for buried treasure using a map with an "X" marking the burial spot. All of these features are clichés. Vampire clichés include a long black cape, slick black hair, and an Eastern European accent. (The most famous actor to ever play one, Bela Lugosi, was Hungarian.) Fangs, however, would not be a cliché: they are simply part of being a vampire (by definition), and can neither claim novelty nor be criticized for conventionality. The following is a List of clichés which are often found in literature.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

It was a dark and stormy night. — Opening line of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's novel Paul Clifford (1830). Also used by the comic strip character Snoopy as he was writing fiction in Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

This phrase is also used as the title of collections of entries from the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest of prospective opening lines for bad novels. This sentence was also the opening line of Madeleine L'Engle's classic children's fantasy novel, A Wrinkle in Time (1960).

Suddenly…
Once upon a time... — standard opening line of many children's stories, fairy tales, fables, folktales, legends, myths, etc.
And they all lived happily ever after. — standard closing line of many children's stories, fairy tales, fables, folktales, legends, myths, etc.
Alabaster brow
Princess and dragon tales.

Turkish fairy tale opening: "Evvel zaman içinde kalbur saman içinde pire tellal deve berber iken, ben anamın beşiğini tıngır mıngır sallar iken..." Means literatively: "In past times when straws were in sieves, when flea are herald and camels are hair-dressers, while I was swinging my mother's cradle back and forward..." (Means at some time interval which wasn't and won't be passed by anytime.) (This is an old and very common one however been supplanted by the more western "once upon a time" in recent years.)

[edit] In Science Fiction

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction on pages 234 and 235 mentions several common clichés found in the genre.

Children characters will often have psionic powers or failing that they will be a child prodigy. (This occurs in the genre from The Hampdenshire Wonder to the present.)
People with telepathy, or other powers, exist but are victims of witch-hunts.
Robots are either funny, terrifying, or sometimes a mixture of the two. When they are terrifying they often want to overthrow "their human masters."
A mad scientist drives the plot.
Aliens want to have sex with the human females considered attractive by human males.
- A kind of reversal occurs in Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison where human women are sexually interested in ordinary alien males. This may have become a cliché in its own right; see Kif Kroker.