[name_m]Hi[/name_m] all!
I am writing a YA fantasy novel, and there is a love triangle in it. I am trying to avoid clichés, so any advice you have to offer on the triangle would be very appreciated!
Here’s the situation: The MC (girl) has a best friend who is a boy. In the story, they are caught up in a political scheme. The MC meets another guy who is a little older than her. They become friends, and then she finds that he is actually a spy for the other side of the political scheme/struggle she is involved in. He is sentenced to death, but she doesn’t want to see him killed, so she helps him escape. Later, she actually becomes involved with his rebel group.
Meanwhile, her best friend admits to her that he loves her, but she doesn’t feel the same about him.
She ends up getting with the second guy (the spy). And I’m not sure how the rest is resolved yet.
That’s all I have so far! Let me know what you think. 
This love triangle sounds almost exactly like every other love triangle I can think of. A few examples: [name_f]Katniss[/name_f] disses [name_u]Gale[/name_u] (the best friend from childhood) for Peeta (the boy she meets during the events of the story). [name_u]America[/name_u] disses [name_u]Aspen[/name_u] (the boyfriend from back home) for [name_m]Maxon[/name_m] (the boy she meets during the events of the story). [name_f]Amy[/name_f] disses [name_u]Evan[/name_u] (the boyfriend from back home) for [name_m]Jake[/name_m] (the boy she meets during the events of the story).
These are just two examples from the countless books, specifically YA fantasy novels, that involve love triangles. If you truly want to get rid of cliches, do something different with the overall romance or do something drastic to the love triangle early in the story (kill off one of the boys, discover one is gay, have one turn out to be related to her, anything to avoid a long-term love triangle). In the early version of one of my stories, I had a love triangle similar to the cliched ones I mentioned above. As I was reworking the story, I completely got rid of the “best friend from home” character and replaced him with a mix of a close female friend, an intelligent and kind older brother figure, and an annoying foil who has some minor protective emotions for the main character that are confused for romance. The only way to avoid the cliched love triangle is to destroy the love triangle or do something extreme to change the love triangle early on.
[name_f]Do[/name_f] you think it would help if, say, the “best friend” character liked someone completely different? He would still be friends with the MC, but maybe there doesn’t have to be any romance between them at all. It would be hard to cut him out altogether - he has more of a role in the story than being part of the love triangle.
The problem with most so-called love triangles, as someone from my NaNo group put it, is that they’re not actually triangles, they’re just angles. They go from A to B and from B to C, but a triangle is closed, it also goes from C back to A.
So a way to mix things up a little could be if one of the guys had a thing for the other. Or if your MC falsely beliefes him to have one, and that’s what keeps her from acting on either of the boys. Sitcom Senanigans! Only if that suits your tone, of course…
Of course just dropping that idea alltogether is also a good idea if you wanted to avoid clichés anyway. I don’t think that means you have to cut him out as a character, just establish there’s no romance early on.
I’ve grown very bored of love triangles, especially in YA. It’s always one straight girl and two straight boys. My recommendation would be to scrap the idea completely OR give us some LGBTQ+ representation. For example, what if your female lead were bisexual and the love triangle consisted of her, a female love interest, and a male love interest? Or perhaps your female lead is straight with two male love interests, but the two guys fall in love with each other? Or maybe the three decide to enter a polyamorous relationship?
It sounds a little like Hunger Games in a sense, and, to be fair, you might want to rethink the love triangle idea.