Avoid clichés in your writing

Think about the friends you find most interesting and why. Maybe it's the way they tell stories at dinner parties, or how they express themselves over email, or even how they craft their Facebook status updates. Chances are the people you enjoy listening to the most use colorful, descriptive language that makes you laugh, cry, think, or all of the above.

I highly doubt they use many clichés.

Clichés are boring in general, and clichés in dialogue make for boring reading. When your characters interact with each other, their conversations should jump off the page and pull the reader right in. You want your readers to become fully engaged and excited to be a part of your characters' world, if only temporarily.

Look at the difference in the following sentences, which essentially convey the same information:

A) "He put his arms around me, and as I became lost in his eyes, my heart skipped a beat."

B) "He put his arms around me, and when I finally managed to look up at him, I think I momentarily forget my own name."

Or these two:

A) "You shouldn't have counted your chickens before they hatched," he said with a smirk.

B) He looked at me and laughed. "Now you're left with a bunch of dead chickens in a shell, my friend. Good luck with that."

Which of the above characters would you like to hear more from?

If your characters come across as cardboard, your readers are going to lose interest in them. Well-written dialogue sounds like real people, and unless they're super good-looking, boring people don't get invited to hang out very often.

Palo Alto native Maria Murnane is the author of the best-selling romantic comedies Perfect on Paper, It's a Waverly Life, Honey on Your Mind, and Chocolate for Two. She also provides consulting services on book publishing and marketing. Learn more at www.mariamurnane.com.

This blog post originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. Reprinted with permission. © 2013 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.