We’ve all had moments, often when talking to a parent, when a story veers off course and we have to suffer through a longwinded tale about the latest find at a yard sale, the pie Aunt Margie made, or an amazing new way to make money just by forwarding an email. (Sorry, Mom!) The story isn’t relevant, illuminating, or engaging, so the listener checks out. Well, the same thing happens when an author makes readers wade through pointless, unimaginative, clichéd examples in the course of trying to learn something from a book. Many writers fail to realize that the elements that make an example or case study good are the same elements that make a story good.

Using examples in most works of nonfiction is a great way to illustrate a point, particularly when those examples follow the rules of good storytelling. Here are a few guidelines to help you offer your readers a chance to be informed, engaged, and maybe entertained.

1. Avoid Adding Fluff: If you aren’t revealing something informative or interesting about your topic, why include an example at all? There’s nothing worse than an irrelevant example that’s thrown in because the author knows she needs examples and this is the best she could do. It’s loosely tied to the subject, but readers quickly lose interest when they realize it’s the written equivalent of dryer lint. Examples are only worth including if they enhance your reader’s understanding of the topic or present a unique perspective on how to apply the information in the real world. If they’re amusing, interesting, and engaging, all the better, but they must at least be relevant.

2. Try to Give Everybody Something: Think about your intended audience. While there may be a single unifying characteristic (interest in the love life of Albert Einstein, for example), there is also incredible variety in terms of interests, life experiences, basic demographics, and how much they care about what you’re saying. Use your examples to reach that broad and varied audience, not to exclude or annoy readers. A key benefit of using examples is improving how readers relate to the information. So make sure your examples are engaging by including a variety of situations, characters, backgrounds, and perspectives.

3. Don’t Overdo It: Yes, examples are great and can really enhance a reader’s experience. And it’s important to include a variety of examples to make sure that you aren’t speaking to one potential reader. But if every other paragraph in your book is an example, readers will start skimming, no matter how good the examples. Readers bought your book because they want to learn something, so the majority of the content needs to be original thought and ideas on the subject. Examples should be supplemental, not the core of the content (unless your book is just a collection of case studies).

4. Be Original: There are some very funny stories out there about successes or failures and the strange things people do, but if you ever saw the story in a mass email, your probably shouldn’t include it in your book, even if you’ve confirmed that it’s true (unless your book is a collection of urban myths). If you’ve heard the story a few times and you can’t remember exactly where, everybody else has probably heard it too. If the story has been covered repeatedly by every major newspaper and magazine, you may want to come up with a better option. The best examples and case studies are those that have people talking at cocktail parties–naming your book as the source. When it comes to examples, tried and true is not the safest route.

Follow these rules, and you’ll be one step closer to an informative, engaging book that will have people talking.