Tell me if any of these sound familiar.

"Mary Sue is the shy, quiet girl at Cliche High. She's short, skinny, plain, flat-chested, and *insert general description of the teenagers who enjoy reading this kind of story*. Mary is just an ordinary girl... so how does the the school's hottest, buffest, most popular football player end up falling for her? As well as another cute guy who's forced into the story for the sake of a terribly contrived love triangle, but hey, I think we all know how this is going to play out. Squeal!"

"Mary Sue has lived a quiet, small-town life for the past sixteen years. Then she meets uber-cute Damien Nopersonality, and everything's turned upside down in the blink of an eye - especially when she finds out that he's a HOT WEREWOLF/VAMPIRE/OTHER WATERED-DOWN SUPERNATURAL CREATURE and she's his MATE. Whaaaat? So unpredictable!"

"Mary Sue is tough. Yeah, she's one badass motherfucker. Obviously, she's FAR too busy for stupid girly things like pink frilly dresses or ridiculous amounts of makeup or *other things that show the author clearly has no clue what she's talking about*. She's also never shown any interest in dumb, smelly, cooties-ridden boys... until she meets Evan Sexyabs!"

You know what I'm talking about. There are so, so, so many god-awful cliches in the romance genre, and every time I'm lurking through Fictionpress I see loads of them, even just by reading the summaries.

Now, I'm only one little amateur writer, and I'm not judging you if you enjoy reading or writing these kinds of stories (okay, I am judging a little). But if you want to know how to write realistic love interests and not sound like a tweenager with a seriously warped view of what constitutes a healthy relationship, then read on, my friend!