On the Young Adult Love Triangle Cliche

I'm pretty sure that if you've been reading Young Adult for any decent amount of time, you've noticed this cliche. It is pervasive in every genre - fantasy, contemporary, paranormal, romance, dystopia . . . you get the gist. No matter where you go, it will appear sooner or later. Love triangles are not necessarily bad. However, there is one specific kind of love triangle which has become cliche and is, quite frankly, boring me to death with how cliche it has become.

The Hunger Games. Matched. Uninvited. Twilight. The Naturals. Hex Hall. The Vampire Diaries. They all feature a very specific breed of love triangle, the one that I now consider a cliche. It features a female main character being presented with the choice between two handsome guys (although, obviously, one will be blond and the other will be dark-haired, and thus, they'll be handsome in different ways) - one of which will be sweet and sensitive, and the other will be more broody and tough.

It looks something like this.

This can come off really well, in some cases. But in other cases, the characters aren't unique enough and/or the two guys aren't equally attractive enough (I'm not just talking about physical attractiveness here) to make this set-up work. Honestly, I can't figure out why this particular love triangle has become so popular - maybe our culture is gravitating to the idea of a woman having the ability to decide who she'll be with without any complications such as, ya' know, one of the dudes not actually liking her.

Which leads me to . . .

This is not the only kind of love triangle out there. And I really wish more authors seemed to know that and take advantage of the different kinds of romantic set-ups there are.

For instance:

1. A love triangle with a boy as the central character, who has to make the choice.
2. A love triangle in which the girl is in love with one guy, but he is not interested in her at all. Instead, another love interest is pursuing her and she ignores him.
3. There isn't a love triangle at all - perhaps a love square? A girl likes two guys, but maybe they're both interested in a completely different girl . . . or maybe they're both interested in both her and another girl, creating three interlocking love triangles.

There are so many ways to layer love triangles to come up with unique romantic setups, which is why it is so frustrating to see the same love triangle repeated over and over again. There are so many opportunities to be had here, people! Can't we mix things up a little? 

And if we aren't going to mix up this guy-gal-guy love triangle, can't we at least change the characters involved? Do the two guys have to be such complete opposites? Wouldn't it be interesting if they both shared one big flaw, but were different in other areas? That flaw could make the FMC's decision much, much harder. Maybe, in the end, she wouldn't choose either of them!

Lastly, one last thing I urge you not to do under any circumstances: don't make the MC's choice for her (him if you're being blessedly unique). In the Hex Hall trilogy, a typical cliche love triangle was set up between the mysterious guy and the sweet guy. While I disliked this particular triangle with much gusto because their were several issues with it, the author made one big . . .mistake, I think. The FMC found out that her father had betrothed her to Mr. Sweet, a guy named Cal. I didn't think that was such a bad thing - it may have even provided a lot of tension, had it been used right. However, the author relied on this betrothal to create all the tension of the love triangle - which wasn't much, since Cal was almost never around and the FMC was clearly enamored (physically, at least) with the dangerous Mr. Mysterious. It was so one-sided. 

Even so, the situation could have been salvaged. I held out hope throughout the trilogy that the FMC would see how much of a better guy Cal was than the other option, push away the dangerous unknown dude, and accept Cal. Even if she hadn't done that I may have been satisfied (although disappointed in her lack of common sense regarding strange, mysterious, and obviously dangerous guys who creep around your school). However, the author completely ruined it by (SPOILER ALERT) killing Cal at the climax of the last book, (SPOILER END) making the FMC's choice for her. What was worse, the FMC wasn't even that torn up about it, and was just something akin to "well, now that my fiance is dead I don't have to feel guilty about liking Mr. Dark-Dangerous-and-Mysterious."

And so the love triangle was ruined, once and for all. Any tension that may have existed dead as a door-nail, with no hope of it being revived by a re-read.  

So to recap: please don't automatically set up a cliche love triangle. Try to mix it up and go with some other arrangement. If you do go with the common love triangle, at least change up the characters involved a bit. And certainly, do not make the MC's choice for her/him by killing or otherwise conveniently getting rid of one of the love interests. Take advantage of the variety available for romantic setups, and create an equal attraction to both love interests to make sure that the love triangle is doing what it was intended to do: create tension and conflict.

What are some love triangles you know of that were really well done? Really badly done? What are your thoughts on it? Do you think the love triangle I was talking about is cliche? Do you want some more variety too, or are you happy with the current state of things? Also, check out my guest post on Aimee Meester's blog, To the Barricade!: "One Simple Way to Add Dimension to Your Characters."

Want more posts on cliches and how to put a twist on them? Click here for all my posts on cliches, or click the label in the sidebar.