Ahhh, yes, pointless characters with no other personality trait than to spite the MC.
(Almost everything I say in this rant can also be applied to when the love interest has a random crazy bint obsessing over them and their only purpose is to hate the MC. Yeah romance writers don't think ya'll are safe.)
There ain't nothin' like being the new long brown-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skin beauty at school and getting bullied by everyone with no explanation from the author other than: "I don't know why everyone hates me boohoo readers feel sorry me aren't I so relatable being what's considered a Pretty Person in society yet I'm bullied for no reason just so the boy I hate the most (he's super hot though! But I hate him!) can save me from my abusive drunk dad and protect me?!?!?!".
Who wants to sit and read a book that's all about the character's crappy life? We've seen it before, it's cliche, if I can predict what happens then I will happily move on from your book to the next. It's just a character with nothing more to them than being depressed and damn is it a failed attempt at making readers sad.
Actually y'know, I take that back, it's not a failed attempt. But, I can promise you I'm not sad for the character when I read your story, I'm sad for myself because I'm bored out of my mind and I'm sad for you that you pressed publish and thought it was good writing.
(If someone commented telling you how sad they felt for the MC I'll bet you they were probably bullshitting you mate. Nice comments done by people who were requested to read it don't always reflect what they really think. Either that or you have some very very emotionally sensitive readers on your hands.)
Lemme get yo ass McEducatedᵀ⁻ᶠᵘᶜᵏᶦⁿᵍ⁻ᴹ mkay, you about to get schoolT up in here.
Shit that happens to your MC(s) needs reasoning behind it, it needs to benefit the story's plot in some manner and have an actual effect on the character.
bUt iT DoEs aDd tO tHe pLoT, iT AdDs cOnFlIcT!!!! That's not conflict, that's just sentences written in bloody diarrhea Sweatheart. It's not even a character arc let alone a bad one, the characters fall flat harder than granny down the steps. It's boring, like a Life Alert infommercial at 2 AM.
If you're only doing it to make the character's life seem sadder and not because you want to write about actual bullying as a whole, select that shit and hit backspace. Just because your MC has a sobby life doesn't mean they need to be bullied too.
That's how you make others in real life fear they'll too be bullied for no reason when they go to high school when in actuality they most likely won't be.
Assuming you did all cliches and made them have an abusive home-life and/or they are the anti-social sit the corner type, they're even less likely to be bullied. Students can't be assed to start shit in class with some stranger who's in their own lane.
A story/character needs balance, there needs to be at least one thing about their sob story life that isn't bad. Plenty of abused kids use school as an escape from their home-life, school is a place they have friends and don't have to stress about their parental figure doing something to them. That's something that'd make a nice ass character balance, but don't just give them one friend and one friend only, that's cliche. Give them a small group of friends, make school their happy hour.
You don't needa take every opportunity to make their life shit that there is. If you make your story too depressing it loses interest, like they say, too much of anything isn't good.
Now, you CAN take every opportunity to make your character's life hell, if you do it right and realistically that is. But they still need balance so don't think you're off the hook and can pull excuses for every depressing thing that happens outta your ass without having to add balance to it.
There's such thing as beta readers, you should invest in some. That way they can roast your shitty book before the public can, you get to fix all your mistakes, and nobody will ever know your story used to be a boring, pathetic pile of garbage.
It amazes me, the people who write unrealistic teen fics are usually still in high school themselves. (Or middle-aged women who for whatever reason want to write cringy teen romance novels because that's not slightly weird of a 45-year-old woman at all to write teenage smut in her free time.)
There's no preppy mean girl cliques ready to beef the moment they see you, there's no tattooed bad boys or hot jocks who prefer quiet girls who "aren't like other girls" over the bitchy, two-faced cheerleaders.
As usual, let me set some things straight before someone leaves a salty comment being triggered. Cliches can happen in high schools in real life as well, you'll probably run into a couple kids who fit some type of high school cliche sooner or later. But the popular ones on Wattpad such as the ones I mentioned? Not so much.
You could say bullying DOES happen for no reason in real life, but there always is a reason. The reason could be as small as someone having glasses or the way they breathe, no it's not the most understandable reason for bullying someone but nonetheless, it's a reason.
How could a reason for bullying be understandable? Saying something is understandable and saying it's valid aren't the same things. It's understandable as to why someone may bully someone for being transgender, it's probably because that person was raised to think transgenderism is wrong, they don't understand it. A trans person can sometimes stand out a bit. But that doesn't make it acceptable/a valid reason.
Depressed people sometimes don't have anything else in their life other than just dull days. But in this rant I'm not discussing real life, I'm discussing creative story-telling. For the sake of your novel, unlike real life, things need a reason to be.
Nah, your character doesn't have to be bullied for a very specific reason, but it needs A reason and needs to have a bigger effect than just "Oh I'm the new girl everyone already hates me even though it's only my first day and nobody knows who I am! Oh well, woe is me, I'm already depressed anyway!". Being bullied digs deeper into a person than what books like this discuss.
So don't water down bullying to use it only to make your characters more relatable, don't toss it around lightly like every other traumatic event to pick and chose what parts of it you want. Put some respek to those who have actually been through bullying and other shit.
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Why Your Story SUCKS | Writer's rants & discussions
RandomA rant book of things that Wattpad writers do that I find annoying and pointless. Plus topics that need to be spoken about and brought to people's attention. I have very very little filter, so if you're someone easily offended, my rant book isn't f...
