To Trope or Not To Trope
I’m at the end of writing the third book in my New Sight trilogy, which gives me the opportunity to look toward my next series. It will by YA Space Opera, and I’m super excited about it!
In an attempt to see what readers want, I pulled up the worst YA tropes ever. I read through a few lists and agreed with most of them. Then I pulled up the best YA tropes ever. I read through a few lists and…well…just read on.
YA Tropes We Love
- The Chosen One – Only this character can save the world!
- Love Triangles – Because ever girl secretly wishes she had two hot guys after her..
- Surprise, you have superpowers! – How else are they supposed to save the world?
- The world is so broken – Hello Dystopian society. Why fight bad guys when you can fight an entire bad system of government?
- The “Strong” female character – Because girls kick butt!
- The Super Evil Bad Guy – Because…evil
- The dysfunctional family – Don’t we all love to watch someone else’s train wreck?
- The tall, dark, handsome love interest – who also has a tragic past!
YA Tropes We Hate
- The plain and super boring main character – who is destined to save the world
- Love Triangles – They’re both so wonderful, however can I choose?
- Your super plain protagonist has super secret super powers – this sounds familiar
- The Coming of Age story – Because some people hate adventure? So they set their story in a dystopian world and all is well.
- #StrongFemaleCharacter – A dude in a girl’s body
- Evil Villains – who are evil just because it’s hip
- Parents who are actually children in big bodies
- The tall, dark, handsome love interest – who is a jerk
Do you see what happened there? Apparently readers hate the same things they love. I can’t tell you how confusing that is.
Needless to say, this little exercise didn’t really help me much. Thanks a lot, internet.
