CLICHES -- LOVE 'EM OR LEAVE 'EM?

We've all heard them, seen them in used in television, movies and advertising, or read them in books. The dreaded cliché. People use them all the time while talking. It's as natural for some as talking with your hands (which I'm totally guilty of—never stand too close when I get going—you could lose an eye. LOL) They also tend to be a regional thing. I'm from the South . . . we spout cliches here like well—like water off a duck's back.

There's a natural rhythm and familiarity to the cliché. They can be a comforting turn of phrase which takes us to a special place and time. Or reminds us of a particular friend who always used those particular word(s). In writing using cliches can be great as long as we don't overuse them. Too many and the reader will start rolling their eyes to the back of their heads.

Still they can add a nuance or flavor to the story that might not otherwise be there. Like adding an accent to the dialect, the cliché can change the ordinary to the extraordinary. Here are a few examples of some cliches I'm sure you've heard before.

Avoid it like the plague

Deader than a doornail

Grab a tiger by the tail

If these walls could talk

The pot calling the kettle black

Think outside the box

Thick as thieves

Banging your head against a brick wall

All dressed up and nowhere to go

Plenty of fish in the sea

Every dog has its day

He/she was like a kid in a candy store

Back to the salt mines

The best thing since sliced bread

Crying all the way to the bank

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

These are a handful of cliches I know I've heard or read over the years. Sometimes they make a character unique and stand out in a crowd of same old, tired caricatures. But, and this caveat I'll give you for free—don't overuse them. Sprinkling a few of them throughout your story or conversation can be fun and light but too many and your creativity can be called into question, thinking you're using them as a crutch. (I've been guilty of having a few too many cliches running throughout my books and my critique partners call me on them every time.)

So, how do you feel about cliches in your stories? Do you love 'em or would you rather do without them altogether?

Why not add your own special cliches to the above list. Post them in the comment section for everybody to see and enjoy.

I-Spy: Writing the Gay Mystery - Dialog

Join the authors and friends of Not Your Usual Suspects for an occasional series of posts about their world of reading, writing and publishing.

Short and sweet, hopefully both informative and entertaining - join us at I-Spy to find out the how's and why's of what we do.

 TODAY'S POST: I-Spy: Writing the Gay Mystery – Dialog


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Dialogue serves several purposes, but each purpose is designed to one end: to advance the story.

 Aside from specific topics of conversation, there’s nothing about writing dialog for the gay or m/m mystery intrinsically different from writing any other kind of mystery or suspense dialog. Or writing dialog for general fiction, for that matter.

Since there’s no shortage of excellent general writing advice, I thought I’d focus today on a particular brand of dialog known as pillow talk. Pillow talk is, of course, the dialog that occurs between your protagonists during lovemaking.  Pillow talk gives you a chance to offer insight into the characters and their complicated relationship – so it has to be both  meaningful and sexy.

Discussing crime and murder is generally not an ideal topic for pillow talk – unless you are trying to make a point about your characters and their relationship. Two guys in law enforcement who have sex on a regular basis but kid themselves that they are not in a relationship, might discuss their case rather than anything intimate or personal, but in the ordinary way your reader is going to be hoping for more in these scenes.

When human beings have sex with someone they love, they’re vulnerable. Which means it’s a great time to insert romantic and heart-felt dialogue. I’m not planning to discuss sex until later in the series, but it seems like the right moment to observe that every sex scene should have a point — beyond the obvious one. It should signal some change, some development in the romantic relationship between our two protags. This is why the dialog in these pivotal scenes is so crucial.

Now there are some readers who are content with a few moans and groans and “Oooohs,” but I think they’re the minority. And I’m guessing they are not mystery readers. Mystery readers, by definition, like mysteries. They like puzzles, riddles, enigmas...they like to deduce and deduct and work things out. And that extends to the emotional content of the story as well as the primary crime plot.

Your characters will — should — say things when they’re in bed together that they wouldn’t say anywhere else. They’ll reveal things about themselves through dialogue and action in those particular scenes that could only happen in those particular scenes. Bedroom dialogue isn’t interchangeable with other dialogue. It is sexier — earthy and emotional and naked — but it still needs to be coherent.

I think the test of solid bedroom dialog is whether your story still makes make sense if you remove that particular conversation. It shouldn’t be easy to strip it out because, again, that dialogue is often going to be a turning point. At the very least it should be an emotional turning point. Certainly even if you took all the physical action out, the dialogue should still make sense. Mostly.

You don’t need a ton of bedroom dialog, let me hasten to add. Think quality over quantity.

And after you’ve written the dialog between your characters, ask yourself the following questions: Does the dialogue still make sense (for the most part) without the physical action: meaning, are these two characters actually communicating with each other? Even without knowing the backstory or the characters, is this dialogue interchangeable? Will the reader concur that she/he is watching a turning

point in this relationship — learning something about the characters and their feelings for each other? Could this dialog happen at another time in the story?

Dialogue in your sex scenes? Dialog is what brings your characters to life. Without dialog they are simply descriptions of rippling muscles and piercing gazes and great hair. Dialog is what makes your sex scenes hot and personal and memorable. Yes, you do need pillow talk, and yes, you need to take as much time and trouble with it as you do with the rest of your dialogue.

 Questions? Thoughts? Opinions?

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A distinct voice in gay fiction, multi-award-winning author JOSH LANYON has been writing gay mystery, adventure and romance for over a decade. In addition to numerous short stories, novellas, and novels, Josh is the author of the critically acclaimed Adrien English series, including The Hell You Say, winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT Fiction. Josh is an Eppie Award winner and a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist

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 FUTURE POSTS will cover:  

Kindlegraph / the art of research / writing male/male romance / rejection and writer's block / building suspense / writing love scenes / anti-piracy strategies / audio books / interviews with editors and agents / using Calibre.

We welcome everyone's constructive comments!

Wearing My Writer’s Hat: Writing Effective Dialogue

Whenever I teach a workshop on writing, the two most common questions I’m asked are, “How do you write interesting and effective narrative” and “How do you get your characters to use dialogue that sounds normal and yet moves the story forward?” I’m going to address the second question in this blog by sharing my top ten dialogue tips that I believe will help strengthen your story.

1. Use dialogue to break up long narrative passages.

2. Incorporate dialogue so that it creates, and then heightens the drama/conflict.

3. Use dialogue to make your characters more human, more realistic. Remember narrative writing can describe a character, but dialogue makes them real.

4. Remember that dialogue is not conversation. Conversation can be meaningless, full of redundancies and irrelevant information. Dialogue is important and must move your story forward.

5. If the pacing seems slow, use dialogue to jump-start your scene. Dialogue moves the plot forward.

6. Use tags to help the reader identify who is speaking. Remember, however, to use them sparingly and effectively.

7. If your character is a policeman, a cowboy, an English aristocrat – make certain they speak in the appropriate manner. Police have specific terms for actions and items, so do cowboys, and so do aristocrats. Make certain you know them.

8. Use dialect sparingly. A little goes a long way.

9. Be careful in your choice of words. Don’t try to impress the reader – they will only feel intimidated and jerked from the story if they have to continually consult the dictionary.

10. Avoid dialogue that is too stiff or too formal. Most people use contractions in their speech, your characters should, too.

For those of you who are writers, do you use any of these more than others? Are there any I forgot? As readers, are there any books you feel have outstanding examples of dialogue?

Writing Memorable Dialogue

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Familiar with this line of dialogue? If you said yes, then you are in good company with millions of people who recognize this line from Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind. Dialogue is critical to any novel and is an important tool to develop your characters and give the reader insights into their deepest feelings, fears and emotions. When dialogue is good, you don’t even notice the pages flying by. When it’s bad, well, it’s awful.

Every writer needs to use dialogue to make their characters come alive – it makes them real to the reader. The narrative part of the story, including the setting and the action, is important, but it's dialogue that makes your characters human. To help illuminate the importance of dialogue, I’ve outlined ten points to remember when writing:


1. Use dialogue to express internal and emotional turmoil of your characters. Many times the way someone says something means more that what they actually said. Also to whom your characters speak to and in what manner is important.
2. Stories tend to move faster when there is more dialogue. Dialogue should be a very active part of your story. If you re-read your manuscript and find pages and pages of narrative, backstory and/or internal musing, the odds are that the reader will find the pace slowed considerably. See if there is a way to rewrite some dialogue into all that narrative.
3. Use dialogue to show the reader your protagonists’ relationships to other characters in the story. This is a great way to show instead of tell.
4. Use dialogue to heighten sexual tension. Words can often have more than one meaning. Use that to your advantage.
5. Remember to ensure your character is speaking properly. Is she high-bred or lower-class? From the city or the country? From the North or the South? Ages affect the way characters speak – is he 25 or 55?
6. Use dialogue to replace narrative if the story seems slow. If weather is important to the story, have the characters chat about it, instead of having someone looking at it and thinking how cloudy it is.
7. If a character is alone and there is no way to bring another character into this particular scene to break up the narrative, then I sometimes have my characters speak aloud to themselves. It can be humorous and, of course, as someone who often speaks to myself, I can identify with this and it makes my character seem more human.
8. Everything the character says should be important to the story. Your novel has no room for incidentals, nonsense or pleasant chit-chat that isn’t leading up to something. If you see it in your manuscript – cut it. Extraneous dialogue will slow your pacing.
9. Everything your characters say must somehow be connected – there should be a thread running through the story, including what the characters say and do.
10. Dialogue must be appropriate to the genre in which you are writing. Read books in the genre, the line and the publisher you are targeting. This is very important. Sci-fi writers approach dialogue in a way different than those who write mysteries and those who write romances. While the basic rules for using dialogue still apply, there are particular nuances that are unique to each genre.

Now, having said that, what is your favorite line of dialogue in a book or movie? Is there a memorable line of dialogue that will always be linked in your mind to a particular moment in the story? I’ll start by saying I love many of the one-liners in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, such as in the Terminator when he says: “I’ll be back.” How about you?