Never in all my years (have to fix that phrase) have I seen so many examples of bad puns, overused lines, tired camera angles, and well-worn jokes.

No, we are not talking about the Pauly Shore Film Festival (Love ya, P!), we are celebrating the cascade de cliches that is the response to last week’s request for the dullest conventions in filmmaking.

Thank you one and all! It was dreadful! Really, really awful!

But I digress (whoops, there’s another one).

The point of all this is to have a handy guide to what NOT to do, and to make sure that anything we send out is the freshest, newest take, and one we have never seen before. This is the nature of our job. So don’t be afraid of cliches, get to know them and learn to avoid them. If nothing else, use them as a springboard to find the take we have never heard or seen.

I myself have been guilty of the cliche, as a young writer it felt safer to use a joke others had used before me — wouldn’t they like me too if I said it?

Now if I find myself using a dull witticism or someone else’s joke, I either dump it or give it a twist that makes it new. Every aspect of our job is like that: Give me the fresh take on the rom-com, the ghost story, the epic adventure. Let me see the characters I have NEVER seen before with quirks and aspirations that make them new. Don’t give me the outcome I expect, surprise me! In a sense, we are like magicians, and must constantly look for new ways to pull a hat out of a rabbit (ewwww!) But you get what I mean.

The winner of the contest will now be decided by… You! There’s a twist. After reading over the 50+ cliche entries in last week’s blog, tell us who you think came up with the most startling cliche, the one that until that moment you didn’t realize had already “jumped the shark.” (whoops again)

The winner will be awarded a copy of the BRAND NEW Save the Cat! software, the upgraded version that will be available in October and includes some bells and whistles even I don’t believe we managed to squeeze in there.

And as a bonus, the commenter that makes the best case for the winner, and convinces us all he or she is right (as long as it is not his own brilliant insight he is pitching) will also win a copy of STC! 2.0.

How about them apples??? (Darn!)