My good friends over at the Paper Hangover is doing Five for Friday and asking the question, What are five things you wish to see more of in fiction?
1) Boys who aren't there as a love interest. I hung out with LOTS of boys back in high school. That's where my humor for fart jokes really started to shine. But not one of them did I think, yep, I want to suck face with THAT guy. Probably because they told a lot of fart jokes. Anyway, not every guy in a girl should be a love interest. How boring. Boy are more than good hair, good at opening jars and have junk you don't have. Please stop making them all the same.
2) NICE TEACHERS who LOVE THEIR JOB. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. Every teacher is a either a jerk or wise beyond their years. SO NOT TRUE. I rarely dish out good advice that's the exact thing a kid needs to hear at the moment but I also LOVE my job.
3) Smart female protags who value their lives and aren't willing to risk others just to get that cute boy to talk to them. Bella and that chick from hush hush, I'm looking in your direction.
4) More nerd jokes. Where's the jokes about dark matter people? How is it I can read an entire book and not see a SINGLE joke about Kate, Jack and Sawyer? Hmmm.
5) Parents who are alive and have a healthy and normal relationship with their children. Yep. In 10 years I've taught I've only had 3 students lose a parent in the year I've taught them and a grand total of 15 students lose a parent prior to that. I've taught 1500 students. That is 1% of the population. Writers stop killing off moms and dads-- just because you want your characters to have a problem and to run around without parents yelling at them.
haha great list! Both of my YA novels have parents who are alive and aren't terrible people, since I'm annoyed at all the distant/absent parental figures too.
ReplyDeleteAs for #4, the love interest in my YA contemporary is a closet Star Trek fan :)
I think I'm terrible at #1 thought. Something to think about for future books ...
Number five and number one are my favorites. Alright, I like all of them. Great list.
ReplyDeleteI had the female protag issue too. Great minds, blah blah blah. :)
ReplyDeleteToo many absent parents in books, movies and tv shows. Even cartoons.
ReplyDeleteYes, yes, yes, and yes. I want all of these! Especially jokes about Jack, Kate, and Sawyer :D :D
ReplyDeleteGreat choices--I agree about wanting to see more healthy parent/children relationships. And I also like your first one, I had a lot of male friends growing up too and didn't want to kiss MOST of them :D
ReplyDeleteGreat list! I especially like the one about the teachers--though I will say that I wish I had more like you in my building. :) It's rare when I can tell that any of my co-workers love their jobs.
ReplyDeleteNice list. I agree with you. I'm guilty of ony having boy love interests in my WIP. Well, one's a friend who becomes a love interest...BUT I have a cool teacher and two present parents!
ReplyDeleteAmen, sister! You already know how I feel about the whole parent thing. I get it! They're an inconvenience in the story, but newsflash! they're an inconvenience in REAL TEENAGE LIFE too. I'm not even asking for a lot. I'm just asking for acknowledgment that parents are some kind of concern in the characters' lives. Otherwise, I think I'd rather the character be an orphan than have ridiculously absent parents.
ReplyDeleteAlso #1 is so true. My sister has tons of guy friends and she doesn't consider a single one of them as anything other than friends.