Do You Age With Your Characters?

popmuze · Jun 16, 2007

No matter how old I get, I'm basically only interested in writing about what happened to me in my early 20s.

I know a lot of interest must have happened to me since, so how come it's not what I want to write about?

JoNightshade · Jun 16, 2007

I go the opposite way. I always write about people much older than I am. As a teenager I was writing between 18 and 25. At 18, I was writing around 30. In my mid-20s, now I'm writing up to 70 and everything in between. Rarely younger than 18, though. I think for me it's two reasons: First, I've always been more "mature" than my own age group, throughout my childhood, and always felt more comfortable with adults. Second, I like to explore what comes next. Where am I headed? My characters precede me into generational conflict, paving the way.

Also, it's fun to write about an age before I get there, and then look back and see how accurate I was. So far I've done pretty well. Not that age has much to do with maturity...

Siddow · Jun 16, 2007

I'm reading a book now, a kinda silly one, but I borrowed it from the library as a crutch to finish Script Frenzy, titled "How to Write a Movie in 21 Days" by Viki King. In it, she talks about life themes, and what themes we are apt to explore depending on the different times of our lives.

Judging by her armchair psychology, older folks tend to explore the life themes of earlier years, trying to make things come out differently. FWIW, she nailed my themes for my age. If I wasn't thinking I was five years younger than I am, that is.

Kristin Landon · Jun 16, 2007

There may also be some distancing involved, more or less in self-defense. If I wrote a rip-roaring SF adventure novel about the wild adventures of a middle-aged woman who's kidnapped from her humdrum job and family by exotic aliens and embarks on a galaxy-spanning quest to save the space-time continuum, everyone will say it's a Mary Sue. If I write the same book about a 20-year-old, no problem.

Storyteller5 · Jun 16, 2007

My characters do tend to age with me although not always at the same speed as me. These days I am writing with characters close to my age but maybe a little younger. I don't feel in touch with high school, but I can do late twenties, early thirties.

Chasing the Horizon · Jun 16, 2007

Well, I'm 20 and I write main characters everywhere between 14 and 55. I do seem to have a cluster of characters between 14 and 19, then another group that are all between 30 and 38, but I have a few that fall in between or over those ages too. I haven't been writing long enough to know if this might change over time.

Just from watching the people around me I've noticed age and maturity have remarkably little to do with each other, though.

maddythemad · Jun 16, 2007

My characters are usually 2-3 years older than me, because I want the target audience to be my age. However, I kind of wonder if I'll keep writing about teenagers when I grow up, because they're so fun to have as characters. I guess I'll see....

Elodie-Caroline · Jun 16, 2007

I'm 46 years old, and in the novel I've finished, my female character is the same age. I've written her as having hot flushes and panic attacks, as I know what I'm talking about lol. My character also has some very childlike qualities about her, she's psychologically damaged, so she's really like a kid in a grown-ups body.

I think I would only ever write from a younger woman's perspective, if I were doing my memoirs.

Elodie

popmuze · Jun 16, 2007

I guess I feel like if I write about what's happening now, too many people are going to read into it and maybe get offended.

If I write about the past, everyone's either dead or way past caring that I'm writing about them.

It could be the matter of distance, too, both time and emotional, but then, I still think of myself as so much younger (at least emotionally) than I actually am.

FloVoyager · Jun 16, 2007

Not really. I've always written about mature adults, 40 to 60-year olds, regardless of my age. Well, except for my current WIP, in which the MC is 1100.

Legionsynch · Jun 16, 2007

Other than becoming more mature than I was a decade ago, I don't feel very different from what I felt like as a teenager. I think that's why I've focused so much time writing about teenagers, and things they're going through.

Freud was the one who talked about oral fixations as a child leading into adulthood, right? I think I have a teenage fixation. It's just what my mind puts together, and it's still interesting to me.

narselon · Jun 16, 2007

In my first efforts most of my characters were around my age (late teens). But I think I was placing myself in the role of the characters instead of letting them being themselves.

Now I write characters that are much older than me (30-40s). That way nobody can say a character is essentially what i wish I could be. But I'm not sure if the behavior fits the listed ages exactly. My younger characters (mid to late twenties) are much more secure with their place in the world while the older ones question everything. I suppose some of my teen struggles are comparable to a midlife crisis.

Shady Lane · Jun 16, 2007

When I was fourteen, my characters were sixteen.

Now I'm sixteen, and my characters are eighteen.

So, yes, they age with me, just two years ahead.

Jo · Jun 16, 2007

I've written about an immature ten-year-old, and her side-kick who's an ageless twenty-tooth. I've also played with growed-up characters, but they're icky and mean. What does that say about me? :tongue

WriterInChains · Jun 16, 2007

It takes me a long time to process things well enough to write about them, so my protags are younger than me. Most of them by at least 15-20 years.

One was 38 y/o, but she didn't come across as well as the younger gals -- maybe I'll be able to fix her in 10 years? *lol*

reenkam · Jun 16, 2007

my characters are always 14-19, pretty much. I've been writing since I was 14...I'm 19 now. Maybe when I'll turn 20 I'll add that to my age range...

alaskamatt17 · Jun 16, 2007

No, I kind of mix it up in general. For my Orion's Key I started off using protagonists in their mid twenties, but now that I'm older I've realized the story really needs to be told from a teenager's perspective.

In The Blight there are no teenage characters. Some of the protagonists are in their 30s, some in their 20s, a couple are in their 50s. William Torres is 6.

For me, it's basically whatever age the character looks when I first see them in my mind's eye. Later, ages can be revised to whatever the story needs.

Claudia Gray · Jun 16, 2007

Evernight and its sequels are YA novels, with a MC and her friends in their late teens and early 20s -- younger than me. The thriller proposal I'm going to develop in the fall has a MC who is in her early 50s -- older than me. I enjoy imagining the different perspectives!

maestrowork · Jun 17, 2007

When I was younger, I wrote about characters much older than I was. Now I am always older than my (main) characters. I do try to write about people closer to my age range, if the story calls for it.

ChaosTitan · Jun 17, 2007

In an odd way, I've aged into my characters. I have always written about protagonists around the age of 26-32. Not sure why, it's just been the appropriate age.

In one week I'll be twenty-seven, the same age as my very first novel protagonist. Hehe.

Stijn Hommes · Jun 18, 2007

The ages of my characters are all over the place. The short story that I have submitted to magazines now is about a 30 something mother and her 8 year old son. My novel is about a 10 year old (and features a 14 year old brother). Another story in the planning features a father and his son in similar age ranges. I'm 26 myself. I tend to write about any number of people apart from those in my own age range.

I prefer writing about kids, because that's something I have experience with.
I still remember being a kid (and pretty much still am one at heart). My characters haven't aged since I begin writing, so my answer would be no.

Feathers · Jun 18, 2007

When I first started writing as a teen, I wrote about teens my age, or a few years older. I still keep that same habit.
Alot of it is because there is such a huge difference between the stages and mentalities between ages. Someone hitting thier thirties will think 25 was young, 25 will think 20 was young, and someone in thier seventies will muse those youngsters have thier whole lives ahead of them, so what should they care?

popmuze · Jun 18, 2007

I'm even more particular, in that what I want to write about takes place in a certain time and place, Greenwich Village in the 60s. These days I live in suburbia, but those years in the Village dominate my thoughts.

Southern_girl29 · Jun 18, 2007

My first real novel was written when I was 20. My character started out at the age of 16 and it followed her through most of her life. It gave me a chance to write different ages, all through one character.

In my second novel, I wrote about a 22-year-old man coming home from Vietnam after serving two tours of duty. I started it when I was 22-years-old and I'm female. The second half of the book is told from his daughter's POV, and it starts when she's 15.

Psychic Straits is about a 14-year-old girl. There are other 14-year-olds in it, along with a 16 and 18 year old, plus her parents.

Feathers · Jun 18, 2007

^Sounds like a pretty diverse book^

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