Teen Fiction. A genre full of clichés. Home to bad boys, nerdy girls and non-existent parents, and occasionally you'll find some amazing books there. So here's my advice on how to make a 'decent'/ non-cliche/ interesting teen fiction book.

1. Know your audience. Your audience will most likely be teenage girls, however this doesn't mean you have to 'dumb down' your book, it just means that you have make sure that teenage girls can relate to what is happening in the book. I would suggest having your protagonist being a teenager, seeing as you are writing a 'Teen Fiction' book.

2. Avoid the clichés. It's easy to fall into the trap of just rewriting a popular storyline, but to make your Teen Fiction book stand out, make it different. Have a protagonist that isn't perfect, have a romantic interest who isn't considered a 'heartthrob'.

3. Emotions. Tell the reader what your character is feeling, and fully describe it. Don't just say that your character is 'sad', say what thoughts are running through their mind, why they feels so sad and describe how their body is reacting e.g tear ducts welling up.

These emotions will help your mainly teenage audience relate to the character and sympathise with them, because they know fully well what it's like to feel those emotions.

4. Do not be afraid of description. Writing in Teen Fiction books tends to be slightly more informal than other fiction genres because they are usually from the perspective of the teenager, however don't feel like this informality means that you can't write beautiful descriptions. Use your best similes, metaphors and other literary devices.

5. Avoid speech that isn't useful for the plot.

You don't need to write greetings between friends every time they meet up because that's dull, just write something like 'Cassidy saw Becca in the distance and they waved at each other etc' but obviously make it better than that.

6. Don't be afraid of dark themes. Just because your story is set in a high school and the main focus may be about love, you can still explore slightly darker themes that aren't just depressed. Try alcoholism in parents, drug addiction in school kids, and discrimination at schools.

Some big DONT'S:

Don't start your story with an alarm beeping. It was an interesting start the first ten times, now it's just seen as one big cliche.

Don't go into full detail every chapter about what your character is wearing. Nobody really cares.

Don't rush the relationship between your character and their love interest if they have one. I know it's probably a teenage relationship, but let it develop over a few weeks.

Don't be too unrealistic. Of course fiction is usually an exaggeration on real life and what happens, but don't be too crazy with it.

I hope this has been helpful! Please comment any questions about Wattpad that you have!