FREAK ( WRITING TIPS )

iv. ORIGINALITY

ORIGINAL STORY IDEAS ARE let's face it, pretty hard to come up with. If you think of an idea, there's at least a 60% chance someone has done something similar before.

However! If you add personal aspects, twists, avoid cliches, etc, you get a pretty original idea!

CLICHES TO AVOID

— Mean girls, bullies, etc. High school isn't like that anymore (if it was ever)

— Siblings. Especially in fanfictions this is so overused and it takes skill to actually pull it off, trust me

— Cutting/self harm/other triggering things. This is problematic for a whole other reason than it simply being overused. People use self harm - a very serious and not good thing - as a gateway to a love story. More often than not some girl gets her scars kissed by her favorite band member or something and that is total BS

COOL TWISTS

— Mental health disorders/disabled characters. If written realistically, disabled + mentally ill characters make for a way more interesting story! These people exist, so it'd be cool to see a deaf, blind, paralyzed, etc character as well as a character maybe struggling with OCD or ADD/ADHD!

— Lgbt+/poc characters. I personally, am tired of seeing the same pasty white boy fall in love with a pasty white girl. I'm not talking about throwing a Latina girl in the mix for the "diversity quota," I'm talking like have a trans Pakistani girl fall in love with a non-binary Latinx person! Even when I see lgbt+ stories, it's always skinny white boys falling in love with each other!

feel free to include more cliches/twists in the comments!