Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

Real Issues for Teen Fiction (That Aren't Romance!)

I'm in too deep, and I'm trying to keep, up above in my head instead of going under again!! Twenty points to the person that can give me the name of the song and the band. (I love games too much)

Anyway, I get this question a lot, because I always say I hate having romance as the only conflict in the whole damn story. So, I thought it would be fun to do the thing where I give you my idea and then give you a challenge to write and leave the link in the comments. So here you go: Real Issues for Teen Fiction (That Aren't Strictly Romance!)

1. Divorce

I'm a sucker for stories where kids try to keep their parents from getting divorced or trying to get them back together (like The Parent Trap). Seriously, family life makes a huge impact on teenagers and I don't understand why teen fiction writers tend to ignore that. I wanna see a story where a divorce really fucks a kid's world up. One where the kid doesn't want to have to pick sides. They don't want to have two Christmases.

Or one of my favorite plot lines (that got seriously worn out in the '90s, but I'm totally okay with bringing it back) where the kids try to chase off all their single parent's potential dates. I did that with my best friend more than once and his dad still has no clue some of the shit that went down was our doing. But he liked really bratty women that were very bad to him, so we had to do something.

Seriously, that's your challenge: write a story where divorce is the main conflict. Maybe the MC doesn't want her parents to get divorced and so she's acting out at school and failing and all this shit. Or maybe she does for whatever reason (except abuse!) and s/he goes on a crazy journey to break them up. Or be a cutie and try my suggestion of the MC trying to run off potential step-parents. Then post the link in the comments. Those make me so happy for whatever reason.

2. Social Networking (Yup. Naked Pictures are Forever)

One of my friends is writing this fabulous story about a girl that has to deal with her naked picture getting shown to the entire school and I'm head over heels about it. I've never seen one like it and I just think the idea is brilliant. Brilliant! This is one of those really relevant topics that people hardly talk about unless there is a huge scandal.

But I love this, because this is a huge, hot topic. Like, lemme see if I can get you started on some ideas.

Okay, well, you guys probably know by now I had to delete my social media in high school, because a very unflattering picture of me at a party ended up online (I wasn't totally naked, but if you look hard enough you can find a picture of me pretty damn close to it, that shit is forever). (And if you wanna have a good laugh about the situation I'll share this fun fact: it was on MySpace. Because MySpace was still a thing! Ha!)

Anyway, so it really does cause a problem. Back then the problem was that I was sixteen and the vast majority of the other guys in the picture were over eighteen (and for those of you that don't know, anything under eighteen is child pornography). I was also slightly inebriated, which is also illegal.

And had I not deleted all my social media, that picture would have spread. And ruined my whole life. Because employers will find that shit. So don't do it. Because now it will be all over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and I don't even know what else people use. Back then, it was one website. And it was taken down within hours and I still got in big trouble. I thought my dad was going to have a heart attack.

And see, only the people in the picture, at the party, or exposed to it online (because not everything was instant gratification back then) knew about it, luckily, but just think about it today. Immediately everyone knows.

And this sexting thing. My God. It's ridiculous. I can say this, because I wasn't completely naked: Do NOT, under any circumstances take a naked picture. And do NOT ever send one. Because that is not a good thing. I had a friend be arrested because a fourteen year old sent him nudes. He was eighteen. He's now a registered sex offender and will be for the rest of his life because of this fourteen year old girl. Nudes ruin lives. Don't do it.