Why Young Adult Characters Are So Overplayed
Background photo by Sean MacEntee on Flickr [CC BY 2.0]; Text by Emma K.
Once upon a time, there was a stereotypical young adult character. He was just a typical high school student-- he was good friends with one of his teachers (even though it might have raised some eyebrows from the other parents if they found out about it), he was in lust with an edgy, shy, nerdy, popular outcast who was extremely beautiful and also misunderstood, and lived in a ramshackle house with a broken family. He was really good at one particular sport but wouldn't join the team, despite the coach asking him multiple times to join the team, because he was either too cool or too awkward to join the team, or perhaps both.
Photo credit: vanes_hud [CC BY-SA 2.0]
She had light brown hair, and brown eyes, and was as shy as could be, with absolutely no social life other than the boyfriend she was about to meet, and she was on her way out of Starbucks with her coffee when she bumped into the most incredibly handsome and insanely gorgeous and absolutely stunning guy (who also happened to be exactly her age). Her coffee spilled all over him, and after her stuttered apology, he just smiled and waved her off, despite the fact that his skin was probably burning where the coffee had hit him. She felt like she would melt into his smile. He was so dreamy...
Photo credit: Adina Voicu [CC0]
She was the head cheerleader, with blonde hair and blue eyes and flawless makeup. She was really pretty (and she looked really pretty to everyone, of course; no one here has different beauty standards or anything) and all the guys were absolutely in love with her. She's dating the two-dimensional romantic interest, and even though they're dating, the protagonist is still trying to date her boyfriend, because the cheating only counts if he's doing it to you. She's really angry at the protagonist for some reason. Maybe she's jealous? Who knows.
If you haven't figured it out yet, this post is about young adult characters, and exactly what is wrong with them. I know what you're thinking-- "Something's wrong with young adult characters? My young adult characters that I love and cherish?" The answer to that rhetorical question is yes. There is definitely something wrong with young adult characters. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of amazing, (nearly) faultless young adult characters out there, and that's not to say that the quality of young adult characters isn't constantly improving, but... we have a serious problem here.
The truth is that there is an underlying culture of young adult clichés.
"An underlying culture of young adult clichés?!" You gasp. "How could this possibly be?!"
Clichés have been around for a long time-- and admittedly, for good reason. The concept of a cliché is that it's something that has been used many, many times, to the point of exhaustion.
Ha, you can say that again!
PiAndWhippedCream from en-with-disclaimers [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
...Sorry. Bad joke. Moving on.
The problem with clichés is that, though they are tried and true, they're also overused, and if we're being honest, they make you cringe when you read them. Their nature as parts of a story meant to be used over and over again has turned them into unoriginal, cringeworthy things-- and that can be most dangerous when creating characters. Especially "relatable teens".
If you're writing a young adult book-- or if you're reading a young adult book, for that matter-- you're probably looking for relatable characters, who the reader can truly empathize with. And perhaps an inexperienced writer, or a writer who's just a little lost, will write a character who follows the latest trends-- say, a fidget spinner-spinning, dabbing, Emoji Movie-watching 16-year-old boy. That, in and of itself, is an atrocity to the earth, fictional or no, but the point is, that's not a realistic, deep character. That character has no levels, no layers of the proverbial onion. (If I didn't use at least one cliché in this post unironically, you'd have no reason to believe that they can, in fact, be used correctly.) And it can be very, very easy to want to appeal to the trends, or to use the clichés that have sold well yet again.
Photo credit: OpenClipart-Vectors [CC0]
As a reader, though, would you prefer a seventeen-year-old girl who, when she was little, used to bite at the wrong end of her fork whenever her parents would argue, and hated salmon growing up but loves it now, who wants to learn to play the piano someday but her parents never bothered to ask her if she wanted to take lessons, or maybe they couldn't find lessons close enough, or cheap enough? Or would you rather have the boy who dabs, spins his fidget spinners, and listens to Top 40 music and nothing else?
In a romance, would you rather that the romance is something that organically--and, admittedly, awkwardly--develops, or would you rather they have a meet-cute where she spills her coffee on him, he pretends not to be burned by her scalding venti extra cream, no sugar, caramel cocoa sugarplum iced frappuccino, and despite a situation that would, under any circumstances, lead them to hate each other... they magically fall in love? I mean, hello, these characters are teenagers, or at least young adults. They aren't going to have their romantic intentions figured out yet.
That brings me to my next point.
A lot of YA authors (surprise, surprise!) are adults. And though many adult authors can easily recall what it was like to be a teenager, or perhaps--what a groundbreaking idea!--they write their teen characters with the same emotional complexity as they would give an adult character. Some YA authors struggle to remember what it was like, though, or maybe they haven't spoken to a young adult in a long time, and so they try very hard to appeal to the "teen audience." Here's a shocker: those characters are the characters that appeal least to the actual teen audience. The actual teen audience will pick up that book, get halfway through the first chapter, think, "Well, this poor author tried to be relatable," and will put that book back down again.
And maybe I'm not an expert on young adult characters, or how they should be written, but I know you've had that moment, where you're reading a book and they do that one thing that you knew was going to happen because you've seen it before a million times-- like when the fictional teacher says he/she is going to assign partners for a class project, and you just know the female lead is going to be partners with the romantic interest.
And if you haven't had that moment yet? Well, you'll get it when you're older.
Thank you so much for checking out this post! Please be sure to check out my most recent blog posts, as well as some other resources for writers about having developed characters:
How to Start Your Own Book Club
The 12 Common Archetypes (Soulcraft)
Beyond the Cliché: How to Create Characters that Fascinate (WritetoDone)
Storyville: Ten Ways to Avoid Clichés and Stereotypes (LitReactor)
Beyond the Cliché: How to Create Characters that Fascinate (WritetoDone)
Storyville: Ten Ways to Avoid Clichés and Stereotypes (LitReactor)
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