How Dare You Suggest I Wrote This YA Novel As A Way Of Living Out My High School Fantasies Of Getting Revenge On My Bullies And Hooking Up With Popular Girls
By: Michelle Cohn
Tags: Authors, Satire, High School, Humor, Novel

How Dare You Suggest I Wrote This YA Novel As A Way Of Living Out My High School Fantasies Of Getting Revenge On My Bullies And Hooking Up With Popular Girls Michelle Cohn Follow Dec 2, 2019 · 4 min read

I want to thank you all for attending this Q&A for my upcoming novel, The Fly On The Wall. Before we get started, I just want to address something that seems to come up frequently.

People keep asking me about very minor, really isolated similarities between my book — which is totally fictional — and my own high school experience, which is ancient history. But any suggestion that I wrote this novel to somehow vicariously live through my characters and re-write my high school experience is completely false. I mean, who would use a book to somehow get revenge on their high school bullies and hook up with a hot, popular girl?

By complete coincidence, sure, my protagonist shares a few physical traits with me. Yes, we both have chestnut brown hair, are left-handed, and have astigmatism. But I used these physical cues only for their relevance to the story. They’re crucial plot points and really barely noticeable. You’d have to be crazy to think there’s any resemblance between myself, John Stevens, and my character, Steve Johnson.

As a writer, I want my characters to be well-developed and multi-dimensional, and that’s why it’s so important to give them hobbies. For example, Steve’s got this very cool interest in the modern reboot of Battlestar Galactica that bears no relation whatsoever to my own personal interest in the original Battlestar Galactica. Why would anyone reading my novel — specifically, the part where Steven gives an exhaustive accounting of every kind of Cylon which results in the other kids crowning him Homecoming King — see any parallels to me at all? It certainly has nothing to do with how I wanted my high school classmates to respond to my own (very cool) hobbies. And of course, I never wanted to be homecoming king, even though all my friends said I would be a really great homecoming king.

Getting back to Steve for a minute, yes, there’s a part where Steve Johnson beats up the big, dumb football player, Tom Lipton, but that’s not a revenge fantasy against people who bullied me in high school. The fight is an example of the connections that I, as a writer, draw between my characters. Connections include conflict. Yes, there was a senior lacrosse player named Tim Loptin who may or may not have dunked my head in a few toilets because I (correctly) identified him as a “mouth-breathing ignoramus,” but I can assure you I harbor no ill will towards Tim, and Steve’s labeling of Tom as a “slackjawed imbecile” was entirely coincidental.

My book explores the universality of the adolescent experience, which includes young love. In my novel’s emotional climax, Molly Yates (the smart, popular cheerleader) admits that she has a crush on Steve. She mentions that was too intimidated by Steve’s placement as “first chair” in the French horn section, and superb SAT writing score, to say anything before. This scene is wholly fictional. It rings with emotional truth because it’s perfectly logical that Molly would avoid talking to Steve because she was intimidated by his intellect and impeccable embouchure. It makes perfect sense that she’d try and cover up her secret love by dating a dim-witted, lacrosse-playing oaf. Regardless, I can assure you these situations are entirely made-up, mere tales I weave from the depths of my imagination.

I write because it is my passion and my craft, not because I “have a superiority complex” or “was a major asswipe in high school,” as some of my old classmates have suggested. My novels are meant to teach, inspire, and ultimately, form connections between the reader and the characters. These connections are the hallmark of my writerly skill.

Be sure to join my mailing list so you can keep up-to-date about my upcoming novel. It’s about a young adult author who marries a supermodel, signs a book deal for millions of dollars, and wins a Pulitzer prize over his stupid college professor who once called his work “derivative.”