How to Get a Date: Tips for Fictional Characters

Are you a young, good-looking fictional character who needs a love interest but isn't sure where to start? I'm here to help. First, be assured that you are not alone. There is such a wealth of stereotypes available to authors to use and combine that some characters are overwhelmed at the idea of purusing a relational plot. The pool of romance may look as scary as your author's weird analogies, but don't stand paralyzed on the diving board. Go ahead and jump into one of these surefire ways to find True Love! These suggestions work for both males and females, and have been proven in more famous cases than I care to count.

1. Move to a new town and get enrolled in a new school. On your first day there, the principal will assign the most attractive student of the opposite sex to give you a tour.

2. Go to foreign countries. No matter how populous and crowded the location, you will repeatedly, coincidentally run into a handsome/pretty stranger who shares your interests.

3. Get arrested, kidnapped, or locked in a dungeon. There's bound to be someone cute and available in the next cell so that you can fall in love and run away together.

4. Develop a life-threatening illness and fall tragically in love with another sick teen. Bonus points if your disease is inadequately researched or imaginary. 

5. Only make friends with people who have handsome older brothers or cute younger sisters.

6. Have inexplicable financial independence and freedom from responsibility so that you can go on long, dramatic road trips with your friends.

7. Be really dumb at a school subject so that your teacher will set you up for tutoring with a really attractive member of the opposite sex.

8. If you're a girl, be super klutzy and accidentally walk into attractive strangers. If you're a guy, always be on the lookout for klutzy girls to intercept.

9. Get into a near-death situation. Someone wildly attractive and available will appear in the nick of time to rescue you.

10. When you're interested in someone, give them an annoying nickname they dislike. Every time they ask you to stop, grin and say, "Yes, (unwanted nickname)." They will inevitably fall in love with you.

11. Take lots of plane rides. You're bound to be seated next to Mr./Ms. Perfect one of these times.

12. If you're a girl, take off your glasses and get a makeover. If you're a boy, make sure your hair always looks messy and keep a distracted half-smile.

13. Don't invest in a healthy, thriving friend group. Good platonic relationships distract from your pursuit of True Love and result in an unacceptable sense of self-worth and independence. Remain lonely, aloof, and isolated until you meet the one person who Understands You. (If you must have friends, the limit is two: one of them is quirky and outgoing and the other one is super unpopular and clueless. Their contrast helps show how perfect you are.)

14. Lift your gaze and make smoldering eye contact with random strangers.

15. Find someone cute and stalk them. As long as you're attractive, they'll find it endearing.

16. Go to parties on a regular basis and make bad life decisions. You're bound to meet the perfect someone one of these times and drunkenly profess undying love for them, then have lots of angst for the rest of the book because you're not sure how serious you guys are and if this is going to work out.

17. If your genre is not already conducive to arranged marriages, convince an authority in your life to arrange one for you anyway: as soon as it's time for you and this random stranger to start getting to know each other, Perfect True Love will waltz into your life and create lots of angst as you reject your culture, parental wishes, and arranged spouse to pursue the kind of reckless, boundary-free romance you always desired.

18. Figure out where your childhood friend moved to years ago, uproot to that town, and show up at their school. You are guaranteed to fall in love.

19. If you're female, keep an eye out for supernatural beings. They're always ready to have forbidden relationships with ordinary girls. If you're male, however, there's no luck for you: one would presume that there are female supernatural beings too, but they apparently never have romances with humans.

20. The most effective thing you can do is get involved in your local Resistance. It doesn't matter who or what you're resisting – joining a group of people with weapons and tight leather clothes is the fastest route to a fulfilling relationship. Through all of your dangerous missions, you're resisting not only a totalitarian government, but also bad hygiene: no matter how hard you fight or how long you are stranded in the wilderness, you will never sweat enough to smell bad and will miraculously never grow unwanted facial/body hair. Nor will you have bad breath when it's time to kiss that special person. Throughout your love story, be prepared for conflict, angst, separations, and near-death experiences, but know that your involvement in this noble cause and love story will always succeed, never one at the expense of the other.

I hope this leaves you better equipped to pick your favorite path and pursue the person of your dreams. At the end the novel, gaze into your love interest's oft-described, magnetic eyes and say in unison with them, "We saved each other." These four words are the go-to statement of undying teenage love. It doesn't mean that you rescued the other from a near-death situation, although that is likely: these words signify the deeper meaning of how your trite feelings and dramatic angst have redeemed the other's soul. The more you question this, the more sense it makes, so speak these words often as your book draws to its conclusion.