Since I started the month writing about why I write YA fiction, I’m ending it with cliches I hate in YA fiction.
All the adults are mean, stupid, or unrealistic.
All the characters in a book should have an understandable motive for how they act. In YA fiction, the adult characters should be as well developed as the teen ones. If the father of the main character is cruel to him, the author must provide a reason other than it’s convenient for the plot. If the parents don’t know what their teens are up to, it shouldn’t be because they are too stupid to realize their kids are into trouble.
This kind of character motivation was brought home to me by my friend, author Cindy Thomson. I wrote about this in my post “Digging Deeper into Characters”. With both your major or minor character, you need to ask why characters act the way they do. I think this is especially important when developing a villain. She does things because she’s bad isn’t a good reason.
In my novel The Truth and Other Strangers, Sheriff Acker hates the family my main character belongs to and goes outside of the law to deal with them. Why? Because some members of the Lody family are con artists, and the sheriff assumes all Lodys are bad. But why does he go outside the law? Because he thinks like a Pharisee. He believes he acts so perfectly in both his personal and professional life that he can accurately judge when to use extra-legal methods to protect law-abiding citizens from anyone he labels a criminal.
When any of my characters isn’t behaving correctly or won’t behave at all, I need to ask why. Over and over until I come up with a realistic answer.
Private Schools
In YA book after YA book, the main setting is a private school. In Christian fiction, it’s often a private Christian high school. A variation is for a kid in a private school to lose her money and be forced to attend a public school. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I think most American teens never attend a private school, certainly very few attend a private high school. My kids don’t. The teens in my church don’t.
I see some advantages for this setting. The teens have less oversight if they board at a private school, giving the author more room to get them into trouble. It’s also an easy way to employ the fish-out-of-water plot: poor, deserving teen wins a scholarship to snooty private school and is set upon by rich brats. (By the way, why do so many YA books deal with rich brats? Do publishers or authors thinks poor kids don’t have interesting problems?)
Although authors can use this setting well, new authors should find other ways to get their characters into trouble or throw them into uncomfortable situations. The private school is growing old. And I think readers would appreciate seeing characters in a setting more familiar to them.
Your turn. What cliches do you hate in YA fiction?
Last Monday I said that prompt was the last for my month focusing on YA fiction. I forgot that July had five Mondays this year. So you get a bonus YA prompt!
One of the cautions I hear most about writing for a teen audience is you have to be authentic—if you’re not genuine, they’ll spot it from a mile away. The thought makes me nervous! I’m not a teen, nor do I currently have any young adults in my family or close circle of friends. So will my teenage characters come off as inauthentic stereotypes? Will I distance myself from readers by sounding like a preachy adult?
Only one person knows of the plot against the royal family and cares enough to try to stop it—the servant girl they banished.
Today, fantasy YA writer Clare Campbell is here to talk about her experience writing YA fiction. Welcome, Clare!
Platform often scares so many authors, especially in YA, but do you know a lot of young people read and write fanfiction?
This is my last spark for YA fiction. I chose this photo because it can be used in any genre. Who is the girl and why is she hitchhiking? Is she hunting for a friend who disappeared after a murder was committed? Is she on the run from officials because she possesses special powers? Is she crossing the country to start her first year at college and her car has broken down in a remote area without cell reception?