Character Flaws

Teenagers, like adults, are complex. They make mistakes. They say problematic things. They make stupid choices. This isn’t a news-flash for anyone. After all, teens [people] are flawed, nuanced, and constantly growing. In my opinion, they do and say A LOT of things very, very wrong and this should be reflected in YA novels. And I think for the most part it is.

My point for this blog isn’t about writing more flawed characters, it’s about accepting those flawed characters. We (as writers) tend to romanticize our characters and make them perfect before weaving in a dose of reality. And although we know people are flawed and our characters should be too, there’s an awful lot of judgement thrown around after the fact about how frustrating those flawed representations can be.

Sure, these teenagers were written by adults and as adults we would hope that our peers could understand the delicate nature of certain conversations or situations teens get thrown into and age-appropriately display them. I don’t know about you, but when I read teenagers making incredibly well reasoned choices in the face of challenging encounters I call shenanigans. Not on everything, of course, but generally speaking if they go with the choice any rational adult would make, I’m not sure I buy it.

Yes, there are characters who could be considered an exception to the rule. I knew and currently know teens who don’t act their age or behave like tiny professors in kids bodies. However, for every one of them, you’ll come across ten, twenty, maybe a hundred teens who are just trying to make it to the end of high school without having a total break down.

Although I find it frustrating and sometimes second-hand embarrassing, I like reading about teenagers who don’t understand the world around them. I like reading about teens who struggle to find the right path. I like reading about teens who royally mess up. Why? Because that’s what teens do! I enjoy watching a character’s evolution from saying dumb shit to finally realizing how uninformed they were. I know as a teen I struggled to connect with a lot of YA characters because they seemed to have everything together and I totally did not. Frankly, that was a factor that turned me off the category. Perhaps (and arguably) I wasn’t reading the right books, but I am glad to see an increase in flawed teens these days. It’s nice to read realistic teens and watch them stumble before finding their wings.

To expand that point, though, I have noticed while male teenage characters are allowed to make these mistakes and lapses in judgement without backlash (actually, they get a lot of cheers and laughs for their mistakes), female teenage characters on the other hand are often not allowed the same leniency. Everything gets put under a microscope and people go off the deep end about how immature or irresponsible these girls were. If they were fellow adults, sure, I’d probably be concerned about them as well, but they’re teens and giant mistakes and glaring flaws are part of that stage in life.

It’s like no where is safe for girls, even fictional girls, not to be perfect little princesses. Ugh, even writing that made me a little sick. Moving on before I have a conniption.

Since many YA readers are adults, I’d like to kindly remind that portion of the fanbase about how messy they were in their teens and how many things they said and did that were problematic. I think teen readers need to see other teens (even if they are fictional) making those same errors and growing from those choices. I think it’s really important to remove the notion teens should be perfect. Maybe we can be less critical as outsiders looking in and more sympathetic to how flawed characters might actually be a good thing for teens to read.