How to Write Better Teen Fiction

{ plots, clichés, and how to deal with them }

{ plots, clichés, and how to deal with them }

                When you really get down to it, all romance stories are the same: someone falls in love with someone else. Then you start diversifying into the “clichés”: the bad boy and the good girl; the famous person and the not-famous person; the best friends; and so on. Then you could get into how they fall in love, the events that occur, and all that jazz, but I’m sure you get the point by now. Basically, no matter what you do, your romance story will always be at some point of cliché-ity.

                Since this guide is titled for teen fiction, I guess I should apply this theory to teen fiction. Is it possible to come up with an original teen fiction story? To some level, yes, but you will always be drawing ideas and subconsciously putting in bits from someone else’s work into your work. It’s only natural. Remember: these ideas go back to ancient times. You are in 2013. There is no such thing as true originality anymore.

                With that being said, I’m basing those first two paragraphs on the idea that you are the first to think of something and nobody else before you has ever come up with an idea like it, but that’s not what rational originality is. Take Harry Potter for instance: I have never come across anyone who has never said they aren’t in awe of J. K. Rowling. Her plot combines so many elements and symbols that span the length of seven books that it’s nothing short of incredible, but she’s not the first to come up with wizards. Even with that in mind, her series is still ridiculously inventive. I’m even going to give Stephanie Meyer props for putting that sagging bag of teen soap opera drama and age-old myths into a somewhat-cohesive saga. (But I still hate Twilight).

                So what was the point of all that? My rant about how no plot is truly original or cliché. So then why are the words used so often? Because every single freaking scene on Wattpad is not only written 5,384,295,457 times, but they’re all written the exact same way. Think about it: how many times have you seen the “I just woke up next to a really hot guy, and I’m absolutely hammered but I still can still look in the mirror and describe myself with gorgeous blond hair” scene? It’s overdone as a way to open a story, as a premise of a story, as anything.

                Yes, it’s a logical sequence of events: wake up, go to the bathroom—no one ever says their character goes to the bathroom to pee; it’s always to go shower—look in the mirror, come back to behold really-hot-guy in all his shirtless glory, but just because it’s logical doesn’t give you an excuse to write like everyone else does because guess what? You don’t have to spend a freaking long-ass paragraph describing how your character looks super pretty but still hates how she looks. Include a short snippet of what she does, but don’t make her spend forever admiring/hating herself in the mirror. You can save her looks for later.