You might have written a teenybopper story if…

• Your story is a romance.

• Your story is overly happy or overly melodramatic.

• You have a main female character who is tall, thin, and beautiful, perfect in every way.

• Your main female character has a weird name (ex. Sapphire or Harmony), a common name spelled in a weird way (ex. Carynn instead of Karen), or the female version of one of the Backstreet Boys’ names (ex. Brianna or Nicole).

• Your story has one of the following plots:

1. Female group/artist tours (and falls in love with) the Backstreet Boys
2. Girl moves in next door to (and falls in love with) one of the Backstreet Boys
3. Girl gets front row concert tickets and backstage passes to a Bsb concert and meets (and falls in love with) the Backstreet Boys.
4. One of the Backstreet Boys finds his long lost sister (who then falls in love with one of the other Backstreet Boys).

• You describe exactly what your main female character is wearing and how her hair is done in every single scene.

• Your main female character and her Backstreet boyfriend both die, and the story continues on to chronicle their life together in Heaven.

• The Backstreet Boys all live in the same house and spend every single moment with each other, unless they’re going to the bathroom or having premarital sex with your female main character.

• Your write not in English, but in Teenybopperese (ex. “R U going 2 the mall?” instead of “Are you going to the mall?”)

• You are a teenybopper.

If you (or your story) fit a majority (or all) of the above qualifications, you might have written a teenybopper story. Now, you might be asking, “How do I fix it?” Here’s some tips for writing a non-teenybopper story.

• Don’t write a romance.

• If you do write a romance, have some conflict in it (fights, break-ups, tragedies, etc.), but not so much that it seems like a soap opera.

• Don’t make your main female character perfect. Why not have a story where a Backstreet Boys falls in love with a girl who is:

1. morbidly obese
2. hideously ugly
3. mentally and/or physically handicapped
4. all of the above

• Give your main female character a relatively normal name that isn’t the female version of the name of the Backstreet Boy she’s going to fall in love with.

• Make your plot original, or if you’re going to use one of the plots from #5 on the above list, make sure to include some twists in it to make it different from all the other stories with the same plot.

• Don’t have the description of the main female character take up most of the story. It’s good to use description and tell what she looks like so the readers can picture her in their heads, but it gets extremely old to explain what outfit she’s wearing each day and how her hair is done. Contrary to what you might think, your readers don’t give a crap.

• It’s okay to have your main female character and her Backstreet Boy of choice to die in the story. It’s NOT okay to have the rest of the story (or an entire sequel) be about their life together in Heaven. While that may sound sweet to some, it sounds sappy and fake to most (especially when you have them go to McDonald’s in Heaven – not very realistic).

• Okay, people, the Backstreet Boys love each other and all, but they DO NOT LIVE TOGETHER. They have different houses in different states, and they do not hang out together 24/7 every day out of the year. They actually have families and lives of their own outside of Bsb, and even though they’re friends, they don’t do everything together. I mean, come on, even your best friend would get on your nerves if you spent every single moment of every single day with her.

• Do not write in Teenybopperese or use abbreviations. That’s perfectly acceptable for e-mail and IM, but it is NOT acceptable for stories. Write in English, or no one is going to take your story seriously.

• If you’re a teenybopper, JUST DON’T WRITE A STORY. It will most likely turn out to be a teenybopper one, and no one will read it except for other teenyboppers.