Writing Tips

High School Writing Tips

Know this type of popular can exist in stories too.

The next few will have examples from my school too (it's a big school, so there is a huge variety on the cliques). But I want to say this before going on.

The larger the school = less cliques/cliches

How? Because since there's so many people, you make friends from different groups.

Do you like Hamilton? Anime? What about Vampire Diaries?

In a large school, there are groups that focus just on that thing. And there's multiple groups of the same thing.

The "geeks" aren't just one big group. There will be one just for comics. One just for superheroes. One just for CW dramas.

Nerds are also in their exclusive groups. There's the group just for math. One just for theatre. One just for science. And so on.

I could go on, but this is how large schools are. You hop many groups and hang out with a different set of friends almost every singe class period. Sure, you have your bff, but rarely will get a class with them. So you have other friends in each class.

Maybe your freshman year you will share many classes with your bff from middle school, but only for required classes. And even then, if it's a big school where there's a minimum of 200 students per grade, there's at least 3 teachers for one subject teaching a minimum of 3 class periods for that specific grade. So chances you and your bff in the same English class? It's about a 11% chance.

Now, smaller schools are very heavily cliquey/cliched. The jocks stay together and pick on the smart kids. The anime group? Even if they fight over Naruto or DBZ being better, they stick together since others will ridicule them for liking anime or comics.

So if you're wanting to go heavy on the cliches, I recommend having your story set in a rural area where a graduating class from said high school is 50 kids or less.

If you're going to have one in a big school (graduating class being 100+), it's going to be way more diverse. People are going to interchange their groups every single class period. Keep in mind these details.

Now, back to the cliches...

Nerds

We're starting with the nerd. One thing I'd like to say right off the bat is that not every nerd wears braces and glasses. Nerds also don't wear beanies all the time, it's not true for them at all.

A nerd's fashion depends on the person. They can be trendy like everyone else. They can also be conservative with what they wear.

Another thing with nerds in small and big schools is that they generally know every other nerd there is. If they're gonna start drama, it's usually light gossip about others. And no not "Omg, Bertha didn't get an A on her test. She's so stupid." It's going to be more along the lines of "Is he sick? That's not good."

From general experience, there are snotty nerds I've encountered that are high and mighty (yet she was salutatorian, not valedictorian lol) and shame others for not being smart,  but most are not actually like that.

If you want a good nerd, mix it up instead of having it be a kid who has braces, broken glasses, and ugly fashion sense. Because those who have been labeled as nerds for their good study habits generally don't like a negative image on them.

Jocks

Jocks are usually what we think of when we see those big muscular dudes or the girls in their varsity gear in school. While this term applies to them, the personality stereotype is the staple of this cliche group.