In which an angry teenage girl bashes clichés and authors for using them
WARNING: do not read if you are hypersensitive to people correcting your mistakes.
WARNING: Talk about rape and sex will be present in this chapter. Should you not wish to read about said topics, it'd be recommended that you skip this chapter.
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Oh, werewolfstories.
They're full of clichés, ranging from being rejected by the alpha to being some yeti moon goddess.
Why is there no variety?
I, myself, am not a big fan of stories about werewolves (mainly because werewolf packs are involved), but I am aware that a ton of stories on Wattpad are about said creatures.
Where in the world did all of these clichés come from, though?
Stop getting your "inspiration" (actually tropes) from unoriginal authors. They 're only going to make your stories annoying to read for the people who've read similar books in the past. This is because clichés make your book much more predictable (depends on how common the cliché is), and for people such as myself, a bit less enjoyable (again, it depends on the cliché).
Frankly, I'd love to hear about a werewolf story with little to no clichés at all. Would somebody please send me a recommendation, so I don't judge a genre on its cliché usage?
Some overused tropes include:
1) OC's mate is the Alpha of the wolf pack
2) Mate rejects OC
3) OC is apparently some Moon goddess since their wolf form is ALWAYS WHITE! (Was she bitten by a yeti or something?)
4) Mate is possessive
5) Mate kidnaps OC
6) OC refuses to like the mate*five minutes later* "I LOVE YOU!!!!!" she whispered.
7) OC sometimes has more than one mate
8) OC lives a terrible life "HI :D My name is Ashley Moon Goddess and I've been raped 30 times everyday for the past 8 years, and my parents beat me afterwards for 5 hours LOL"
9) OC is usually different than everybody else, in terms of some rare thing. (Moon goddess, anybody?)
10) When mate rejects OC, OC tries to prove she's good enough (What a terrible OC with no backbone. MOVE ON!)
11) OC becomes/is an orphan
12) If the mate kidnaps OC, she always gets Stockholm Syndrome
13) Sometimes the pet is actually a werewolf
14) OC is usually a female
It's terrible how rape has became such a cliché thing to use in stories. According to rainn.org, an average of over 321,500 victims get raped ANNUALLY in America alone, and the victims are 12 years old or older. The website also states that approximately every 98 seconds, somebody is sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, when I last checked the statistics in 2015/2016, it said that a person was raped roughly every 107 seconds.
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Sickening, isn't it?
If you do choose to write a story where the OC is raped, make it obvious she/he was. Don't make your character upset about it for one chapter, but then the rest of the story they're all happy with his or her life.
Rape is something that should be taken seriously, not as a joke.
Females: How would you like it if some creep (male, female, or other) went up to you and started stripping you of your clothes and then decided to insert their genital inside you without your permission?
Males: How would you like it if a stranger (again, gender doesn't matter) came up to you and tried to have sex with you, despite the fact that you told them "no"?
People who identify as neither male or female: How would you feel if you were raped? You would have a few options: 1. Be pissed off (is this a thing?) 2. Be happy (that is, if you enjoy losing your virginity to a rapist) 3. Be traumatized (most common)
Regardless of your gender, you'd be pretty traumatized, and it would be difficult for the average person to recover from it.
