Turbulent Teen Romance

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Nightshade, May 13, 2011.

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  1. cybrxkhan

    cybrxkhan New Member

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    I've been out of high school for a while, but it's still relatively recent enough that I can remember most things (the important ones at least), so anyways...

    I think either way works fine as long as you make sure the characters are interesting and work naturally; I would imagine that certain character types work better with a certain development than others. It also depends on the story's mood. A slow, slice-of-life, heartwarming kind of story probably prefers the former, while a more classical tense romance probably would want the latter.

    Everybody was different at my high school, and I saw this as a clear counter-example to the stereotypes that all teens are stupid and just follow their sexual impulses. Some of us even realized that we were stupid kids who didn't have a lot of experience in relationships, so yeah. Still, a lot of people at my school did prefer personality per se, as in they preferred to hook up with others within their group of friends. I myself was one of them, except I got rejected. Still, I guess because my school was a rather warm and cozy community (comparatively), this makes sense in that context. There were, of course, still some kids who went for looks and cared more about sex and the like. There were also quite a number that hooked up for a short while and then broke up as if it were nothing, but I think that 1) in some of those cases the kids were just learning about relationships anyways, so it's sort of like long-term speed dating and 2) it was limited to a certain group of kids, so not everybody was like that.

    I ultimately think that, at least at my school, it wasn't so much that teens were obsessed with sex, it was more that they just didn't have much experience. Okay, well, and they wanted sex too, but it wasn't the biggest thing, surprisingly. In all my years in high school I don't remember ever hearing about any girls getting pregnant, if that means anything.

    As another side note, there were some kids (especially girls, for some reason, although I personally don't think this is any evidence that girls are "maturer" than boys, which I think is bullcrap) who didn't want to start relationships and never wanted to start any, for whatever reasons (i.e., "I want to focus on career", "relationships can really mess up your life", etc.)... except that those kids sometimes fell in love without realizing it.

    Remarkably, though, there were some relationships that persisted through almost all of high school and are still going strong today (or, well, at least the relationships are still there).

    Anything can change you for the better or worse depending on how you take it. Early in high school, I tried to ignore these kinds of relationships in general, and it worked out really, really not well for me. Later in high school, I fell in love with a really close friend, but she rejected me. I still think it was one of the best things that ever happened to me, because it kind of taught me a bit about relationships in real life and it taught me not to get worked up about things if they didn't work out.

    Thus, I think the same works in fiction and in real life - I mean, for example, stereotypically we're all supposed to get depressed if we're rejected, but that doesn't always happen. I think it ultimately boils down to how you choose to react to it, and that can, of course, depend on our personality and/or our previous experiences. A character prone to anger will probably not react to a rejection in the same way some happy-go-lucky, easy-going guy would.


    Either way is fine, as long as you show her as a distinct, unique character somehow. As said, it depends on your story's needs and your characters' general personalities.

    ---

    As JPGriffin said, even in a book where romance isn't the main thing, it might happen anyways, since, well, relationships are obviously very important in real life. Romance is a natural thing, especially in high school, when you're starting to learn about all this stuff.

    Again, I think that it's important not to follow the stereotypes and cliches. High school is, unfortunately, full of them, and some of them are unfortunately real and true (as in, for instance, yes, my school had a clique of football players and cheerleaders), but even in real life these "stereotypes" are a lot more complicated than they first seem (many of the football players and cheerleaders were friendly with the other kids, i.e. they weren't jerks, some of the cheerleaders were really smart, and a couple of the football guys played WoW). Throw in romance, and you have even more danger of falling into cliche-land.

    The most important thing, I think, is to ultimately have good characters. Good characters will generally improve even a crappy plot, because it's characters that people care about. Write a really deep and interesting character, and you can perhaps even have them pull off tons of cliches and stereotypical storylines, and no one will care, because it's the character they're looking into.
     
  2. darkhaloangel

    darkhaloangel Active Member

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    Sadly I was a boyfriendless teen, but my oh so popular with the boys friend has lent me some insight. They started dating and didn't even share their first kiss until they'd been going out for two weeks and being very lovely dovey! They were a sopey couple, but the emotions and comforting stage of the relationship always came before the physical. Always remember lots of hand holding - and when they started dating everyone would give them grief when they walked past in the corridor. Even as I write this it sounds so overly innocent, but fifteen is still quite young. I mean you can add in some sex, but I'd say the forumla would be the same. Having a relationship at school means that pretty much everyone knows about it!
     

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