FML Fridays - The Wild Teen Party

The Wild Teen Party is a mainstay of teen literature, movies, and books.  The entire plot of Superbad was based around the trope, and the climax of Lauren Oliver's book BEFORE I FALL occurred at a Wild Teen Party.

In the original incarnation of FML, the party in question was actually going to occur while away on Spring Break.  In fact, if I remember correctly, the outline my editor bought FML based on was built around the party occurring during spring break.

I ultimately ditched that idea because my editor suggested, before FML was even an idea, that I needed to focus less on the wacky, zany humor Deathday had been filled with.  Some readers felt that Ollie's constant one-liners derailed some of the better character moments.  I don't agree or disagree.  I wrote it and I love it.  But I understood what they were asking for and I definitely wanted to write something that allowed me to dig deeper into the characters (while still having some fun).  Because of that, I thought that Spring Break antics might have been less believable and could have skewed into "wacky" territory pretty easily.

Thus, the house party came about.

While writing key party scenes, I wanted to give nods to various elements of the Wild Teen Party trope from my favorite childhood movies/tv shows/books while trying to pull away from them and come up with something unique.

So there are bullies and dumb jocks and cases of mistaken identity and drunken troubles, but they all have a bit of a twist.  Every time I got to one of those tropes, I looked at the note I posted on my wall to be more like Bridesmaids, and tried to do something realistic but unexpected.

I like to think that doing so helped me craft a story featuring the Wild Teen Part trope that is both familiar and unique.

Of course, that will be up to you to decide on June 25th.