#lostinstories

Sometimes fiction is the snake swallowing its own tail. Certain tropes will cycle around forever, because there are some things that exist in only TV and movies and aren’t actually real, because they were invented by someone who never experienced them in the first place.

(Think about all the movies you’ve seen about things all the things that happen in high school that never happened in your high school, or any high school you know of. Those tropes go back THIRTY YEARS because it’s easier for writers to use them because they are things everyone will recognize despite not actually existing.)

Take a step back, and think for a bit. Your girls are people. They are not characters in a movie written for a specific purpose, they do not know they exist to advance the plot forward. They’re people. What are people like? They’re certainly not the well-scripted Mean Girls. Most well-timed barbs I’ve seen in real life have been complete flukes, said without thinking. No one ever lands a joke all the time.

The scene exists to advance the plot, and certainly your characters do too, but they don’t know that. What do they care about? What do they want to do at a party? If you end up writing a scene straight out of those January horror movie releases, take a step back, remind yourself that your characters are people, and try again. Sometimes you have to try a extra hard to get those cliches out of your head, but it’s worth doing.

Here’s some books I like that might help you write teen girls a bit better;

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

Bleeding Violet and Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves