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Tropes are often tropes for a reason, so don’t be too worried about leaning into them. The mean girl trope has become so ingrained in pop culture that you don’t have to feel like you must reinvent the wheel. It’s not as difficult as you might think to write a trope without leaning into cliché, and the fact that you already know that your mean girl needs motivation to be a believable and well-rounded character means you’ve covered the hard part already!

So let’s look at some tips for how to lean into the the trop without resorting to cliché:

Understand why people are “mean”

Mean girls are cruel. So, to write the trope well, you need to understand what drives someone to behave cruelly. Meanness rarely exists in a vacuum and is usually a response to something like fear, insecurity, trauma, learned behaviour, or a desperate attempt to maintain control in a world that feels chaotic.

What might your character be protecting? Is she afraid of being seen as weak? Did she learn that cruelty equals power from watching her parents? Is she terrified of losing her social standing because it’s the only thing that makes her feel valuable? Has she been hurt before and decided that striking first is safer than being vulnerable?

The most interesting mean girls aren’t cruel because they’re inherently evil. They’re cruelty usually stems from a learned behaviour, because, at some point, they learned cruelty was effective or necessary.

Give her a goal beyond “being mean”

You already know that this is necessary, so half the battle is won. A mean girl whose only goal is to torment others isn’t an interesting character, and all characters ride or die on how interested readers are in getting to know them.

Think about what your mean girl actually wants. Some possibilities might include:

• Survival: She may try to maintain her social position because losing it feels like losing everything.
• Approval: Perhaps she’s desperate for validation from a parent, peer group, or romantic interest.
• Control: If other areas of her life feel chaotic (family problems, mental health struggles, uncertainty about the future, etc.), controlling her social environment might be her way of coping.
• Protection: She might be guarding something; a secret, a vulnerable friend, her own fragile self-image.
• Achievement: Maybe she’s genuinely ambitious, and her meanness is a misguided strategy for eliminating competition.

Her meanness should be a tactic she uses to achieve her goal, not the goal itself. This is the distinction between a three-dimensional character and a cliché. She needs a goal, a motivation, and a conflict.

Show how her behaviour impacts her

One thing the Hollywood stereotype often misses is the cost of being cruel. In reality, people who behave badly usually pay for it in some way, even if it’s internal. This can often lead to a self-perpetuating cycle, as the character compensates for the negative results by attempting to assert more control over the situation.

A mean girl might experience:

• Isolation: She may have many “friends” but no one who truly knows her because cruelty keeps people at arm’s length.
• Exhaustion: Maintaining a persona is tiring. She might be constantly performing, and never able to relax.
• Self-loathing: Many mean people don’t actually like themselves. Her cruelty might be a way of projecting outward what she feels inside, or making others feel what she thinks she deserves.
• Paranoia: If she’s climbed to the top by tearing others down, she knows exactly how quickly she could fall and needs to protect her position.
• Missed connections: Show moments where her cruelty costs her something real. This could be a potential friendship, a moment of genuine intimacy, or even an opportunity.

Avoid the visual shorthand

Hollywood loves to signal “mean girl” through appearance: the perfect hair, the designer clothes, the eye roll, the friendship group. While these details aren’t inherently bad, relying on them too heavily can make your character feel like a type rather than a person.

Make sure you also reveal character through choices and actions, rather than just relying on visual cues. How does she treat people when no one’s watching? What does she do when she’s alone? What are her private habits, her secret interests, her unexpected kindnesses? A mean girl who’s secretly obsessed with birdwatching or writes poetry she’d never show anyone becomes infinitely more interesting than one defined by her signature lipstick or hair.

Don’t neglect relationships

A character’s relationships reveal who they are. Think about how your mean girl interacts with different people:

• Is she cruel to everyone, or does she choose specific people? Why them?
• Does she treat her friends well, or does the meanness extend to them too? Are these genuine friendships or alliances of convenience?
• Is she deferential to teachers and parents while mean to peers, or is she cruel across the board?
• How does she respond to someone who is immune to her tactics?

The contrast between how she treats different people can reveal her motivations and vulnerabilities.

Let her be more than one thing

The most important thing you can do is refuse to let her meanness define your character entirely. Give her contradictions. Perhaps she’s cruel to her social rivals, but genuinely kind to animals. Maybe she’s dismissive of most people, but fiercely loyal to one particular friend. She might be terrible at parties but surprisingly thoughtful one-on-one.

Plenty of beloved novels have been set in locations their authors never stepped foot in. I know that so much writing advice will tell you to “write what you know,” but I’ve always preferred to say that we should write what we can learn. It’s not about where you’ve been, but about knowing how to research effectively and, more importantly, understand what details actually matter to your readers.

Modern technology has made writing about distant places more accessible than ever before (or you can kick it old school and head to the library). You don’t have to have been somewhere to make your setting feel real, lived-in, and genuine.

Research beyond the basics

Use visual and interactive tools

Google Maps and Street View have become invaluable tools. You can virtually “walk” down streets, see how buildings are spaced, and get a sense of a place’s landscape and atmosphere. For a US small town, for example, you might explore the distance between buildings and how the town centre is laid out, what local businesses exist and how they’re clustered together, how parking works and where people gather, and most importatnly, the style of houses and the rhythm of residential streets.

YouTube is another goldmine for this kind of research. Search for vlogs, driving tours, or “day in my life” videos from people living in places similar to your setting. They give you ambient details, like sounds, daily rhythms, and the way people interact that can really help you build a sense of place.

Dig into local sources

To really understand a place, you need to understand what its people care about. Local newspapers (many of which have online archives), can show you genuine community concerns, local controversies, and the way residents talk about where they live. For contemporary settings, town Facebook groups, Reddit communities, and local forums are treasure troves of mundane details.

Even tourism websites can be surprisingly useful. Search for “things to do in [place name]” and you’ll discover not only what is tourist-worthy, but will also probably find blogs sharing what locals consider noteworthy as they share the small, quirky details that make a place distinctive.

Read widely in your setting

Novels, memoirs, or essays set in locations similar to yours are also great resources. Other works that share you setting that have been well-received will give you a sense for what tolerance readers will have for authenticity.

Pay attention not just to what these writers describe, but how they describe it. Which details do they choose to include and which do you think they leave out? This will help you develop an instinct for what matters and what doesn’t.

Focus on universal truths

Readers don’t need exhaustive geographic accuracy. They need emotional authenticity.

A small town in the US shares qualities with small towns everywhere in the world. Everyone knows everyone’s business, there’s often tension between tradition and change, young people leave and sometimes return, and certain families or institutions hold outsized influence. These universal dynamics are the heart of your setting rather than the specifics.

What emotional truth do you want to convey about a place? Is it claustrophobic or comforting? Is it dying or resilient? Once you know the feeling you’re going for, the research details you need will become clearer.

What to include (and what to skip)

One of the biggest traps writers fall into is over-researching and then feeling compelled to include everything they’ve learned. Resist this urge. Your job isn’t to prove you’ve done your homework, which is a trap that writers with specialist interests often fall into. Accuracy should not come at the expense of plot. Your readers should feel like they’re there.

Be specific in your detail

A few well-chosen sensory details will do more work than paragraphs of description. The smell of coffee from a diner, the sound of a distant train, the way heat shimmers off pavement in summer are all small, specific moments create atmosphere without overwhelming your reader and don’t necessarily need an intimate knowledge of a setting to assume and describe.

You might also include regional speech patterns, cultural touchstones that ground your era and location, or details about local businesses or landmarks. But use these sparingly. You’re writing a novel, not a travel guide.

Keep vague what you’re uncertain about

If you’re not confident about precise distances, travel times, or highly specific local references, stay general. Readers are surprisingly forgiving about vague logistics but quick to notice when something feels wrong. When in doubt, focus on the emotional experience of a place rather than its precise geography.

Things to avoid.

• Don’t over-describe your research. Readers don’t need a geography lesson or a tourism brochure. A few confident details will establish your setting.
• Avoid stereotypes. Every place has clichés associated with it, and while some may contain a grain of truth, leaning too heavily on them makes your setting feel flat and can often be offensive.
• Don’t ignore the climate and seasons. Weather affects everything, from what people wear, to how they socialise, what they complain about, and how the landscape looks. Make sure your setting reflects the reality of its climate, and that you understand the differences. For instance, if you’re writing from the southern hemisphere and forget that the northern hemisphere has different seasons, your readers are going to be jolted out of their belief in your setting.
• Don’t forget scale and logistics. Different places have different relationships with distance. What counts as “nearby” varies enormously between cultures and geographies. For the US specifically, remember that it’s vast, so a “quick drive” in rural America might feel (and be) further than where you’re from.