Letting our characters speak for us

Novels make excellent vehicles for self-expression, especially when we occasionally let our characters speak for us.

For example, I love clichés and I use them a lot in my "real" life. But, as all writers know, they’re frowned upon and considered lazy writing in novels. Writers are supposed to come up with new and innovative expressions even though clichés became clichés because they get the point across in a way that everyone immediately understands; they’re universal. But, that’s the way of the writing world. 
So, when Olivia, the octogenarian in my Malone Mystery series, says something like “Davey, you look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” because of her age, she can get by with it. I smile every time she does.

And, when one of my characters expresses an opinion or vents about something that also happens to be how I feel, it feels good to put it on paper. For example, I'm tired of all the commercials on TV, especially the medical/pharmaceutical ones, and I mute most of them. As it happens, Louise, another character in my Malone series, feels the same way.

She wanted to throw something at her TV and shatter the screen when she saw the constant barrage of advertisements for one pill after another to treat everything from depression to a leaky bladder. The only thing that stopped her from destroying her television set was knowing how much it would cost to replace it.

Now mind you, Louise is not one of my most likeable characters but she does make some valid points.

Kate, the main character in Secrets in Storyville, my first small town mystery, is definitely - to use a cliché - "a woman after my own heart." She knows when to say the right thing while thinking something entirely different. 
In the book . . . Kate has a flat tire and, just as she’s about to change it:

I turned around and saw a tall, dark-haired man wearing jeans, a red flannel shirt and boots get out of a blue pickup truck. As he walked toward me, I couldn’t help noticing how good looking he was.

“Can I give you a hand?”

A hand, a foot, your whole body. Instead, I said, “Oh, that’s okay. I think I’ve got it figured out.”