Love Triangles in YA, A Rant

*Rant Warning*

NOT ALL YOUNG ADULT NOVELS NEED A LOVE TRIANGLE!

Especially not the exact same love triangle vomited day in day out. It's never one girl likes a boy, and then the other boy likes her and the girl isn't sure. No, no, recently every single movie/book to come out has a love triangle where the girl is in love with both equally and it makes me insane.

Here are some suggestions for not terrible love triangles:
The girl likes ONE boy, but not the other.
The girl likes one boy, but the boy doesn't like her back. Another boy is in love with her that she doesn't care about.
The girl likes two boys, but neither like her back.

There are three corners to a triangle. Which means - if I remember anything about math permutations -  there are nine different possible outcomes to a love triangle. I know, this may be difficult to absorb.

But L.B., you mutter, when all the boys love one girl, it *sells*!

How about none of the boys like the girl and its *realistic*. That's what I want to see in a book.

What continues to conflict me, is why are they always exactly the same?

Let's discuss "The Fifth Wave." A novel so good, it became a film. A novel so good, and a backstory so interesting, IT DIDN'T NEED A LOVE INTEREST AT ALL.

But I digress. The story starts with a perfectly good love interest, and then the author throws in some super cute eye candy halfway through the book/movie (boovie?) just to confuse the MC -- I groaned. I even wanted to see the cute guy, he was cuter than the main love interest (IMHO), but was wholly unnecessary.

I told you.

This boovie didn't need a love interest at all. I mean, I was happy there was one, everyone likes eye candy, but come ON. It was so good until then. Creepy, believable Nazi-style aliens which are extra terrifying because you never actually see the alien as they inhabit human bodies (No bad CGI!!).

CRAZY!

Yet here we have another love interest tacked on top like an extra cherry on your sundae. You aren't even going to eat the first one. Why is the second there?

The first one is just for color anyway. No one likes maraschino cherries.



If you want another guy to confuse your MC, make him EVIL.

Like this guy.



Don't make him adorable and perfect! Alternatively, he was a bad guy but now is going to be a good guy because this is a YA and abusive behavior doesn't happen in YA novels because even the bad guys are good guys because the writer made them that way.

PUT. THE PEN. DOWN.

Of course, I know exactly what you're doing. You're copying a recipe that has worked for so many others. You want your two main boy-toys to have a Team Edward vs. Team Jacob following.

But you know what? It's tired. Just because you see something sell doesn't mean you should copy that to sell. It really means that you should avoid that topic entirely because it's already been done. Unless you have a seriously original idea, you're joining a crowd and by the time your story is written and in the public's view, the crowd won't care anymore.

You.

Since I'm ranting, I'm also going to spin off topic: Do you know what else is tired? Telling people the book you've just put out is "Book One of *Random Title* Series."

Your reader hasn't even decided if they like your writing at all, maybe they aren't ready for that kind of commitment? Maybe they want one satisfying book without knowing that they will be left wanting more?

But the biggest pet peeve of mine is not "a three part series'" altogether, but when you've decided to have a "series" but really you're stretching one story into three books. Like how Hollywood has chosen to ruin the last book of every series by splitting it into two movies that come out a year apart. If you start talking about a war in book one, I'm gonna be really mad to discover that war isn't coming until book three. Like, we're done, mad.

Every book in a series should stand alone. Maybe don't bring up the war happening in book three in book one, and focus on building on characters hatred for each other.

You can make the story go any direction  you want, why copy another author?

Be yourself. Be weird. No one else writes like you, so don't write like anyone else.

Don't copy a recipe unless you're going to improve upon that recipe. Like cronuts.

All right, stepping down off my soap box. Apologies for the run-on sentences.

All my love,
L.B.