Top 25 Clichés in YA novels (A NaNoWriMo Post)

Was reading Top 25 Clichés in YA novels and had to respond to her list.

Lets see how many of these thing I did/do in real life, shall we?

#25 – Vegetarian teens with unsympathetic meat-eating parents

I was a vegan teen who grew up on a poultry farm. My parents were very unsympathetic.

#24 – Shy or withdrawn characters that take refuge in the school’s art room/ compassionate art teachers

I have Autism – I have barely spoken a full paragraph in my entire life – I was constantly teased and bullied by students because of it and my only refuge was – huh – my art teacher’s class room – how odd – oh yeah, and my art teacher btw was Kevin Hawkes – a young, not yet famous Kevin Hawkes; I was in his class the day his first book got accepted and he brought all the original canvases in to class to show us (the guy is a picture book author/illustrator who today has won nearly every award and children’s author and illustrator can win)

#23 – A token black friend among a group of white friends – usually it’s a girl, and she’s always gorgeous

In my town of 12k people there is only 1 black family. Just one.

#22 – A tiny scar through the eyebrow, sometimes accompanied by an embarrassing story

I have a scar under my nose across my lip – the only remaining evidence that at age 16 I had to have plastic surgery after one of our roosters mauled my face with his spurs

# 21 – Using the word ‘rents for parents, but not using any other slang

# 20 – A beautiful best friend who gets all the guys but doesn’t want them

I was accused of being that girl – often. Other girls refused to talk to me because of it. Thing was I had one boyfriend, who I started dating at age 12, and today 22 years later am still with and he’s still the only guy I’ve ever dated – the other guys that followed me around ignoring the other girls, got ignored by me because I already had the guy I wanted and just wanted these dolts to get off my trail

#19 – The wicked stepmother who turns out to be simply misunderstood and it’s all cleared up in the climax

#18 – Authors showing their age by naming characters names they grew up with (i.e. Debbie, Lisa, Kimberly, Alice, Linda, etc.)

uhm . . . since when did THOSE names become dated? I could see if it was Rose, Opal, or Pearl, you know, names not seen since the 1930’s, but heck, new babies show up every day with the names she picked.

#17 – Parents who are professional writers or book illustrators

uhm . . . I’m a professional writer, so are several of my uncles and aunts, and heck Kevin Hawkes himself was my teacher when I was a teen! How many writers do you know who DO NOT have kids? Aren’t we supposed to *write what we know*?

#16 – Using coffee, cappuccino, and café latte to describe black people’s skin

#15 – Main characters named Hannah and making a note of it being a palindrome

One of the girls in my class in the 1980’s was named Hannah and she used to walk into class every day and the first thing she would say was : “My name is Hannah, I can spell it the same way forwards and backwards, you can’t do that with your name!”. In fact she said it to every one she meet all day long, every day, for years.

#14 – Younger siblings who are geniuses, adored by everyone, and usually run away during the book’s climax, causing dramatic tension

yeah – Did I mention I have Autism? My IQ is 138. Less than .03% of the world’s population has an IQ over 130. I started reading and writing at age 3. I wrote volume 1 of the Twighlight Manor series in 1978 – yes, I was only 3 years old when I wrote that book. Adults used word “prodigy” and “indigo child” all the time. I hated it. Many times I thought about running away.

#13 – The mean-spirited cheerleader (and her gang) as the story’s antagonist

I knew one of them.

# 12 – A dead mother

about half the kids I knew growing up had one parent or the other – dead, gone to war, in jail/prison, or left home/divorced – in fact I was just about the only kid in school who actually had BOTH parents

# 11 – Heroines who can’t carry a tune, even if it were in a bucket

I can’t sing, never could

# 10 – Guys with extraordinarily long eyelashes

many local guys wear not only mascara, but also fake eyelashes – it’s pretty common actually, and not just with teenaged guys either

# 9 – The popular boy dating the dorky heroine to make his former girlfriend jealous, and then breaking the heroine’s heart

# 8 – The diary, either as the entire format, or the occasional entry

One of my favorite books of all time is Dracula and is written in diary format – oh look, my favorite author Edgar Alan Poe wrote like that too! *shock* – and guess what, the first books I ever read were the “Little House” Books, uhm, those were not just written as a dairy – it ACTUALLY WAS her dairy!

# 7 – Fingernail biting

drives me crazy when I see people biting their nails – I can’t stand it, but wait, almost every one I know does it!

# 6 – Characters who chew on their lip or tongue in times of stress – usually until they taste blood

name a person who DOES NOT do this – name one – try it – you can’t

# 5 – Raising one eyebrow

name a person who DOES NOT do this – name one – try it – you can’t

# 4 – Main characters who want to be writers

1.5 million new titles are published EVERY YEAR, 70% of all writers never write more than 3 books in their entire life time – that’s a lots of kids wanting to be writers when they grow up and hey, I was one of them!

# 3 – Calling parents by their first names

I know several kids who do this. I always thought it weird that they did it, but there they are – doing just that

# 2 – Best friends with red hair*

I know at least 30 red heads (natural) and many more who dye their hair red (and yes, 7 year old girls DO dye their hair)

And the number one thing found in YA novels…
#1 – Lists

name a person who DOES NOT write lists – name one – try it – you can’t – and a character that writes lists or finds a list is in almost every book ever written at every time in history – try finding a book from ANY age group that doesn’t have a list in it – heck, she listed this on a LIST herself for crying out loud!!!!!!!

I do got to wonder, if so many of these things happen in real life, than how are they cliche in fiction? What is she saying that REAL LIFE is cliche and we shouldn’t be writing about it? What ever happened to the writing law of : Write what you know?

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

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