I am officially one third of the way through my almost-final edit of my novel, Life of a Suburban Unicorn. Chapter five is about to culminate with Elizabeth discovering the truth about unicorns, and I find myself continously rewriting it. The problem? I’m trying to deal with uni-corny-ness.
Mention the word unicorn anywhere about anything and your credibility automatically goes down a peg or two. I know the second the word “unicorn” pops up in my story people are going to start thinking of Zev as a poofy white creature with a rainbow tail.
I need edgy. I need wild. I need you to take me seriously, dang it!
A.M. Kuska's Blog 
Aug 06, 2010 @ 12:26:40
Funny, but that’s exactly what I thought when I read your unicornyness…puffy tail, flowing mane, mystical, yet whimsical none-the-less.
If you can tap into this idea and give your unicorns an edge, you’ll definitely be breaking trends in the mythical department.
hugs and best luck~
Aug 06, 2010 @ 14:29:45
I have a crazy suggestion. Since I don’t know how your unicorn plays in the story and whether or not the reader should “like” him, I will take a guess that you do not want to alienate your reader from your unicorn. First let them meet and fall in love with lovable, funny, cute unicorn. Then reveal that Mr. Unicorn has a dual personality living within, dangerous and scary personality that wishes to usurp control over the nice Uni, that wants to destroy Uni and wants to …. Wow! I used to create invisible monsters that would make my younger siblings run for their lives when I was a darling child… Rrrr! What fun it was!
Aug 06, 2010 @ 23:39:11
My suggestion is to face it head-on. Use the cliche as a starting point for your character to be offended or exasperated or pissed-off or whatever.