annoying clichés in YA. Can someone invent something new?

Phoenix_Writer

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Hello Community,

I don’t how do you think about it. But every time when I read a YA-Book it feels like I’ve read this book before.
Either you got the dystopian thing (see Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner, etc.), a magical thing (Harry Potter, Mythos Academy, etc.) or this demigod thing (Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus, etc.). Can someone write something new?
The most stories in the YA genre have also a couple triangle.—Please, let it be! Not every person is heterosexual. There are some people out there who are gay or even asexual (those are people who doesn’t care about having a boy-/girlfriend.). A good example is Nico from the Percy-Jackson-Saga. He is a gay demigod; and son of Hades.
Oh yeah! I shouldn’t forget the most female heroes think they aren’t pretty until a boy tells her. Why? Why can’t be someone happy with his/hers body without be a supermodel-like girl. Everyone should be, even in fictive stories, happy with his/hers look. No one has the right to say “You’re ugly!”. Why write this every author in his/hers book?
The chosen one is also a big cliché. Why we can’t have a team who works together. Oh yeah right! The most readers find this boring. But why?
What annoying you in YA books?

Tell me.
Bye,
Phoenix_Writer
 

KTC

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Well. You leave me wondering why you bother. Condemnation Level Achieved.
 

Putputt

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1. You're only reading the old blockbuster YAs. Solution: Branch out and read more diversely.
2. It sounds like you've got a problem with the genre, i.e. Dystopian/Fantasy. Solution: Branch out and read more diversely. Did you know there are other genres out there? ;)
3. You are sick of heteronormative stories. Solution: Can you guess what the solution is...? Say it with me: Branch out and read more diversely!
4. You are sick of the supermodel-type girl etc. Solution: ...etc etc.

Your list of examples is really outdated. I agree that YA used to be more homogenous, but it has since become VERY diverse in the best possible way. I'm pretty surprised that you haven't heard of all the excellent YAs out there that fulfill all of your requirements.

Have you never heard of The Hate U Give? Simon and the Homosapiens Agenda? The Upside of Unrequited? Dumplin? I'll Give You The Sun? Six of Crows? This is Where it Ends? One of Us is Lying?

You want diversity, it's out there. Come back after you've updated your reading list.
 

Hbooks

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Have you read anything that's come out in the last three years?
 

KTC

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Yes to everything everyone else said.
 

Kjbartolotta

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Actually, I'm willing to cut the OP a break since this is how I think I sound in my head some days. Cliches like these are bad when done badly. But OMG YA is so good right now, you're always going to have titles that are troperiffic but this is not the state of the genre as is currently stands.
 

Sage

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Cheering you all on!
And if, for some reason, you still can't find what you want by reading more diversely and more recent books, write the book you want to read.
 

PyriteFool

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I feel like a bunch of people saw all these cliches a few years ago and thought to themselves "This is annoying. I could totally do this better!"

And then they wrote books.

And published them.

And now things are better.

(Obviously derivative, annoying literature will always be published, but that's true for any genre. i'm just kind of excited to have seen this shift happen in real time, and I'm not even a YA reader. Y'all kind of kicked butt on this one, YA people.)
 

edutton

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I feel like a bunch of people saw all these cliches a few years ago and thought to themselves "This is annoying. I could totally do this better!"

And then they wrote books.
Yep! Same as when the historical romance folks looked around a decade or two back and said, "Hey, crazy idea, what if we made our stories less rape-y?"
 

Kjbartolotta

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Does anyone remember the Keep YA Weird bubble a few years back? Andrew Smith took it and ran with it after Grasshopper Jungle, and there were a few other authors I liked waving that banner. It seems YA trends have moved on since then, and since I think current trends are awesome and necessary I can't really be worked up about it. But it was a fun little movement for a minute.
 
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Jan74

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And if, for some reason, you still can't find what you want by reading more diversely and more recent books, write the book you want to read.

^^^love this.

Write the book you want to read. Don't knock the cliche's, there's a good reason they do well....people want to read it. Almost everything has been done to the moon and back, it's doing it differently or in your own style. Just because Harry was a mega block buster doesn't mean another author doesn't have a story to tell about a wizard kid who's the chosen one. Harry can't be the last....he shouldn't be the last if you have a great story swirling in your head and it needs to get out. If your writing it to jump on a band wagon, well that isn't great. Maybe I have a story about vampire and a wolf fighting over a Mary Jane....I shouldn't not write it because it's become a cliche.

You've been given some great advice and where to look for the story lines you seek.
 

Fuchsia Groan

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I read widely in YA. I also review movies each week. Believe me, there is no comparison in terms of level of tropes and clichés. Mainstream Hollywood is still all about chosen ones and love triangles and various other painfully familiar motifs. If you only see movies at the big multiplexes (no indie films), it's hard to escape these tropes, and it can get boring.

By contrast, any retailer that sells primarily books will give you a wide selection of YA novels that tell stories that deviate from those norms. The trick is finding them—though, these days, some of them are on the bestseller racks, so it's really not all that hard.

Weird books are still a thing! They just don't necessarily get a lot of publicity push. When Goodreads reviews complain that a book is "too weird," or the reviews are split between love and hate, I get interested right away. I heard about two of my favorite offbeat authors, Nova Ren Suma and Courtney Summers, here on this board. And Twitter has led me to many great books with POC and LGBTQA protagonists.

That said, many of these clichés fulfill readers' wishes and needs, for better or worse. When I was a pre-teen, I ate up books where the heroine feels ugly until a boy tells her she's pretty, because I was insecure. Then I grew up and learned that when you're insecure, no amount of compliments make a difference. You have to develop confidence on your own. Now I try to avoid dwelling on my heroine's looks unless learning not to obsess about looks is an actual theme of the story.
 

RaggyCat

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Personally, I am more relaxed on cliches than I used to be. Sometimes, I think we need to remember that although there are many adults who enjoy reading YA it is written for teenagers, many of whom may be encountering the cliches we're so familiar with for the first time (some will be much more acquainted with them, of course). I quite enjoy the escapist nature of cliches when they're well done and what I really like to see is authors taking tired cliches and twisting them. This is a few years back, but one such book I enjoyed is This is Not a Love Story by Keren David - it features a love triangle, two boys and a girl, but turns the concept on its head. A love triangle is also an example of a cliche I don't think is inherently unrealistic... love and feelings can be messy and poorly timed, especially in enclosed environments, and it may well be that more than one person likes the same girl/boy.

Having said all this, some things still make me want to scream. Characters with unusual and much remarked on eyes is a personal pet hate (if only because it often seems to go hand in hand with poor books in general!).
 

stellarsky

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There's a looot more books out there without those cliches! Branch out and read Contemporary - there are so many different kinds. Read the latest published books; they're waaay different and unique. Don't go for all the hyped up books.
 

The Otter

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Right now, there's a hard push away from the type of cliches you're describing. The market got flooded with stories like that, so the reading public got sick of them. At this point, the whole dystopian-love-triangle-chosen-one thing is basically a punchline. There's a Twitter-account-turned-actual book called Brooding YA Hero that's all about poking fun at this trend.

I think it's still possible to write a good story that has those elements. Everything is in the execution. But yeah, the cliches are so tired that even making fun of them has, at this point, become a cliche.
 

RWrites

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The books you're saying are a "classics"(in a way) in the YA genre. They are also quite old and while popular, more books have the spotlight now. I read a bunch of YA and I can safely say what you are reading is not what's super popular now. ACOTAR, TOG, Red Queen, Six of Crows, Truth Witch, Eliza and Her Monsters, etc are popular now. You need to read different books, especially ones that are diverse. There's a lot more to the genre than you think and yes, it can fall into cliches. Most, if not all, writing does. There's never going to be a story with cliches because cliches and tropes help make the story. It can get annoying, but it also makes the book familiar and marketable. People complain about cliches, but that's what sells. If you want your book to sell, sometimes cliches are needed. If you don't want cliches in your books, write the book you want. Eventually you'll realize that tons of books-including yours- has cliches. It's just writing. I agree with the others: branch out!
 

Violeta

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Yeah... some of them get tiring. But some of them don't, they're like flavors.

When you take it with one flavor, you'll keep craving it over and over until you get sick and tired of it. But until then, while it lasts, you won't even think about trying out other flavors that aren't that one! Even the ones you already know and love as much, or even more, as the one you're having, you just won't. Because you're craving that one. And only that one. So with the clichés. Some of them are addicting that way. Once you get into one, you'll be craving more of that after the book is over, so you'll seek them out and read similar books that give you that same feeling the last book just did.

It may also play a part the fact that re-reading a book after you just finished it won't give you that same feeling again, and most likely than not, you'll lose it completely or taint it by even trying to recapture it so soon (or at all). So the best way (sometimes only way) to go is to look for similar books in the same genre, with the same clichés, maybe from the same author... etc.
 

JJ Crafts

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Other people have made some great points about reading more diversely and why there are tropes in the genre in the first place but in the interest of not spreading false info this :

,
There are some people out there who are gay or even asexual (those are people who doesn’t care about having a boy-/girlfriend.).

This is not what asexual means. If anything it's closer to aromantic but even then that doesn't necessarily mean they don't want a partner.
Though I agree I'd love to see more of this kind of rep in books.
 
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Cobalt Jade

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One cliche I'm tired of seeing is the fiery, outspoken protagonist who wants justice and fairness for the oppressed minorities or downtrodden of her world, of which she is usually one. This is intended to make her sympathetic and one of the good guys. But in the story this tendency is played as her being impulsive and hot-tempered by her society, friends, or family and not sympathetic or caring. It's like, DUH, obviously she's doing the right thing out of justice and not because she has a character flaw. It's like the writer thinks the reader can't see this.
 

Roxxsmom

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I read YA fantasy sometimes, but I don't lump them all together as "YA with the magical thing," because the worlds and characters and plots aren't all the same. I read a lot of adult fantasy too, so coming at YA fantasy from the perspective of a "fantasy reader" as opposed to that of a YA reader may make a difference. Some of the YA fantasy I've read is very different from Harry Potter. Much of it is set in secondary worlds, for instance, instead of contemporary magic schools hidden in our own.

I've run across YA SF too that's more traditional in setting (outer space etc) rather than dystopian. Some of the titles have been out for a while, but some are more recent.

There seem to be a lot of "realistic" YA set in the contemporary world, though. Are you saying you've been unable to find YA titles that are not speculative in nature?
 
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Gemini_11

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In my readings of YA, I've definitely come across these same tropes, but not so much in recent years. With diversity improving in publishing, we are getting exposed to different stories that aren't based around heterosexual, white teens. I can't understand your frustration. I don't think it's necessarily 'bad' in terms if a YA book has a trope or two and it's not just YA that's guilty of this. With YA magical fantasy books, which I predominantly read because I'm writing in the genre, and while I've noticed reoccuring themes in these tropes(which, admittedly, help me recognize if I'm doing it in my own), I try and focus on the nuances of each.

I can also understand some of these tropes origins. For instance, when we're talking about teen protagonists perceiving themselves as ugly, low self-esteem is arguably frequen with teens, but it also helps with character development, such as trying to overcome doubt and insecurities. Poor body image is just one character flaw to make for a more engaging protagonist especially when we're reading coming-of-age stories where the body is changing. Love triangles aren't really my favorite either, but when they're rarely done right, they're not too bad (like I can't stand to read a love triangle where the love interests, polar opposites, usually two boys I mind you, with a indecisive female protagonist.)

Reading more diversley will help with this:
Recommendation (which I saw a few already recommend)
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (who also wrote 'Wonder Woman: Warbringer' which I'd. recommend)
Dreadnought by April Daniels
The Raven Boys by Magie Stiefvater (example of starting off on a trope by doing so much more with it.)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Diviners by Libba Bray
 

Bufkus

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Instead of whining about cliches, I think you should try reading different books. There are tons of YA out there and only a small fraction (admittedly among the most popular of it) utilize the tropes you mentioned.

I feel like a bunch of people saw all these cliches a few years ago and thought to themselves "This is annoying. I could totally do this better!"
And then they wrote books.

And published them.

And now things are better.

(Obviously derivative, annoying literature will always be published, but that's true for any genre. i'm just kind of excited to have seen this shift happen in real time, and I'm not even a YA reader. Y'all kind of kicked butt on this one, YA people.)


I think it also helps that agents know what to look for and have essentially weeded out all the submissions with common cliches.
 
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CJMatthewson

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Cliches and tropes are what a genre relies on to start. Only recently has YA diversified, but I'd advise reading some Patrick Ness if you're looking for less heteronormative YA fiction (gays galore). He writes and sells well, so he's hardly pitching to a niche audience.