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  1.  

    We all know about Gloatia Maya and her magical age of fifteen. And most of us have probably read Harry Potter, who single-handedly took down Voldemort at the ripe old age of eleven. How old are your characters?

    Personally, mine keep changing. When I started writing my novel at twelve, my main characters were twelve. When I turned thirteen, they turned thirteen, too. I’ve stopped their rapid aging at fifteen, but that is subject to change. I keep thinking “A thirteen-year-old couldn’t do this!” or “A fourteen-year-old couldn’t do that!” Also, I understand them better, because they’re my age…ish.

    So my question is, how old are your characters, and how does that effect the things they do?

  2.  

    When I started writing my novel at twelve, my main characters were twelve. When I turned thirteen, they turned thirteen, too. I’ve stopped their rapid aging at fifteen

    I did that exact same thing in the first book I seriously tried to write. I think I stopped the aging at fourteen though. Unfortunately, when my computer crashed, the whole thing disappeared. The first paragraph was awesome, but the rest sucked. I wish I could recreate the first paragraph.

    Lately, I’ve been making my characters older than I am. The first book I actually finished had a twenty-six-year-old protagonist because I was sixteen when I started it, and twenty-six is ten years older than sixteen. I just wanted an adult, so I used a random method to determine age.

    In the main book I’m writing now, the protagonist is nineteen. I always have trouble with deciding age, especially for teens/kids. My nineteen-year-old is kind of naive about a lot of things in her world (it’s fantasy). Older characters know more.

  3.  

    Male lead is twentyish, female lead is nineteen or twenty. Originally they were both in the 17-18 range, but I had to bump it up because the two extra years let me decompress the male lead’s backstory to the point where it was only somewhat improbable rather than “lol yeah right.”

    • CommentAuthorRocky
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009
     
    I typically wind up with a character around my age. I, too, was guilty of the parallel-aging tactic. Most of the stories I write are stories which I'd like to experience, so those characters are a bit of a self-insert. I try to steer away from anything else similar to myself, though.
  4.  

    37. And he has a wife and son.

    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009
     

    My main character is 10, it works because my story isn’t about a hero who can do amazing things. :P

  5.  

    I’m not quite sure…the male and female protags are about 16-17 in the beginning. Old enough to observe the world more objectively than a child, yet young enough that they don’t really know much about it yet. Especially in the girl’s case, since she had a very sheltered upbringing.

    • CommentAuthorSlyShy
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009
     

    Most of my characters are older than me. They seem to gravitate towards 19 and 23, possibly because I just like those numbers.

    •  
      CommentAuthorDiamonte
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009
     

    Female Lead is somewhere between her late teenage years and early twenties, but her maturity level definitely is closer to 17 because of situations in her life that forced her to grow up too fast in some aspects, but stunted her in others.

    Male Lead is floating in middle age, in his forties, but he is a mentor/father figure for the female lead.

    The other Female Lead [who really could be considered the true lead, since she orchestrates all the events in the book] is just ancient.

  6.  

    My main character is probably about 35, I don’t think it matters exactly how old he is.

  7.  

    I think age matters a lot. I am a much different person than I was three years ago, or even a year, for that matter. I will be very different in another year from now. A person’s experience is often defined by their age. (I say often, not always)

  8.  

    I’d say the younger you are, the more age matters. The difference between 12 and 17 is much greater than the difference between 32 and 37.

  9.  

    Yeah, I guess that would be true.

  10.  
    Well my male lead is 18ish and he has a little sister that has to be around 10 or less, so to make the lead any older that early 20s would make it a bit unrealistic that he has such a young sister, though I guess there's people out there who had their second (or third or fourth or whatever) child pretty late... Well he just can't be that old or the whole story probably wouldn't work.

    My "mentor" would probably be in his 50s or 60s, and then there's a whole bunch of other people probably around that age in my main group of people, too. Book 2 is when I add more people to the main group (after some have died), some around the same age as the lead and some in their late 20s, 30s or 40s.
  11.  

    The guy ‘mentor’ is…well, I don’t know, anywhere from his late thirties to early fifties. The female mentor is maybe in her mid-forties.

  12.  

    I’m in a bit of a conundrum with this, since I have to come up with some convoluted explanation for my female lead not already married off given her age and status, but I want to keep her around the same age as the male, who as stated can’t really be younger without straining credibility even more than I already am.

    Seems like all my supporting characters are either around the same age as the leads or else they’re old codgers.

  13.  

    I’m in a bit of a conundrum with this, since I have to come up with some convoluted explanation for my female lead not already married off given her age and status, but I want to keep her around the same age as the male, who as stated can’t really be younger without straining credibility even more than I already am.

    Several reason off the top of my head:

    1. Her father is very, very doting. He doesn’t want his little princess to get married too soon, or to a guy she’s doesn’t like. (Stolen from Romeo&Juliet, by the by)
    2. She is unmarriable. She’s too ugly, too nasty, has some sort of defect, or is in any way unsuitable for marriage.
    3. She is already an old maid. She’s untouchable.
    4. She has taken an oath of some kind to keep her virginity.
    5. She already was married, very young, but her husband, who was very old, died. Alternatively, killed in something (battle, brawl, booze…).
    6. She has some sort of test set up, like Atalanta or the Grimm’s fairy tale princesses.

    There you go, six off the top of my head.

  14.  

    1. Her father is very, very doting. He doesn’t want his little princess to get married too soon, or to a guy she’s doesn’t like. (Stolen from Romeo&Juliet, by the by)

    I’ll probably go with something like this, I suppose.

    •  
      CommentAuthorArtimaeus
    • CommentTimeAug 18th 2009 edited
     

    Let’s see. In Nightfall, most of the main characters are 17 (my age). In the story I’m planning to write in November, my main characters are 20 and 19. I’ve also written a 12 year old and a 22 year old.

    I’m in a bit of a conundrum with this, since I have to come up with some convoluted explanation for my female lead not already married off given her age and status

    1) There’s some sort of scandal that she has yet to live down (she got pregnant off a farmboy and miscarried, for example)
    2) Alternatively, in the right society, the mere knowledge that she isn’t a virgin might be enough to scare suitors off.
    3) she was betrothed to somebody who went missing or ran off or something, and it’s not clear whether she still has obligations to him.
    4) She’s a bastard technically not a member of the family. (sorry, been reading a lot of Song of Ice and Fire recently)
    5) Tradition dictates that a girl may not be married till her older sisters are, and she has one ugly ass older sister.

  15.  

    3) she was betrothed to somebody who went missing or ran off or something, and it’s not clear whether she still has obligations to him.

    That might work. I don’t want it to be a major plot point, just a believable way to handwave the question. Thanks for all the suggestions though, y’all.

  16.  

    My characters are usually older than me: 19-22 usually.

  17.  

    I’m in a bit of a conundrum with this, since I have to come up with some convoluted explanation for my female lead not already married off given her age and status, but I want to keep her around the same age as the male, who as stated can’t really be younger without straining credibility even more than I already am.

    1) The circumstances of her birth is thought to be unusual or unlucky in a certain way (there was an eclipse at the time of her birth, etc) and as people are highly superstitious she is thought to be undesirable, even though they aren’t prepared to admit this themselves.

    2) His father is very proud and headstrong and won’t settle for a son-in-law that is extremely noble in blood, while such marriage will be almost impossible given the girl’s family’s current standings. This might work if the girl’s family is a once-noble run-down house, or something.

    3) The girl has a older sister/brother who is also unmarried, and the customs of that society decrees that the firstborn child must also be married first. (The Celts had this custom, I think)

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeAug 18th 2009
     

    My main characters are in their thirties. Up until last year, however, they had aged along with me, from 11 right up to 20 before I decided to make them adults.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeAug 18th 2009
     

    My main character is somewhere in her mid hundreds- it changes day-to-day, depending on how old her family is and what particular view I’m taking toward her. At the moment, she’s about in her 140s or 150s. However, because she’s not human, that isn’t old at all… it’d be the equivalent of being, say, mid-to-late-twenties for a human. She’s certainly not 200 yet, though, which would sort of be the equivalent of turning 30 for us.

    •  
      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeAug 18th 2009
     

    I’ve got a pretty large range of ages from my characters. Youngest I have is three-years-old. Oldest is over 500. The main characters in my current project range from 18 to 27. For the most part, their ages only really affect the amount of life experience they have and whether or not they have children/grandchildren.

  18.  

    1) The circumstances of her birth is thought to be unusual or unlucky in a certain way (there was an eclipse at the time of her birth, etc) and as people are highly superstitious she is thought to be undesirable, even though they aren’t prepared to admit this themselves.

    I like this one. Now I want to use it, and my character is too young to get married!

  19.  

    I think age matters a lot. I am a much different person than I was three years ago, or even a year, for that matter.

    I’m not really much different. But I do think age matters. I always want to know how old the characters are.

    •  
      CommentAuthorSpanman
    • CommentTimeAug 18th 2009
     

    The duration of the story is about three years, so my two main characters go from age 17-20 and 23-26, respectively. I gave up on characters that are the same age as me quite a while ago….

  20.  

    My main characters are aged between 16 and 23. Evidently, I’m currently 19 years old.

  21.  

    I have major characters ranging from 15 to around 4000 years, but the 4000 year old guy is a Vampire bent on burning the world, so he might not count. The fifteen year old, meanwhile, has the ability to see possible futures and basically acts as intelligence officer for a secret organization’s version of Delta Force. He’s an antagonist, too, although not really a villain.

    On the protagonist end, the main characters are a 30-year old FBI agent, a 35-year old FBI agent who is assigned as the first guy’s partner, a 28-year old Gypsy Vampire Hunter, and a 615 year old Inquisitor.

  22.  

    currently- teenagers for me. I also deal in kids aged eleven to thirteen or so. I know I’m going to make a dreadful hash of it (hey, practice makes perfect!), but I’m going to have a go at doing eighteen-to-twenty year olds.

  23.  

    My “epic” (or it will be when I’m done.) has about four main characters:

    Fyodor, age 19
    Ivan, age 65
    Mitka, age 37ish (I’ve forgotten exactally….I haven’t worked on it in a while..)
    Katarina (Katya for short), age 6

    Three of them die. Yay.

  24.  

    The ages of my main characters iare between 19/20 and tens of thousands of years:P And although not many of them die, plenty of them get tortured/mutilated/driven insane/disfigured. Hurt em plenty, I say.

    •  
      CommentAuthorMoldorm
    • CommentTimeAug 22nd 2009
     

    I usually only think of my characters’ ages in very vague terms (child, teenage, young/middle/old adult).

  25.  

    Hm…well my protagonist is only twenty seven and is a counter terrorist officer for England. My antagonist is at least six or seven hundred, but he doesn’t care to remember such trivialities.

    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeAug 23rd 2009
     
    I keep my characters middle aged, jaded and for the most part male. Need to work on that. I also kill everyone off. Strokes? Check. Alcohol poisoning? Check. Getting crushed by a helicopter? Check indeed!
    • CommentAuthorWitrin
    • CommentTimeAug 23rd 2009 edited
     

    5) Tradition dictates that a girl may not be married till her older sisters are, and she has one ugly ass older sister.

    Taming of the Shrew. Yay.

    My protagonist is 17, give or take a year either way. She’s intelligent, but for most of the plot has the emotional maturity of a cactus.

    • CommentAuthorliadan14
    • CommentTimeAug 23rd 2009
     
    23. Strangely enough, this is a rewrite from about 3 years back because the story won't leave me alone, and the protagonist was 23 then too. Apparently it's meant to be. I have another story where the character is about 18. I have issues with going younger on actual original fic because the characters usually turn out unrealistic or unlikeable.
  26.  

    So my question is, how old are your characters, and how does that effect the things they do?

    Well my main story cover a fairly wide time span. (up to ten years)
    Now some start at around 16-20 but of course, they’ll be older in the end. This allows me to show the characters growing as they go through everything.

    The reason for starting them in their teens is realism. The world they’re in forces people to grow up sooner. “Childhood” is considered over around 14-16 (varies based on species). There are no such things as teenagers. (just kids and adults) I do enjoy a variety though so there are characters much older, in their 30s, 50s, 60s or thousands. Each depends on the character, their history, etc.

    With Nagasaki moon I prefer to make everyone as old as possible. Because the more history you can give characters, the more fun it is to discover facts about them.

    Most of my characters are older than me. They seem to gravitate towards 19 and 23, possibly because I just like those numbers.

    Yep, that’s why I made Jack in NM 19. It was all for Sly. Yes sir. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

    2) His father is very proud and headstrong and won’t settle for a son-in-law that is extremely noble in blood, while such marriage will be almost impossible given the girl’s family’s current standings. This might work if the girl’s family is a once-noble run-down house, or something.

    The main romance in my work has a dramatic point that revolves around something similar to this.

    I think age matters a lot. I am a much different person than I was three years ago, or even a year, for that matter.

    Well up until about 20, a human being undergoes a lot of changes. After that 20 mark the changes stop, thus your 23rd year is a lot more like your 22nd year than your 16th and 15th years were with each other.

  27.  

    Getting crushed by a helicopter? Check indeed!

    That made me think of ER.

  28.  

    I read “marriage” as “marijuana.”

    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeSep 1st 2009
     
    NeuroticPlatypus: Wasn't that more of a hand-removal?
  29.  

    ^^Yeah, but later it came back and landed on top of him.