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Hey there KeePers!
I need advice. Currently I’m looking at how I’ll need to improve my WIP and what I need to change as I get ready to start on my second draft. I’ve identified a few things I want to change but I’m in two minds about my mc’s age. The novel is a superhero/scifi YA but my character is 24/25ish.
My question is: do you think I should lower the age of my character to make him more relatable to a YA audience? (I’m only sixteen myself, but I seem to read a lot about older characters, but maybe that’s just me and the genres I read?) Or do you think that age is irrelevant and the character’s personality and struggles are what will make him relatable to Ya?
I’ll tag some people who are really active on this forum and are knowledgeable, but I’d appreciate anyone’s two cents!
@daeus, @dragon-snapper, @kate-flourney @jane-maree, @graciegirl @kina-lamb @that_writer_girl_99INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
Sorry @kate-flournoy, I always get your tag wrong!
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Oh dear, first I became an “active” member of the forum, now I’m “knowledgeable”? No pressure there. 😜
I can definitely relate with you on this. When I was younger, the protagonists of my stories were ALWAYS older than my actual age. Somehow, it made me feel cooler, writing characters who were older. I don’t do this anymore, but there’s something to be said for the age of our protagonists, both for us, the writers, and the readers.
Your concerns about relevancy and being relatable are probably warranted, but think about this–characters that are truly relatable and relevant to the readers will be characters that stand out because of their personality, their individual development, and their morals. I think the reason so many YA books fail to strike a chord with society is because their authors become too consumed with being relevant, or relatable, or whatever. And that’s fine–that may make money for them, and that’s great–if it’s all they’re pursuing.
But here’s a thought. As Christian writers, are we about creating hip and cool characters? Or Christ-like role models that will challenge society and their views? Characters that stand up for what’s right instead of falling into peer pressure? Characters that stand up for what they believe instead of choosing to remain silent?
I could rant for hours about this. Honestly. So many book series have made money off of flat characters, no ambition, and a weak plot. The truth is that, as writers, our platform is so much bigger. We’ve got the potential to share hope and light with everyone who picks up our book.
So what’s it gonna be? Relevancy? Or role-model?
Writer. Dreamer. Sometimes blogger. MBTI mess. Lover of Jesus and books.
@seekjustice – This is a great question and something I’m not very knowledgeable about, but I will share a little bit just of what I’ve experienced: There’s this one book that I’ve read about 3 times. The first time I read it, the WIP was a little younger than me, but I still got a ton out of the book. The second time I read it, I realized he was the same age as I was and it did make me feel more relatable to the character. I still learned a ton, but maybe in a different way.
So I think because people’s ages change, different people will get different things out of your book.
Like @that_writer_girl_99 said, character, I believe, is what matters the most. I’ve watched movies and read books that have really impacted me, not because of the WIP’s age (a lot of them have been older/younger than me), but because of their character. 🙂 Just a few things that I’ve experienced 🙂
@seekjustice
Great question!
First, let me try to think up a reasonable response…
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Personally, I love it when the character is exactly my age, but because YA is such a broad age group, that rarely happens. From 12-18, it’s hard to find a happy medium for everyone in an age group.
So.
As far as I know, the characters I’ve read in YA have never exceeded the age of twenty, so I’m not sure how well your WIP would fit into that genre of YA if your MC is that old.
Also to keep in mind is that the relatability is indeed important, however, I find it extremely difficult to relate to people that much older than me. As teens, we can regard adults as another level up. Hard for us to relate to adults? Probably for most teens who might be reading your novel. I’m guessing that teens reading it won’t be like @daeus and @kate-flournoy and try to figure out their MBTI type, or take @aratrea ‘s stance and discover the little thematic elements that might be important to the MC’s age in particular, ( 😛 Seriously, you guys are awesome! ) but the fact that the character is eight years older than them may certainly impede a relation between your MC and the character. ( 😛 )
On the other hand, there are books in the children’s section, (and perhaps books that I haven’t read in the YA section) that have adult characters, but were written before the twenty-first century. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ is a good example. Bilbo is about fifty years old in the Hobbit, and yet it is a children’s book, and a good one too. There is also ‘Star Wars’, where Luke Skywalker is eighteenish and the MC. Also a famous movie. I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t think of them right now.
You should also keep in mind your plot and setting. Is it important that the MC is 24/25ish, or would the plot run smoother if he were younger?
So, now that I’ve contradicted myself in the concept of the importance of a young or older MC, I’ll conclude. I always liked having a character around my age because I felt that I could put myself in there shoes, so to speak. But that’s not to say that you can’t have an adult character in YA.
And it comes down to this, if I were you, I would change the age to something a bit younger, at least 18 or 20 so that people in the YA age group are around the same age, and not eight years older. 😛
Good luck with your conclusion!☀ ☀ ☀ ENFP ☀ ☀ ☀
@seekjustice I see your problem—I’m also in the same boat. I’m writing a children’s book that has an adult protagonist. According to the 2016 Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market Guide, it is good to have your protagonist be on the oldest side your readership will allow (they recommend not going above college age for YA).
So if you can lower the age without changing the story or characters, do it. However, if it will change your story, leave him that age (for instance, in my book the protagonist is a scientist; if I made him the age of my target audience, he’d be a child. Then he couldn’t be a scientist and the whole plot would be altered).
I think it depends on how you present the character that determines whether or not it appeals to your audience, not necessarily their age. Look at Disney-Pixar. They produce only kid movies but most of their movies have adult protagonists (grown-up superheroes, fish, chefs, etc.) and kids still gobble them up.
@SeekJustice hey, everyone does. No biggie. 😛 I will be the first to confess that my name is cumbersome. 😉 In retrospect, I probably should have made my tag just @Kate, but oh well. (@Daeus @Rolena-Hatfield actually is there any way I can change it?)
Great question. You’ve got a lot of good answers here already, but I’ll just add my two cents in case. Personally, I don’t really care what age the character is so long as I can relate to him. In my own work I tend to gravitate more towards the younger side for the protagonists— nineteen, twenty, twenty one— but it’s instinctive, I think, because their stories as adults are just beginning, so it makes sense to start with them there. I love the coming-of-age story arc. Most of my work has that element hidden somewhere in the pages. That takes a fairly young protagonist, most of the time.
A younger protag makes more thematic sense too. (Stop snickering @Dragon-Snapper.) Because their stories as adults are just beginning, they need to figure out what they believe about the world and how they’re going to handle it, which is just about the definition of theme right there. 😛
I will be fair though and say the rest of the cast is usually a lot older. One or two friends/love interests around the protagonist’s age, and then the rest are usually somewhere upwards of thirty for the most part.@kate-flournoy *stops snickering*
*bursts into uncontrollable laughter*
Dragon Snapper will never stop laughing. XD☀ ☀ ☀ ENFP ☀ ☀ ☀
@SeekJustice Great question! I just recently went through trying to figure this out myself. 🙂
I’m not sure I have a definitive answer, but I can definitely share how my reading experience differs depending on the MC’s age which may help a bit. 🙂As a reader, the MC’s age is definitely a factor when I’m deciding whether or not I buy the book or rent it at the library. When I see the MC is under 13 or upwards of 21 or so, I begin to lose interest. Mostly because I don’t expect to be able to relate to any of the struggles the character will have. That said, I do enjoy protags just a few years older than me best (I’m 16 btw). 16 to maybe 20 is my sweet spot in general. With most younger MCs, I get this been-there-done-that kinda feeling. It’s almost like boredom.
And with older protags I get the exact opposite. I haven’t gotten to the point in my life yet where some of the struggles they may be going through can really resonate with me. Also, the older the protag, the more wary of content I will be since it’s more probable that I will run into adult content. For instance, I may have to deal with their dating-relationships and/or marriage, which I am not usually up to.
Now, I have read some books where the protagonist being out of my age group didn’t end up bothering me all that much, but most of the time, as a reader, I will shy away from MCs not in the 15-20 range if it’s a more modern work. Another note is that I am much more lenient with my preferred age range depending on the genre. While I’m particularly strict with stories based in the real world, and especially ones set in today’s world, I am willing to stretch my ages to much older/younger protags if they’re from a strong fantasy world or a world with a large fantastical element. This probably stems from the fact that those kind of fantasies generally deal with more universal topics than other books (like courage, honor, loss, etc.) that aren’t necessarily related to a specific age. At least, I think that may be why. Can’t say for sure though.
I sincerely hope this helps at least a teensy bit! 😀*is probably geeking out about something*
(apologies for taking a while to get to this, I got halfway through my reply last night and ten got distracted and forgot about it until this morning. >.<)
@SeekJustice Very good question. (as Elizabeth mentioned) I think that it doesn’t matter the age of your character, what matters most is the realism. I can read books that have 25-year-old male characters, but because they’re written well, and are real humans – I can relate. Because I’m a real human and we all do go through similar struggles at some point.
Age certainly can play a part in how relatable a character is though. And also how believeable it is. If you have a guy who’s doing a whole huge bunch of stuff but he’s only sixteen, all the sixteen-year-olds are going to be miffed because they definitely don’t have time to do any of that because of school and everything going on. But if you have a character who’s twenty doing all that, it’s much more believable – they don’t have to go to school, they don’t have assignments. If your characters aren’t believable they won’t be relatable either.
If you’re going to have a younger character (like the 16 year-old) something like Spider-Man: Homecoming is a brilliant example. Half of the movie is him at school, the other half is fighting baddies. And it’s SO relatable.
And then you’ve got Captain America: The First Avenger – it’s about a young man who’s considerably older than me. Yet I still really enjoyed the movie, because of the themes and character in general.So it’s up to you really. It doesn’t matter particularly, but if you’d feel more comfortable with a younger or older character, just go with that. 😀
Writing Heroes ♦ Writing Hope // janemareeauthor.com.au
@SeekJustice The one YA book I’ve read with an older protagonist is Wayne Thomas Batson’s Sword in the Stars. Haven’t seen it done anywhere else, and have likewise read that you shouldn’t have YA protagonists much above college age. That being said, it’s also good for a protagonist to be older than the reader, since apparently younger readers find it easier to sympathize with a protagonist who’s older than them than one who’s younger than them. If you want to write YA, my recommendation would be to make the protagonist younger, but it all depends on what kind of story you want to tell. Most rules can be broken when done effectively.
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. Guiding authors at Story Embers.
@that_writer_girl_99, you might be more knowledgeable than you think 😀 And I definitely agree with you about role-model vs relatability
@thelifeofkatie, thanks for that! I’ve experienced the same thing, if I reread a book I often get very different things out of it than the first time I read it. That’s one of my favourite things about doing a reread.
@dragon-snapper, when I asked my friend this question she actually pointed out as well that the Hobbit was a children’s book with an adult protagonist and the Lord of the Rings is an adult book with an adult protagonist that lots of teens read and love as well.
@mariposa, I’ve also heard the advice to make the protagonist a few years old than the age you’re writing for and I’ve always tried to stick to that as well as I can. it seems pretty solid advice. The original reason he was older than 20 was because I wanted him to be a scientist’s assistant.
@kate-flournoy, thanks. I think in some ways it is a coming-of-age story, so maybe it would work better if he was younger than he is.
@graciegirl thanks for your input! I appreciate it a lot. I’m also wary of reading contemporary books that feature characters older than 20 or so, so I’ll keep that in mind. And yes, I do agree that character’s too young or too old are harder (but not necessarily impossible) to relate to.
@jane-maree, yes the believability was one thing I was worried about! when I originally wanted my mc to be 16/17 I was worried that fighting crime as a superhero was really unbelievable, mostly because (until Homecoming) I’d never seen that done well. Spider-Man was actually one of the things that I was using as I was thinking this through. For example, while I really like the original Spider-man movies, Peter was harder to relate to than he was in Homecoming, where he was younger and still in school. I think the fact that the original Peter was older just made him more distant? (having said that, there are a lot of teenagers who watch the tv show The Flash and can really empathise with Barry Allen, even though he’s in his mid-twenties)
@aratrea thank you for your help! I really appreciate it!
I’ll give this some consideration, but I think I can make him much younger without really affecting the plot too much, so I’ll work with that. Thanks so much for all your input, its been really helpful and has helped with clearing up this issue for me a lot!INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@SeekJustice Yess Homecoming was brilliant. If you can use that example to model off, you’re good to start with.
Writing Heroes ♦ Writing Hope // janemareeauthor.com.au
@kate-flournoy Unfortunately that’s something that can’t be changed :/
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