Because I write YA, the characters I write about are almost all in high school. So it's important to me that my high school setting feels realistic, like it could actually exist. This morning, I read a post by Choco on her blog In Which A Girl Reads where she talks about how her experience of high school seems very different to her from the high schools she reads about in YA literature. It's a really good entry, and all YA writer should read it just to avoid the cliches it's so easy to fall into, but Choco's experience (just like my experience, just like your experience) is not universal. Let's take one example of that: popularity. Choco makes a great point about how popularity is portrayed in YA books and movies. In a lot of them, there is some sort of "ruling clique" that determines the lives of the other students. But here's how she describes her high school: And another thing: I don't know if my high school is just the odd-one out, b
Jay Montville's Blog