Cliches and Why You Should Not Fear Them
The big, the bad, the cliché. These guys are pretty much unavoidable in any work of fiction, especially fantasy and science fiction, and to a lesser extent, romance. You've all heard people telling you to avoid these clichés at all cost, and there's even a site that tells you to abandon your fantasy story if it contains any cliché at all.
However, that advice is stupid.
It's okay to have clichés, as long as you only use them as a baseplate and build onto it. Think of clichés as a straight length of rope. A good author will take that length of rope and twist it around, tie it into knots, and otherwise manipulate it. It is still the same rope, but it's in a different shape.
There is no law prohibiting you from having the villain be the hero's father. You just have to be creative. Maybe the mother died in childbirth and the father went insane from grief, perhaps thinking the child had died as well. Maybe neither of them know their connection and only discover it during their final battle or when the villain is about to have the hero chucked into a vat of acid. Maybe once this happens, they reconcile and have to work on undoing all the wrong the villain has done.
Your head won't explode if you make your fantasy hero a farmboy. Just do something interesting with it. Maybe it's a different kind of farm, something to do with magic perhaps. Maybe his home isn't destroyed and maybe he isn't whisked away by a Mysterious Stranger. Maybe he and his family harbor a fugitive, or do something to try to keep their crops away from an invading army. Maybe the family he has on the farm is actually *gasp* his real family! Epic plot twist!
Presence or absence of clichés does not make or break a story. A story could have an extremely cliché premise, and yet still be a wonderful read (Harry Potter being a prime example). Conversely, a story could be completely original and yet be completely dull. It all comes down to the characters, and to a lesser extent, the writing and research depth.
Clichés aren't all bad. Just do something creative with it. It's still a good idea to avoid them, as original ideas usually (and I can't stress that enough, Meyer...) beat disguised clichés any day of the week. You don't have to be repulsed by the thought of having a cliché, but you shouldn't be parading the fact that your story has every known cliché of the genre in it.
If you disagree, I invite you to go to tvtropes.org, read through all of the tropes, and attempt to write a story without using any of them. You might succeed. But it'll probably suck.