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The Top 10 YA Tropes & How to Avoid Them
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By Michael Pietrzak
The Young Adult (YA) genre has been overrun with tropes that just aren’t working for readers anymore.
In the same way that groundbreaking songs spawn 100 imitators, too many YA authors keep going to the same dry well looking for plot inspiration.
Clichés exist for a reason: they usually contain a kernel of truth we can all relate to, like being the underdog. And while the best YA books of all time are built on universal, emotional truths, you need to deliver these in exciting, new packaging. Young readers have heard all the clichés before. And so have the publishers that want to be the first to market with something fresh.
By all means, use tropes. But be aware of the most common ones, so you can innovate beyond them. A small twist can go a long way.
And now, a countdown of the Top 10 YA Tropes, and How to Avoid Them…
1. The Protagonist is an Outsider
“I’m not like the other girls.”
The world just doesn’t, like, get her. Maybe she’s awkward, weird, or super-smart. She reads Proust and only eats dry toast. She’s definitely not a cheerleader and has maybe one close friend (who’s also not cool).
How to avoid it:
- Don’t be afraid to write a protagonist who’s popular, who moves between social circles, or who is perfectly average (except for, you know, being thrust into this fantastic adventure.)
- A great example: Addie LaRue in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Addie is a young, lovable woman that comes from a conventional family, with a mother and a working father. As many do, she longs to make her mark on the world. In other words, she is a regular person... who just happens to have made a Faustian bargain that sends her on a fantastic journey.
2. The Parents are Dead
“They died in a horrible golfing accident…”
Or, dad skipped town, and mom works late at 3 jobs, 7 nights a week. Your main character’s an orphan? Never heard that one before. Do your characters come home after a 2-week odyssey without a, “Where the hell were you, the police have been looking for you!?” That’s weird.
How to avoid it:
- It’s not impossible to imagine a wild, supernatural, dangerous and epic adventure in which the protagonist has regular parents. Heck – maybe they even aid the good guys in some way? Or maybe they’re just comic relief.
- A great example: Lenore Bennett in Elise Bryant's One True Loves. Not only are her parents very much alive and present throughout the book, but they actually play a key role in her love story.
3. All Adults are Useless
“Did your mom pass out drunk on the couch again tonight?”
Sure, some young readers are angst-y tweens who get their kicks from reading about parents getting their comeuppance, but we’d wager that most of the ones who are reading have a fairly decent rapport with ole’ mom and dad.
How to avoid it:
- Let’s see some adult characters with agency for a change. It’s possible to build a world where the teenage protagonist is a formidable force and who alsoplays well with adults.
- A great example: All The Right Reasons by Bethany Mangle. Admittedly, there a lot of complicated family dynamics in this book. But! There are many instances, too, in which the protagonist Cara and her mother are shown working side-by-side in order to achieve the same end goal.
4. Token Diversity
“Hi, I’m Cheng, and I’m really good at math.”
Daily, YA readers come into contact with friends who have a different skin colour, culture, disability, family arrangement, and sexual orientation from them. They are surely capable of relating to a story involving non-white/handsome/cis/fit characters.
Publishers are clamouring for this kind of diversity.
In fact, these days, the best YA books have a wide ranging cast of characters—from neuro-diverse, to LGBTQ+, to developmentally disabled, to mixed race, to protagonists coming from single parent families.
Just don’t be the cautionary tale that writes in a token character for the sake of it!
How to avoid it:
- Write diverse characters, but make them believable. Do you research: talk to someone of that lived experience. Your characters should talk, act, and even think the way that someone who is X would. Don’t force it.
- A great example: Turning by Joy L. Smith. In it, we meet a young, African American women who's suffered an injury that's led her to living in a wheelchair. We also meet Kyle, an a gymnast who's suffered a traumatic brain injury. There is no stereotyping. Smith delivers an authentic expression of what it's like to live in their shoes.
5. Ye Olde Dystopian World
“Hey do you mind just leading this insurgency for a quick sec?”
War. Really Bad War. Everything’s different now, bad different. This government sucks bad, gotta start a rebellion. Nope, it can’t be done peacefully – gotta be overthrown. Sure, this was an interesting premise in The Hunger Games, but nobody wants to read 50 books with that same basic plot.
How to avoid it:
- Ask yourself – what is the story that only you can tell? Start with the problem or challenge your protagonist is facing, and then write out 25 ideas for the basic structure of your world (Hint: it doesn’t have to be all bleak and broken.)
- A great example: One Of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus. Described as "addictive" by many a reader, this book is proof you don't have to send your characters back in time and off to war to get your readers to sit up, take notice, and deeply care about what happens to them. Sometimes it just takes a setting as banal as a detention room in a run-of-the-mill, American high school.
6. Protagonist can’t see her Beauty
“I’m just an ordinary Hollywood girl making $20 mil a picture”
She’s the family favourite and has a line up of guys at her locker. She volunteers at the orphanage and is at the top of her class. But she’s modest. “Oh, who, little old me? I’m nothing special.” She goes through the book seeing herself as a wilting wallflower despite her incredible feats – until some guy shows her how special he is by falling for her. Please – spare us the 20th-century prince charming thing.
How to avoid it:
- Show us a girl (or guy) that doesn’t need rescuing. Write a character who is actually quite comfortable in her own skin, thank you very much. She can still fall in love, but she doesn’t needto.
- A great example: Amity in Claire Legrand's Extasia. If you're ever in need of a dose of female empowerment, this is your read. Amity is a fierce heroine that has a history of being abused. Yet, in spite of what she's been through, she stands up for herself and her people, determined to rid her family of her mother's shame and save her people from destruction.
7. Hey, my Parents are out of Town. House Party!
“Whoa, you have a hot tub, dude?”
I did actually throw a party EVERY time my mom left town. But the house never got trashed and nobody ever got pregnant. That scene where everyone’s arriving at the upper-middle-class mansion, the protagonist not sure if he’s going to go in, and some kind of conflict ensues, has been done. While we’re at it, nobody wants to read about prom again.
How to avoid it:
- Put your characters in one of the billion other settings that a teenager might find himself in: stuck at a little brother’s birthday party? Being the elderly neighbour’s dance partner for $5 an hour? Identifying bodies at the morgue? Get the story out of the parents’ liquor cabinet.
- A great example: Red, White, & Royal Blue. Casey McQuiston's romantic, LGBTQ+ novel explores the lives of two young, queer boys—one a British Royal, one the First Son of the United States. Readers get a rare look at political landscapes, versus yet another mansion basement.
8. Forced Romance
“There’s something about the way your abs are glistening that makes me want to have your babies”
Have you read a story where a character serves absolutely no purpose except to look pretty and be some kind of one-dimensional love interest for the main character? That’s the calling card of a lazy author.
How to avoid it:
- By all means – write romance into your character’s life, but his beau doesn’t need to be a walking mannequin. Think about how this other person can drive the plot, or aid the protagonist. You can steer right around the “love at first sight” angle. While we’re at it, let’s drop the “best friend turned lover” trope.
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A great example: Soman Chainani's The School For Good And Evil.
9. I AM THE CHOSEN ONE!
“Flunked algebra, but I’m going to defeat the greatest evil the world has ever known”
Main character is just a REGULAR GUY™ but finds out TERRIBLE SECRET™ revealed by FATALISTIC PROPHECY™. Protagonist may or may not have SPECIAL POWERS™that must be used to SAVE THE WORLD™. Oh, and he finds out in the last chapter he’s of royal blood. Your readers are already considering suicide by paper cuts.
How to avoid it:
- If you really need to use this trope (since it works so well) don’t just write another Harry Potter; come up with an interesting variation on the theme (à la Shadow and Bone). Maybe your protagonist’s uniqueness is ordained not by fate, but because he trained his whole life in a special skill?
- A great example: again, Shadow and Bone—for Leigh Bardugo's twist on "The Chosen One."
And the Top YA Trope Award goes to…
10. The Love Triangle
“Betty or Veronica?”
Your main character needs to find the Trident of Poseidon to complete the 12 Tasks of the Merovingians, aligning the Stargates and thwarting the Arachnid invasion. Also: hormones. Should she go for the guy with the 6-pack or 8-pack? The popular blond athlete, or the brooding brunette anarchist?
How to avoid it:
- Love triangles are the most overused YA plot device by an order of magnitude. Unless this unholy trinity is integral to your plot (and why would you do that to your book?), don’t force it into your story. Your story might not even need any romantic sub-plot, but if you choose to include one, it need not be this dusty has-been. Get creative.
- A great example: every story that doesn't resort to this. Like, Divergent by Veronica Roth. Or, Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout, for instance.
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Tropes have a purpose and that is to help readers understand and anticipate the direction of the story. The better advice that’s here, says take these tropes and find a unique way to incorporate them into the story, ratther than just avoid them completely. Readers like tropes, but they don’t like carbon copies of the same story.