I keep being told that something I have written is a cliche - with which, more often than not, I disagree.
What exactly is a cliche? Please give a few examples.
It’s my understanding that it’s a phrase that can be (but is not exclusive to) based on a metaphor that describes a practice the speaker will never do, nor does anyone expect him to ever do, i.e. someone who’d talk until the cows came home probably doesn’t actually own any cows.
More generally, it’s something that is trite and hackneyed, overused and unoriginal.
In the literary context, it means a stereotyped or commonplace expression. And, by extension, a stereotyped or commonplace plot, idea, situation, character, etc.
So, for example, imagine a homicide drama in which the victim has been targetted because he is homosexual, and the homophobic perpetrator turns out to be a self-hating homosexual. We could see that coming. The self-hating homosexual is a cliché character.
The ditzy blonde is another cliché character, as is the tart with the heart of gold. No doubt you can think of other examples yourself.
Give us a few examples of things you’ve written that someone else thought were clichés but which you don’t think are clichés.
A common cliche among critics is to refer to something as “cliched writing” rather than pointing out the specific form of cliche the critic has detected.
I went to see an amateur production of Hamlet the other day. It was packed with clichés: Neither a borrower or a lender be; to thine own self be true; brevity is the soul of wit; to thine own self be true… There were loads more, but I’m sure you get the drift.
The word “cliché” literally means “stereotyped”, in both its original printing-related sense and its metaphorical sense.
The idea is that a cliché is a ready-made slug of text that lazy writers will drop into a sentence rather than think of a more interesting way with words.
If you’re reading a sentence and you can see from a mile off what’s looming over the horizon, then you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s chock-full of clichés. ( 
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Avoid cliches like the plague. They’re old hat.
Ahhh, they’re 1590’s-style “clichés”.
Wait, are those cliques?
It’s more like a bunch of famous sayings all shoehorned into a play.
But they weren’t famous at the time Shakespeare wrote them.
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Hark, is that an autorotor engine I doth hear on yonder horizon?
Takes one to know one.
Like irony, it’s easy to get wrong.
A cliche is an overused meme.
That was the point. He coined them and they have since become clichés. I din not expect to have to explain that on this board.
The best way to avoid clichés in your writing is to have read a lot. The more you read, the more you’ll realize what has been done, been overdone, and been done to death.
Never assume originality. Better to just be original.
V’rily, t seemeth a whoosh just did fly ov’r their heads as a swallow from Africa doest, unburden’d by coconuts.
Usually, it is a remark that is falsely attributed to Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, or Benjamin Franklin, because it has been circulating at least that long.