Can we do better than that?
Well, certainly we can do better than that. It's actually strange to the question asked directly rather than an assumed hypothetical. While its status as a cliché stems from overuse throughout history (after all, it's been around since at least Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1832 novel Paul Clifford), we can take a few different tacks in getting away from it. Like any good improvising tabletopper, we’ll use both our "yes, and…" and our "no, but...," though perhaps not in quite the way we'e used to. "It was a dark and stormy night… " yes, and what can we do to expand upon that and make it different? The night was black, almost to the point where you couldn’t tell if your eyes were open or closed to keep the driving rain from getting in them, punctuated only by intermittent lightning. It is still a dark and stormy night, but we’ve gone a little bit deeper with it. One could take it even further, but we won’t, at least for the purposes of this post. Is that still a bit cliché ? Perhaps, but we’re getting further away from the familiarity of the dreaded intro itself.
We can also "no, but…" here, as well, though again not the way we might typically at our tabletops. The sun was shining brightly in the warm dewy morning, BUT something seemed off - the birds weren’t chirping and everything was just a bit too still for such a fine day. In this example, we start to go in the opposite direction, avoid the cliché intro entirely, but bringing in the original's implied dread at the end. Fortunately, we also manage to avoid using the old "it was quiet... a little too quiet" - that would have put us right into another cliché. So, we can certainly do better, though perhaps neither of the provided examples are particularly great, but one could easily expand or revise them. There are also plenty of ways we could avoid the issue altogether, but there's no reason to, now that we've proven the point. One question still remains though:
Should we do better than that?
Sure, we can and DID do better than "it was a dark and stormy night," but should we? Overall, it depends on your goals. Are you trying to write a gripping or gloomy short story or novel? Then certainly one should probably do their blurst to avoid clichés and come up with their own unique descriptors. However, you could also be going for clichés intentionally - perhaps in making a parody or pastiche. In that case, it might even be entirely appropriate (or even expected) to use "it was a dark and stormy night" verbatim. But even outside of these scenarios, do we really need to avoid a familiar intro, though? For those leading a session of a tabletop roleplaying game, making an effort to avoid these kinds of clichés probably isn’t necessary for a few reasons. For one, unless your group is taking themselves a little too seriously, they probably aren’t going to care much. We’re all there to have fun, and a few clichés aren’t going to bring down your whole session, even if you're going for a more serious campaign. Another reason is the familiarity with that phrase in particular. As suggested earlier, the phrase in question is going to get a reaction. Perhaps that reaction is groans from the players... but DMs and GMs, perennial tellers of bad jokes, should already be braced for that. Or perhaps the clear and concrete imagery (which "dark and stormy night" certainly is) will make it easier to pull players into the scene. Either way, you’re giving them something familiar to hold onto as they delve into shared worlds of science fiction and fantasy.
We can do better, we DO do better, but we don’t always need to. "It was a dark and stormy night" may, in fact, be the perfect intro to the story you’re about to tell at your tabletops. In most situations, it's unlikely you’re going to repeat that same session twice, so as long as you aren’t using it every session (unless tha's the running gag you’re going for), you’re going to be fine. Don’t worry about using a cliché here or there, and have fun! Until the next dark and stormy night post, folks, enjoy your dice and your tables!
Send dark questions and stormy comments to neversaydice20@gmail.com.
