Small town/HS = jocks & cheerleaders as pop culture lets us believe. Larger school = fewer cliques/stereotypes don’t always apply
Why do teens’ bedrooms on TV always have a poster of EVERY band? Chances are one person won’t have up Busta Rhymes, The Sundays, and Staind.
Seeing a lot of “super aware & understanding” perfect teens that make no sense. Sometimes teens are assholes. It’s part of their charm!
Kind of sick of the whole “I’m in love w/ my best friend & he/she has no idea” romance. Or even “we’re BFFs & omg we’re in love now.” Where are all the platonic friendships in YA? Or even the ones who maybe hooked up once before & realized they’re better as friends?
- @sarahlapolla (literary agent)
YA Literature Stereotypes
The Perfect Boy/Nerdy Boy or Perfect Cheerleader/Ugly Duckling Lazy Love Triangle.
We’ve all seen this. Heck, there’s been a hundred teen movies about it (many we still love to watch). But in today’s competitive YA market, this is a well-worn cliché that will not get you noticed by agents or editors. Flipping it on its head isn’t the fix either. Jock is a closet singer? Perfect Cheerleader struggles to keep it together? Been done. Aim to write stories about real, live characters, not clichés and stereotypes.
- the rest is here, at Figment
Interesting Links about Teenagers:
1. Teens are not other; they are us from Janet Reid
2. What Is Your Teen Thinking? Science has answers, from BlogHer
3. Enough With The Slut Gene Already: Behaviours Ain’t Traits, from Wired, which includes some thought-provoking links and a podcast on the teenage brain.
4. A New Look At Adolescent Girls, a study from the American Psychological Association
5. Teenage Brains Are Malleable and Vulnerable, from NPR
6. The Most Stressed Out Generation Are Teenagers from Time Health And Family. Larry Ferlazzo has a collection of links about teenagers and stress.
7. “…contrary to popular opinion, there is no evidence that teenagers are less engaged in literacy activities today than teenagers of the past. Teenagers today do just as much book reading as teenagers did 65 years ago, and it appears that they are more involved in reading and writing in general when we include computer use in the analysis.” (from Why We Should Stop Scolding Teenagers and Their Schools:Frequency of Leisure Reading by Stephen Krashen)
8. DOES POSITIVE STEREOTYPING EXPLAIN ASIAN ACADEMIC SUCCESS? from The Society Pages
9. How The Teenage Brain Works from Nat Geo
10. How To Turn Your Life Into A Coming-of-age Movie from Rookie
