Cliches I Abhor: “It’s a long story”

One of the most eargratingly bad cliches I’ve heard has gotta be “It’s a long story.” Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t name every example ever, because there are just too many; it’s one of the most ubiquitous phrases out there. It serves two primary purposes: the first purpose is to keep the audience from having to sit through a recap of what they just read/saw/heard, which is fair enough, but there are other ways to deal with it, and I’ll get to them shortly. The second purpose is to keep the audience from seeing a crucial plot point too early, which is just lazy writing.

Alright, so, you’ve just walked barefoot over some glass, jumped on a dragon, and battled the evil guy at the end, ultimately defeating him at the expense of your dragon. Now you’ve arrived at home in a beat-up old Ford Pinto, and you look like hell. “What happened?” a friend asks, and you tell them, “It’s a long sto–” Oh wait. I have a better idea. Why not tell them what I just said? I mean, it was like a sentence long. It’s not really a long story at all, so don’t treat it like it is. Hell, 99% of the time, people can sum up everything they did in like two sentences, which is one sentence longer than “it’s a long story.” If it really is a long and confusing story and you’ve got to save the damsel before she is eaten by grues, then just say something like “I’ll tell you later, there’s no time right now!”

Usually, when someone says “it’s a long story,” they say it like it’s some big joke. Unfortunately, it’s rarely funny at all. It’s intended to be understatement, and the line “you don’t know the half of it” might be used as a follow-up to cement this fact into our brains. Most of the time, however, the events that just took place can be summed up very simply, so it isn’t really an understatement, and even if it was, understatement isn’t the funniest of things. Seeing people all suddenly laughing when the guy goes “it’s a long story” (which happens, but not as commonly as the line itself) like it’s the most hilarious thing they’ve ever heard just doesn’t work.

The second problem, the idea of keeping the audience in the dark, is worse, but I really can’t think of that much to say about it. It’s lazy writing. We’ve seen countless instances where someone COULD have asked “where were you?” and gotten the “it’s a long story” reply back, but instead, they come up with a plausible reason for not explaining themselves. At the very least, “not now,” or “I’ll tell you later,” would be a better response, but even then, the audience knows something is up and they’re going to wonder what it is. “It’s a long story” prevents any curve balls from happening, unless the writing is sufficiently good enough to make the reader forget what just happened. It’s especially devastating in heist stories, which are at their best the more curves the writer gives. It’s like a big, blaring klaxxon screaming “ALERT ALERT SOMETHING HAPPENED HERE!” Drawing attention to the fact in the least subtle way possible is not good writing.

I guess my biggest problem with “it’s a long story” is that the story is almost never very long at all and could be summed up quite simply, or that it makes everyone aware that something is going on. Often, it leads to needless drama that makes no sense within the story.