How to Write About Teenage Love | Teen Ink

How to Write About Teenage Love

May 30, 2014
By dlee41396 BRONZE, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
dlee41396 BRONZE, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure..."


Use banal diction; people never get sick of reading the same, overused clichés. Phrases like “he kissed me passionately underneath the moonlight,” and “I get butterflies every time I see his face,” will do the trick. Try to make it exactly like a fairytale, because fairytales are parallel to reality.

Show how careless teenagers can be when they’re in love. How they drop all of their friends and disobey their families for that one special guy they met at a football game in ninth grade. Tell stories about how they skipped school to be with each other, even though they have nearly every single class together. And tell how their grades are slipping because they are blinded by this fun, new fling that won’t last for more than a month.

Write the story from a girl’s perspective; they are the only ones affected in teenage love affairs. They are the only ones who have experienced the heartbreak because all guys are d-bags with no emotions. Remember, the only thing guys care about is status and being known for dating the hottest girls, while the girls sit in the dark eating ice cream reminiscing on the little amount of time they’ve shared.

Constantly abbreviate words; instead of perfect, use perf. And instead of obviously use obv. For example, “By the look on my face you can obv. tell that the date was perf!”

Be sure to include that parents will never understand what it’s like to be young and in love. They were never teenagers and therefore will never know what it’s like to feel your pain. Parents are always the antagonists and are always against everything. They believe that teenagers don’t know what love is so that makes them incapable of loving anyone. Because learning to love doesn’t stem from experience, it just happens. Teenagers don’t have feelings and relationships don’t get real until you hit your 20s.

The main character in your story should not be black because perfect love stories don’t happen in the black community. Your main character should be a white, tall, thin, blond girl. Name her Ashley and name her boyfriend Cameron. She should be extremely beautiful and wanted by many. Ugly people don’t fall in love. Her dad should be a senior partner at his law firm and her mom “works from home,” but it’s never specified what exactly she does. She lives in a big house on the nice side of town and drives a fairly new Audi that her dad bought as a present at her sweet sixteen birthday party.

Throughout the story add snippets of diary entries. Any teenage girl that has ever been in love keeps a diary and writes every single thing she’s feeling down. Include the entry that tell about the first time he kissed her and how she’ll tell her friends when she gets back to school on Monday. Make sure the story contains the “break-up entry,” in which the main character tells how she’ll never love another boy as much as she loved him, how she’s never going to recover from her heartache. And create a scene where she sees him in the mall winning a teddy bear for another girl out of one of the crane machines.

You should somehow add corny song lyrics at one point. Preferably ones from songs like “Bubbly,” and “Dreaming with a Broken Heart.” This is a great touch because every teenager can relate to this.

The cover of the book should be very similar to Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook. Have a portrait of girl smiling and looking off into the distance, her hair blowing into the wind. And when thinking of the title for the book, think of something original like PS; I Will Always Love You. Make sure to use the title of the book as one of the lines in the story, teenagers especially freak out when that happens.

Once again, make this story as close to a fairytale as possible; that means the ending must be happy. No matter how harsh you made the break-up, you must come up with something clever to end the story on a good note. Write how the guy makes a surprise visit at her front door with a Starbucks Frappuccino, Dunkin Donuts, and a rose. Give a sob story of how he didn’t mean to hurt her and that he only did it because he was having family issues. Seal it with a kiss and end the story. And if you don’t think this is enough to have girls closing the book while saying “Awwwww,” then watch Romeo and Juliet. That’s a perfect example of true love.


The author's comments:
I wrote this piece in my creative nonfiction class and the assignment was to write a satirical essay. This particular essay resonates with me a lot being that I am a teen and I have experienced all of the stereotypes that go along with being young and in love. Over time this has become one of my favorite pieces of work that I've written while in high school.

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