Some tropes are universal. Boy meets girl. Betrayal and revenge. The search to discover a hidden truth.... A mother's love isn't clichรฉ, it's universal. These things are archetypes. They're the building blocks of myth and legend. They are a big part about what it means to be human.
Patrick RothfussElodin looked at me. "What a remarkably honest threat," he said. "Normally they're much more growlish and gristly than that." "Gristly?" I asked, emphasizing the 't.' "Don't you mean grisly?" "Both," he said. "Usually there's a lot of, 'I'll break your knees. I'll break your neck.'" He shrugged. "Makes me think of gristle, like when you're boning a chicken.
Patrick RothfussReading aloud sounds like a good idea, but honestly, it doesn't work very well. Good dialogue in a book doesn't actually bear much resemblance to real-life dialogue. For example, if you've ever seen a word-for-word transcript of people talking, it doesn't read off the page very well. The trick is to make it *seem* like it's being spoken, not to make it speakable.
Patrick Rothfuss