on Writers in the Storm blog:

Clichés aren’t necessarily bad—they’re just not original.

One of my favorite writing T-shirts says “I avoid clichés like the plague.” But clichés are so ingrained in our day-to-day lives that it’s hard to eliminate them completely from our writing. For me, the more casual the situation, the more often I use them. For example, you’ll see me use them a lot more in blog posts versus my novels.

Clichés are not bad. They’re cultural shorthand to convey an idea.

However, it’s this ease of communication that makes them undesirable in our writing.

We’re writers. We’re supposed to be original. Using something that’s been used “for ages” is taking the lazy way out and making the reader do the work. Even worse, because clichés are so culturally known, readers aren’t surprised by them. How many TV/movie plots have you ever figured out right away because of the clichés used? I’d guess a lot.