YA cliches to avoid?

Loser girl ends up with hottest guy in school.

End of story. That one makes me want to tear my hair out.

Girl meets new boy. Girl's best friend who is a boy becomes jealous of new boy. New boy gets girl into trouble. Best friend is there for her. Girl realizes undying love for best friend. The end.

BLECH.

I iz teh Batman. I haz built-in pecs.

2007: Waddle 118K

new kid came to town ...

orphans! - grrr i hate them, they are such a cliche

-------------------
Per aspera ad astra.

"I can't be with you anymore!"
"No! My life is over!"
"**googly eyes across hallway at school**"
"**cheesy montage**"

"I can't take this anymore! I need to be with you!"
"I agree. We're so damn hot! **ravages MC**"

Too much time on my hands.

I iz teh Batman. I haz built-in pecs.

2007: Waddle 118K

Oh, god... Loser girls trying to bring popular girl down. Mean Girls was good cuz they presented it in a really good way, but everything else is crappy.

2006: Dance of the Mamed (about 18000 words)
2007: Project I-12 (WINNER AND FINISHED!)
2008: Melt

Oh, god... new kid makes me want to shoot myself.

2006: Dance of the Mamed (about 18000 words)
2007: Project I-12 (WINNER AND FINISHED!)
2008: Melt

Exactly! I hate that one. Actually, I hate all of the ones listed in this thread...o.O

~*In. The. Business. Of. Misery.*~

[oh so hot] vampire falls in the love with weird, friendless human girl.

Gah.

Girl and her best friend have a fight and hate each other. They end up being partnered together for a science project or something. Friendship prevails and they are friends again!

Blech. I am addicted to pointing out clicheness. And I try to avoid it whenever possible no matter what. Once in class the other day, my teacher was reading part of Cinderella out loud (part of our curriculem, Cinderella's from different countries) and at the end she was like, "And they all lived happily ever after," and I burst out, "How cliche is that?"

Oh, that's another one. Happily ever after is good most of the time, but after a while I'm like, "Why can't the bad guys win for once?" and my friend Annie says, "That's the clicheness of the world"

Wow I'm blabbing

cliché can be good because teens problems are always the same

fitting in
unresqueted love
quest for identity

th real trick is wrapping them in an original story

sorry for the english , i'm french

Any and all mary-sues. The worst are the loser girl who doesn't fit in, at the end she gets the dream guy and is the most popular girl in school!
It's SO not original and it's painful to read.
Anything to do with loser girls, geeky girls, friendless girls, girls with oh-so-horrible-problems-which-aren't-that-horrible-at-all... As someone said above, Orphans. Just bleh.

And romances in highschool novels tend to be a LITTLE bit overdramatic. Try to avoid that...
the whose 'quest for identity' thing is quite a lot of tosh as well. I have never, in all my life come across any teenager who is on a 'quest for identity'. Ever.

Hey guys,

Aren't you pretty much listing the plots for most YA novels for girls in here? Hell, we as the writers might hate them, but the readers snap them up!
And kids aren't necessarily going on deliberate quests for identity, they don't know that's what they're doing, but in actuality, that's what adolescence is, trying to find where you fit in as a person in comparison to those around you. Working out who you are.
And high school romances ARE overdramatic, because emotions and hormones and gossip that hypes it all up out of proportion makes it so.

I guess what I'm saying is that they may be cliche cos they're written about a lot, but they're often based on life.

I agree, there are a lot of stories about the loser girl triumphing, but real life loser girls don't necessarily want to read about popular girls who's lives they don't have a realistic hope of emulating. I'd feel pretty down if all I read about was the cool kids and how awesome their lives are. Bring on the loser triumphing, that brings them some hope, don't you think?

These are just my opinions. You can take them or leave them.

Sairz

That's why I read "boy" books- you know, burn all the girly-girl romances, I want action! Same with movies. Who needs Love's Enduring Promise, we have Sahara and The Mummy!

I actually liked Uglies (followed by Pretties, Specials, Extras) because Tally wanted to be a Pretty, not just to be shallow and have all the guys like her, but because it was part of her society. It's kind of like how in our world, people with more money get more "privileges", like people won't mess with them (because they could be sued by the rich person), and they can have most of what they want (again, the money sure helps).

But other books about girls wanting to be "pretty" or "popular" make me gag and want to burn them. (Sadly, I get most of them from the library, so I can't.) I'm not saying that all YA books with romance are bad, because it's a part of life, or else where would our next generations come from? The government assigning people, like in The Giver? (One of my favorite books, right there.)

But one of the cliches I hate-

The MC is either not popular/"ugly"/unliked for some reason. They have a crush on a hot/popular/overall cool person.

Or else it's a popular/cool/everyone-loves-me character with a crush on someone of equal status.

They always end up together.

What I would love to see-

The MC ("popular" or not, doesn't matter) befriends a kid who's either "uncool" or not exactly hot (not necessarily the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but still). Not their best-friend-neighbor-from-childhood, just a kid they happen to talk to or sit with at lunch one day.

If it had to involve popularity, it would be about the MC not wanting to ditch the new friend, because they like each other for who they are. However, at least one or two of their other friends would be concerned about the impact of this "unattractive, unpopular" person on their (potential) popularity.

No ramnce required. No one even has to be popular or hot. Just a situation that could happen to any average kid.

Not just another tale of "I'm so hot and popular, I want this hot and popular guy to like me" or "I'm so ugly, but I still want this hot and popular guy to like me".

Things I hate:

Opposite-sex friendships in which one person is in love with the other.

Some kid gets away with something that, in reality, would make her a total social outcast all the way to the 12th grade and beyond.

The token X (where X = boy, girl, black person, whatever) has no function in the story other than to be the token X. (This one is done more on TV than in books, but I hate it.)

Sex scenes! I hate sex scenes! Make-out scenes are bad too.

lmao.
Yeah. Bella is such a Mary Sue.

I hate it when small children save the world. Or like... people discover some new world. And WHOANOWAI, they're the only ones who can save it.

NaNo '06 | Serenity | 50,020 words
NaNo '07 | Useless Junk You Can Learn in Spanish | 55,800 words
NaNo '08 | Let's just say my brain has imploded

Vampires, with the possible exception of Chinese Vampires, because they -are- different and make pretty goofy/scary villains with their crazy long nails. And while we're at it, Werewolves are also becoming mega-cliche', and the Vampires fight Werewolves, but Humans win idea has been cliche' for years. It makes me want to toss out On the 8th Day as a NaNo Idea because it has 1 Vampire and 1 Werewolf as villains for the MCs. (Of course, I thnk I might just toss them out and stick with Witches, Frankenstein monsters and Mad Scientists as baddies. Who knows?)

NaNo 2008, what will you bring?
More WKRC? The Triumphant return of Siegfred's Giant? The Misadventures of Hans and Greta? Or the newly discovered From one Architect to Another?

Makeovers!!! Of all kinds... not everyone has someone totally hot underneath a lot of hair/thick glasses/whatever. And lets face it, all of their problems can NOT be solved by teaching someone how to put in contacts -.- Princess Dairies got away with it, (just, and only through a large amount of girls who could relate to the 'uncool' Mia) but the rest of the 'Popular girl gives uncool girl makeover to find out uncool girl has the potentially to become popular girl' should all be burnt.

YA books always seem to be about boyfriends in one way or another don't they? Can you think of any other issues
teenagers face that could be written about?

Charlotte Ford

There are one or two cliches I despise.

1) That nasty group of popular girls whom everyone in the school worships because they are so dang AWESOME and hot and rich. gah, let's burn those books, make a lovely bonfire, and have a good, old-fashioned writing excerize to describe what it looks like, I say.
2) (as many others have said) Boy and girl are friends, boy and girl fall in love, but girl/boy is already in a relationship O.o but in the end, he/she dumps partner and gets with the friend. Oh, god. I hate those. they make me want to murder the stupid git who wrote it, as well as those characters.

You guys really don't like Twilight, hunh? i guess I am a bit out of place... I thought it was good. The hype is wearing out for me, however. I just liked the romance bit. I'm finding much better stories, however.

>~< * >~< * >~< * >~< * >~< * >~<
~Novelista~
NaNoNewb (but I write A LOT)

I think that pretty much every YA book is cliched in some way. Really. I read hundreds of YA books every year and I can't think of one that ISN'T cliche. So the point isn't to AVIOD the cliches, it's to take one and make it original. Give it a twist. Instead of having loser girl end up with hot guy, have it end with her kicking his ass or something else. It all depends on the way you write it out.

That's a good point that you should just try to write one that is fresh and original.

Charlotte Ford

I hate YA romances in which there is a girl, doesn't matter how popular or how unpopular, is so IN LOVE with popular boy, whom she's never spoken to in her life, except when he asked "Hey, can I borrow a pencil?" Give me a break! Yeah, it's possible to be in love when you're in high school, it happened to me. But you can't be IN LOVE with someone that you have never spoken to. That's not love. Love takes time and maturity and an actual relationship.

I hate the "unpopular girl with no friends". I'm sorry, but (at my high school, at least) no matter how unpopular you are, you're bound to have friends. And I've read countless books where the girl claims to have no friends, and yet, there isn't something wrong with her. She seems perfectly capable of having all sorts of friends and enjoying herself, whether or not she's the most popular girl in the school.

I don't like the popular girl stereotype, either. In my school, the popular girls are really, really nice girls! Granted, they are pretty and rich (but everyone in my town is... grr) but I can understand why they're popular. The aren't necessarily the girls with the most common sense, but I've never heard of any of them picking on anyone, or trashing someone's things, or anything like that. (No, I am not one of these girls. Don't worry.) A lot of the cheerleaders are popular, but I believe it. Most people with a brain can see through popular girl stereotypes enough to know when they're being two-faced. And anyway, if there is a snotty popular girl, more than just the under-dogs would dislike her. Not everyone but the least popular girls in school would be picked on.

Sorry for the rant :)

Um, I was very unpopular in school--in fact, I am not exaggerating when I say I was the most unpopular at any school I went to--and I only had one friend... and he stopped being my friend in the 9th grade because of pressure from more popular kids. I don't mean to sound rude, but I suggest you actually learn about other people's problems.

What kind of utopia do you live in? In the good ol' U-S-of-A, popular kids get where they are by putting down the less popular. If they are caught being nice to someone unpopular, it lowers their social status greatly.

>~< * >~< * >~< * >~< * >~< * >~<
~Novelista~
NaNoNewb (but I write A LOT)

I used to suck up these novels when I was twelve, but now they're just irritating. It was interesting the first time, but not anymore!

I am going to write a novel about how a male outcast vampire makes friends with the nicest girl in the school, who has plenty of friends (think Elizabeth Wakefield without the minipulative side, those of you who remember Sweet Valley) who happens to be a fairy. Ha, take that, trashy teen novels! Bet you didn't think of putting a vampire and fairy together! And guess what? I don't think I'm going to make them fall in love. I think they'll just become friends to stop the rift between the "bad" mythical creatures and the "good" mythical creatures. Yeah, and he won't have wings, and can go out in daylight (as they are all only a certain % mythical, and doesn't suck blood. Basically he just looks creepy. Ooh, I think I'll do that for NaNo this year.

I agree with the person who says that kids like reading about these cliches, as so many of them are true. I've been working on rewriting a novel for years, and yeah, it is quite cliche - girls rants about wanting a boyfriend, gets asked out, her best friend is jealous as he has a crush, then she realises that guy is an idiot. Then she and best friend date for a while, but he gets jealous when some guy hits on her. I think at the end, however, I'm going to change it around a bit, and maybe they'll decide that 15 is too young for serious relationships and they'll just be friends.

I tell you what I do hate in YA novels - how anyone under 16 can have a meaningful, amazing, perfect relationship. And how everyone is super mature. It just isn't that way in real life. This is why I stopped reading YA novels when I was 14; it's depressing to read about people younger than you fall in love. I really don't think it's possible to fall in love before you're at least sixteen. I remember, when I was fourteen, fifteen, thinking I was in love. I'm nearly seventeen now, and I'll admit that I was so wrong!

I have to say that it is possible not to have many friends in high school. It generally happens when you suddenly mature, and everyone else is still all "Ooh, drama, drama! Trivial things! Must cause drama! How dare you look at the guy I'm crushing on! I must be loud and obnoxious and shout at people who I don't like because they do X and it doesn't affect me in any way but I still hate them! Oh, there's not enough drama, I must gossip about my friends behind their backs!"
Um, yeah. Anyway. That's the way it can be! That happened to me in the middle of Junior year, and I suddenly got sick of all the High-schooliness of high school. We're sixteen, we can technically get married, buy a house, get a job and have kids, but yet we're gossiping and falling in love with guys we've spoken to twice? Um, yeah. Anyway, my best friend was a German exchange student, and there were a few people I talked to, but no one I was really close to. I have plenty of aquaintances, but the person I talk to most is the school librarian.

This is such a cliche statement, but even if they don't look like they're being mean, they actually are. I think the popular girls in my school just simply offend me more than be mean to me. They're mean when they're 12 - 15, and then generally settle down a bit.

But once, in Maths class, we were talking about the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, and two boys were arguing over what the letter G was, and I kept on telling them that it was Golf, and they for some reason thought it was something else and wouldn't listen to me. Anyway, the "popular girl" was commenting on this, and I told her that I knew most of the letters because my dad was a radio ham, and she was like "Aww, Rachel, you're such a wee hen!"

Now, not only does this statement make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE, but I'm quite offended that she used such a patronising tone - and words - about a perfectly sensible thing to say. I mean, maybe you'd say "Aww, you're such a wee hen" if someone said "I collect My Little Ponies." But when they announce that they know the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, it just makes no sense. I mean, what would she do if she needed to contact someone and they were having trouble hearing what she was saying?

Anyway, the point of my rant is that they can be patronising, and make fun of things about your personality in a teasing manner, and it may not look like they're being "mean" but in actual fact it is often translated this way. Thankfully, I think all of the "popular" people have left school this year, so my final year of school should be fairly calm. It's mostly intellectuals and people who failed their exams who stay on.

I suppose it really depends on what area you live in, whether you're mainly upper, lower or middle class, etc, as to how "mean" the popular people are. I live in a mainly lower class area, and we're a total enigma to some people as we're very middle class. I think that may also explain the "teenage girl has few friends" cliche as well. (However, my friends simply have finished school, or live in Germany!)

Okay, I'm starting to go off at tangents now, so I'm going to shut up and go and wash the dishes!

That's exactly how it is at my school. And also, it bugs me when in books everyone seems to know each other and know everything about each other. I go to a pretty big school, but I think it's fairly average size for most high schools, and I barely know half of my grade's name. There's no one in school whose the most popular and everyone knows. That always bugs me in books.

OK, I'm a teenager, so hold on a second while I think.....this is taking a while.....

And THERE goes the bad joking.....side effect of seeing The Dark Knight? XD

1. Parents are overprotective for a reason they won't explain/a reason the teenager doesn't understand
2. A teenager is adopted, and wants to know their real parent(s, possibly) and possible siblings
3. A teenager has a disabled sibling
a. and thinks their parents favor their sibling (give lighter punishments, etc.)
b. or the sibling's condition is getting worse (and go from there in several other directions)
c. or their friends pressure them to "drop" this sibling (stop hanging out with them) and stay with them (the "friends")
4. A teenager's relative (older aunt or uncle, grandparent, etc.) that they are extremely close to gets a memory disease (like Alzheimer's) and the teenager has to deal with slowly losing them while they're still there
5. A parent loses their job and the teenager gets a part-time job, or drops out of school to work or take care of siblings, etc.
6. A teenager is an artist (drawing, writing, etc.) but their parents don't approve of/understand their work, or want to censor it ("No, Alice, you're only sixteen, you're too young to draw women in ballet clothes! Go back to drawing unicorns like when you were ten!" Yes, supreme exaggeration, I know)
7. A teenager has a job or hobby that an older relative pursued (or still does) and excelled at, and everyone expects them to live up to this "legacy"

These and lots more are problems that actual teenagers face, not just having crushes. Our lives are a lot deeper than that (most of our lives, anyhow). There's more, but it's late and I'm tired.....

Edited because it REFUSED to show post from 5 down, and turns out it got deleted...somehow.....

Self-loathing girl some how already has the "hot" guy.

Thats right, I eat books!

NaNo2008 is my first, so feel free to give me tips!