However, my narrator wasn't always going to be a snarky redhead with a courageous drive to figure out who murdered the popular girl in school. Yes, the original TPG was about the death of #1 at a high school, but the original redhead wasn't going to be at all strong. In fact, she wasn't the only narrator. It also wasn't originally supposed to be humorous or even have some of the snappy dialogue that I've included in the final product of the first draft.
Do you wanna know what the original TPG was going to be about? My 13 year old self was proud about it, but the me of now? I kinda just want to cringe thinking about this.
Here we go. Brace yourselves *takes deep breath*. The Popularity Games was originally going to be about four high school girls: a rebellious tomboy who played football, Ann; a supermodel (that's all I got), Joana; the principal's secret daughter who was called in from overseas to investigate something, Riley; and the BFF to the most popular girl in school who was nasty yet had a soft side to her, Star (I think her real name was Stacey). Combine those four first-person point of views with an incredibly prestigious private school called Robin Crest (which was borrowed from something I tried to write in fifth grade that was more of a slice of life drama, Little Rock, which was also just as tacky; there was a girl named Falcon) and popularity being a literal game (probably my favorite part of the original concept), and we have our story, ladies and gentlemen. Think of it like Pretty Little Liars meets whatever thriller you can find, and presto! Instant classic!
Yikes. To be honest, I wrote the prologue for this after finishing the first book in my The Sun and the Moon trilogy (which, if you read it and then look at my new work, shows I've come a long, long way) and never finished it. It wasn't mostly because I wanted to finish the trilogy first, but I feel like at that point I wasn't ready to write a full on melodrama. To be fair, The Sun and the Moon had its share of utopian first world princess problems (including an angst-filled romance, a corrupted government, and of course opening herself up to the perfect guy; as you can see, young me thought I was brilliant) and took itself very seriously. However, there was some humor (albeit not nearly as funny as I try to be now) that lightened up some of the stuff.
The original TPG would have had to been a lot more serious, but the only things that I would probably have ended up using were the classic boyfriend feuds, compulsive lying, and partying that could be found in all the trashy YA novels of the 2000's. To be fair, those were my life when I was growing up, but the thing about those books is that most of them were incredibly shallow. There was always the down-to-earth girl who didn't think she was pretty yet a guy was falling for her, the popular girl who was only after a boy and would fight our protagonist over it while wielding Gucci like she was a gladiator, the group of friends who weren't nearly as important and were there just to make our main girl look better (because all girls are promiscuous except our lead, apparently), and all the drama over unrequited love and how to look good. There's a reason why I found the first two books in the Pretty Little Liars series incredibly vapid and shallow when I read them at 12: it wasn't really about the mystery of A at all. It was all about the four girls hating each others' guts yet begrudgingly working together (yet somehow not becoming closer as a result) and their sexual conquests (sure, Emily was a lesbian, but that was the only thing that set her apart from the others). The four episodes I watched of the TV show were much better because the girls were closer and actually worked as a team, but I haven't continued watching it. Besides, ABC Family (or Freeform now because #wearecoolandhip) has been milking the franchise for more seasons than the show really needed.
I may have been able to subvert the tropes if I wanted to, but I was still freshly 14 and unaware of how to break the mold. Also, some of the tropes could have worked if they were well-written, but with no concrete idea of how to develop them or how to handle crafting four unique voices, the project slowly fizzled out and I wrote The Light and the Dark, the sequel to The Sun and the Moon, instead. However, I held onto The Popularity Games as a title for the future alongside murder because I really liked it and thought it would still make something out of itself.
A year later, I had scrapped a realistic fiction novel idea called Realizing Reality while working on my second trilogy about an agency with people that had powers involving their senses called The Sense Trilogy (there was also a reverse harem so my main girl got to kiss a bunch of guys). It was a very similar situation to TPG minus the actual writing it out (I had also started making character lists for my novels at this time), but it was deleted for a different reason: too much was going on in it. I had a bisexual male protagonist (this was before Duet, too, so props for me including LGBT+ diversity back at 14), a snarky female protagonist alongside him, a romantic plot where my main guy was trying to get together with his best friend from childhood, another plot where they saved a library from closing down and being demolished, school life, and whoa, that seems like a lot of stuff to handle. The more I thought about it, I couldn't see any of the plot points that I had created ever ending up gelling with each other. Besides, I was in the middle of something else, and the more I thought about it, the more I didn't see myself coming back to it. I ended up deleting the cover I had made and the document of characters and the novel itself right before writing the revived TPG, but continued on while putting the other stuff aside.
However, there was an element from Realizing Reality that I kept: the popular girl. Her name was Chloe (inspired off of Chloë Grace Moretz for reasons that I will explain later), and she was probably the snottiest character I had ever created. Her behavior was undoubtedly going to be pretty cliched (she was rude just for the sake of it), but the idea of a well-known girl around the school named Chloe sounded cool with me, so I carried it over into the final product of TPG alongside another thing: the humor. The novel idea was supposed to be lighter than my other works while having the drama of regular teenage life (main male guy's childhood friend is actually a jerk, worries about growing up and figuring out what's really important), so if I did want to write this murder mystery, I didn't want it to be completely dark. There had to be lightness to compliment some of the other stuff that was happening.
And thus, another year passed. I had finished my first real novel, Duet, in August, and I spent the next couple of months going over my prior work, writing a short story, and just being generally lazy. The Popularity Games had started formulating in my head, and the pieces were clicking together: the humor, the snotty behavior of the popular girl now going to another character, the lead popular girl continuing to be Chloe (who would get axed in order to be sacrificed to the horror gods because Moretz was the lead in the 2013 Carrie remake that gave me nightmares for four hours after watching the trailer, although her performance from what I've seen was really good) who was capable of being nice, and the drama of trying to figure out who exactly wanted to murder an innocent girl. Everything seemed like it was working, so I created a character document with the people that I wanted, began brainstorming ideas on the flow of the story, and started drafting on the very first day of November 2015.
The process of writing down TPG was longer than it was for Duet, clocking it at around eight months rather than the latter's five. While most of Duet was written during the summer, when I had more time to sit down and make complete sentences, that novel was also more personal to me than all my other work had been, so I wanted to put in the effort to make it something really special. Meanwhile, TPG was drafted right smack dab in the middle of the school year. While I was juggling AP European History homework (that has been one of the most challenging courses I've taken) alongside all my other classes, I was falling in and out of the novel and the world I created. Sometimes I didn't feel like writing the book and would go make up some songs or fanfics instead, but whenever I did get in a good groove, I found myself really enjoying this story. It may not relate to my real life as much, but I made sure to put bits and pieces of it into the book. After all, this is realistic fiction, and I love making it as authentic as possible so not only I relate to it but my readers (both present and future) can as well.
It was also really challenging to not focus on the romance as much (although it does pop up, don't worry) and decide to lean more into the friendship angle. I love romantic connections and writing about two people who gradually start to love each other, but I knew that in order for people to take Chloe's death seriously and for the mystery to mean more to the plot, I needed to cut down on YA's biggest selling point. I also feel like friendship gets pushed to the side more often than not, with girls hating on girls and them only talking about boys when there is that friendship present. Other times, the best friends don't really matter to the plot as much as me as a reader would like. So, as a result of all this, I wanted to give Ivy an anchor that gave her motivation, a space to share her thoughts, but also comfort. The North Nightly team helped provide a diverse and fun backing team, allowing room for jokes to bounce off walls and for a perfect place for Ivy to be herself and have fun. Writing the scenes with the whole crew together were some of my favorite parts, especially the part where they all crash at Ivy's house for a sleepover.
Some of these friends and other characters are also diverse in terms of race and sexuality. I don't think it's realistic to have a completely white and straight cast in any book (I'm thinking about making Ross Japanese-American in the next draft of Duet, but there's a lot of different sexuality representation there so...moving on), which is why there are African American, gay, and bisexual characters that are involved in The Popularity Games alongside others. It's important that everyone is fairly represented in everything I write from now on because our world isn't entirely made up of Caucasian heterosexual people; there are so many different races, so many sexual orientations, so many people that have disabilities that we can explore but have to make sure to eventually write as authentically as possible. I'm still working on making sure I do this, but I'm happy with what I've included and I hope others are too. Mazin and Monique the African American twins (who would be identical if not for my grandmother pointing out that identical means identical, even in gender; I'm chalking it up as a mutation for now and moving on), Charlie the rocker who has an obvious crush on my male lead, Sean, and Sean himself who has a different sexuality than what would typically be expected of him (I don't want to spoil it because it'll ruin the surprise) are all examples of this in TPG, but I want to keep on expanding the amount I include with every novel so more readers can find themselves within the crevices of the novels they read. I just have to make sure it's accurate and doesn't offend anyone.
Alongside a murder mystery comes the setting that I haven't written in a full-length novel project since fifth grade: school. The Sun and the Moon took place in a futuristic society (maybe even a different planet, but that's still debatable), whereas Vue, the first in The Sense trilogy, mentioned school fleetingly in the very first chapter before not even focusing on it at all. Cam, the main protagonist of Duet, was a high school graduate and hardly remembered anything of his four year experience the summer before college. However, Ivy is a junior and still attending classes, and because Chloe's character mattered so much to North Valley High (that's the name of the school in TPG) alongside Ivy's involvement with the newspaper club, it made sense not only for the school to be the setting for chapters but for it to play a role in the story, even if I made the principal completely unsympathetic to anything. It was refreshing to have characters walking down hallways, slamming lockers, eating lunch, and talking with people that they met through activities in the building they also got education from. It also gave me the opportunity of painting people from all the "social" groups that frequent high school into one place: the popular, the jocks, the hipsters, the geeks, and, of course, the normal ones that don't really define under any of the labels.
However, all of those come with the main point that I wanted to make with The Popularity Games, otherwise known by my grandmother when she asks, "What's the Main Dramatic Question?", a thing that she coined in order to either help me connect themes to my work or because she's testing me. I could respond to this in a question, but I think it's easier just to state it rather than make it sound like an unanswerable inquiry that you would have to read the novel to find out (which would actually lead to more suspense, but alas). This is my 'people are unique' novel, meaning that I'm enforcing the point that we need to stop judging others by their labels, appearance, or how they act. We are made up of so many pieces that being associated with one isn't enough. A gay guy is more than his sexuality, a black woman is more than a female or her skin color, a stereotypical dork is more than taped-together glasses and suspenders, and, most importantly, there's more to a popular girl's made-up face and their posse of friends. Call it cliche, but it's incredibly relevant to our society today. Homophobia, racism, and fear of the unknown still exist all over the world, and me writing TPG is my way of saying enough. Sure, it only really touches upon the school social ladder, but there's a simplicity with it that matters. We judge so many people in high school because they have what we don't or just because everyone else does it. It's not fair to anyone involved, and so maybe now's the chance to continue making sure we treat everyone like a human and not like some horrible thing that creeps around our lives. Every little bit makes a difference even if it doesn't seem like it, so love your friends, make new ones, and let others see that we are all beautiful in our own ways and that will never change.
If you'd like to read The Popularity Games, you can go to Quotev or Wattpad to read the novel. If you want some music to listen to while you take a look, I've created a playlist on Spotify featuring songs that inspired my writing process and also really capture the feeling of it. It's available here.
Until next time!
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