An Age Dilemma

The JoJo

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To cut to the chase, I've had feedback from a couple of beta readers which has led me to question the age of my novel's protagonist.

For context, we're talking about a complete science fiction adventure, just shy of 67,000 words. The young protagonist is twelve years old, but two beta readers have separately suggested that she would be more believable if she was a year or two older. Changing her age is not completely out of the question, but it would require some changes to her backstory, which involves events happening to her and her younger brother when they were a toddler and a baby respectively. These events are no longer recalled due to her young age at the time, but if the gap between the siblings is widened by a couple of years, then it becomes very unlikely that she would not remember any of it.

An alternative suggested by one of the beta readers was to simply not mention the protagonist's age. This would be fairly trivial to do, as its only mentioned in two places in the entire story: once at the end of the fourth chapter and again at the beginning of the seventh. My concern though is that it would be fairly easy to guess by how they're described and act at certain times that they aren't that old, and it would come across as stilted when trying to pitch the book if I tried to avoid ever specifying her age.

It was also suggested that kids and teens tend to like to read about a character who is at least their own age, if not slightly older. I've generally imagined my book appealing to readers aged between about ten and fourteen, though I realise now that crosses over both MG and YA.

In summary, I suppose my questions are these:

1) Is it feasible to pitch a story at ten to fourteen year olds, or would it be better to commit fully to either MG or YA? (Realistically given the content and style it's written in, probably the latter.)

2) Would it be feasible to have a novel pitch which never mentions the protagonist's age, including in the query letter and synopsis? Or would that seem like a strange omission for YA?

3) Do you think age of protagonist is a potential dealbreaker for agents and publishers? I can think of some YA with similarly young protagonists, like His Dark Materials' Lyra and Will, but they may well be exceptional.

If you've read all the way through that, thank you :)
 
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cornflake

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To cut to the chase, I've had feedback from a couple of beta readers which has led me to question the age of my novel's protagonist.

For context, we're talking about a complete science fiction adventure, just shy of 67,000 words. The young protagonist is twelve years old, but two beta readers have separately suggested that she would be more believable if she was a year or two older. Changing her age is not completely out of the question, but it would require some changes to her backstory, which involves events happening to her and her younger brother when they were a toddler and a baby respectively. These events are no longer recalled due to her young age at the time, but if the gap between the siblings is widened by a couple of years, then it becomes very unlikely that she would not remember any of it.

An alternative suggested by one of the beta readers was to simply not mention the protagonist's age. This would be fairly trivial to do, as its only mentioned in two places in the entire story: once at the end of the fourth chapter and again at the beginning of the seventh. My concern though is that it would be fairly easy to guess by how they're described and act at certain times that they aren't that old, and it would come across as stilted when trying to pitch the book if I tried to avoid ever specifying her age.

It was also suggested that kids and teens tend to like to read about a character who is at least their own age, if not slightly older. I've generally imagined my book appealing to readers aged between about ten and fourteen, though I realise now that crosses over both MG and YA.

In summary, I suppose my questions are these:

1) Is it feasible to pitch a story at ten to fourteen year olds, or would it be better to commit fully to either MG or YA? (Realistically given the content and style it's written in, probably the latter.) You really meed to commit, otherwise it looks as if you don't understand that MG and YA exist and what the categories generally mean.

2) Would it be feasible to have a novel pitch which never mentions the protagonist's age, including in the query letter and synopsis? No. Or would that seem like a strange omission for YA?

3) Do you think age of protagonist is a potential dealbreaker for agents and publishers? Not necessarily, but there'd usually need to be a reason besides you wanting it to be something it wouldn't generally be considered by publishers -- like the ages in your world aren't comparable for whatever reason, or the character is preternaturally mature or whatever .
I can think of some YA with similarly young protagonists, like His Dark Materials' Lyra and Will, but they may well be exceptional.

If you've read all the way through that, thank you :)

See le bleu.
 

Debbie V

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Agreeing with Cornflake. I know editors and agents who look for the age in the first couple of pages.
 

emlm21

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I would definitely include the age - I know it's something I look for as a reader. And I don't think the age of the MC is a dealbreaker for agents, but you'd have to commit to MG or YA. One, because when you start pitching to agents some will only accept one and not the other. And two, it shows you have an understanding of what exactly your book is.

Can I ask what happens/what is it about the character where it's hard to believe she's 12 but 14 is more suitable? I think age can be flexible, depending on the situation. For example, my MC is 18 because there are some sexual situations where I think 18 is simply more mature than 16. The other character I had aged at 24-25 for awhile, and realized at that age, making him 22-23 didn't change the story at all.
 

Horseflye

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Pick an age :) I had the opposite problem; my agent wanted my MC to be younger, which meant I had to move her from college to high school! Worth it though!