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9 Ways To Write a Successful YA Fantasy

After the success of Twilight that had every teenage girl sigh longingly over pale guys with serious mental problems, every popular YA book started to include certain elements.

Here’s a list of things your book MUST have if you want to have squealy girls crucify anyone who dares criticize it!

WARNING: This list might contain bashing of highly popular books, Twilight fan girls, shiny vampires and garden gnomes. If you don’t have a healthy amount of self-irony, please avert your eyes. If you own a garden gnome, give me an axe.

  1. Create a Female Main Character With the Personality of a Doorknob If you look at the current books that are declared masterpieces by every Twilight fan girl out there, you’ll see that an acceptable protagonist doesn’t have to have much more depth than roadkill.
  2. Make the Setting a Small Town High School Vampires and other supernatural creatures seem to have abandoned the castles and dungeons and are rushing to get an High School education or 5. Some would think being immortal would teach you enough, but I see that it might be very useful to read about Jane Austen if it has been a few decades since you met her last.
  3. Enter Mysterious Angsty, But Oh-So-Dreamy Guy Have him being a vampire is the obvious choice, but another kind of supernatural creature works as well. Describe him as charming and nice, even though he actually acts like a jerk and have him angst about how dangerous and horrible he is at least once every other page.
  4. Have Doorknob Female Fall Irrevokely In Love With Mysterious Guy At First Glance ‘Cause the fact that he’s an a-hole who wants to kill you hardly matters as long as he’s good-looking. And that he glares at you and avoid you at all times just show how absolutely crazy he is about you!
  5. Have Mysterious Guy Mysteriously Disappear at Seemingly Random Times ‘Cause we will never figure out why he runs off when you start bleeding. Hmm, what could that be about?
  6. Enter Hunky Not-as-Angsty Guy Be sure to have him be the exact opposite of Mysterious Guy. If Mysterious Guy is a vampire, have Hunky Guy be a Werewolf. If Mysterious Guy is a demon, Hunky is an angel! And he should be completely crazy about Doorknob Female even though she treats him as dirt and only have eyes for the Angst Fest.
  7. Have Everyone and Their Mother Try to Kill Doorknob Female If you want to date a vampire, his family will try to eat you. But everyone have trouble with the in-laws, right?
  8. Always Have Guy Save Girl It’s extremely important that the girl can’r do anything by herself and need the guy to save her every time she breaks a nail or gets maimed by various bad guys.
  9. Be Sure to Use the Exact Same Plot as Twilight Works every time! If necessary, switch out the vampire with some other immortal dude and have the guy be the newcomer to the girl’s High School instead. Wouldn’t want copyright problems with Stephanie Meyer, now would we?