I've noticed a lot of stories on this site star characters in the 12-17 year old range, how old are the characters in your stories and why did you chose that age for them?
For example I make a lot of my characters in the 24-28 range because in addition to being at peak physical shape I feel its old enough to have a realistically high skill set and general level of competency and emotional maturity but still a manipulable sense of identity which suits the needs of my stories. What about yours?
My youngest is 14 or 15, but is in disguise as a 16 year old (albeit a smol one). Then my others range from 16 to 21, my oldest
I tend to have characters from the 14-25 range, but I really wish I could have a 60 year old man. I just don't know what it's like to be 60 and a man
It really depends. I have a character who gets older as the book progresses (6-26) and I have a couple teens and some peeps in their late 20's
My most major protagonists are 17 and 21. The full main cast ranges from 16 to 30, and there are a couple of named characters who are older or younger than this range. I figure if you go any younger than 16, you're dealing with literal kids, especially in the type of story I'm writing.
My major characters range from 18 to 32 with the exception of one 10 year old. If I make them too young, I feel like they wouldn't be able to realistically have enough skill and experience (as said by @IShotAnArrowInTheAir), but if they're too old I wouldn't be able to write them as well because I wouldn't be able to relate to them.
I think the main reason why a lot of stories have young characters is because they made the characters the same age as their demographic, which is understandable.
My main characters range from 15- 30 something, with most of my characters being in their late teens/early 20s. My 30 something year old is kind of an outlier, but I needed a mature responsible adult character for this one particular story.
I guess I stick to that range because I like reading stuff about teen characters. Makes sense that you would write something that you'd actually want to read.
In addition to that, I'm 23 so characters are more or less around my age. Because of that, I don't really have to think too hard about whether or not it's realistic for a character of that age to say/do something. And I guess I just connect better with that range because not only do I fall into it, but so do a lot of people that I see on a regular basis (friends, family, coworkers, etc).
Wait guys I realized a thing. or 3.
1) I obviously don't pay enough attention to my characters ages
The youngest one is 15 but disguised as an 17 year old bc that helps keep her cover (she's cross dressing bc reasons)
I have one sixteen year old, two seventeen year olds, and one nineteen year old. I'm writing in my 21 year old rn andddd….
2) my minor characters are actually a much wider range. They're like…. 17 (which is the legal adult age in my fantasy world) to like
IDK
their late 40s or 50s? I'd say that the king is the oldest character who has been in more than one scene and he's in his late 40s prob
3) I obviously don't do enough basic character building. I started this project two years ago, before I used notebook, and I'm too lazy to copy all my character development from google docs to here for this project. And like… I just
don't do ages (at least for all my characters… but at this point I have ages set for all major players…. except my villain but his background/age aren't well known. He kinda works behind the scenes) or weight.
I do height and other appearance things tho so that's what matters right?
Wow. I have old characters compared to you guys. My range is from 21 to 74. Mainly around their 30's.
@Joneathan you are truly a brave soul indeed. I can hardly think of any media amature or professional that dares to make a main character more than half past 30.
21 to 74- Thats goals
Probably all of my human characters fall somewhere between 21-29, but most of my characters are animal like creatures so ages become more difficult.
Age rages for my characters are 20-late 50’s. Doesn’t mean i don’t have a character older or younger than those though. Those are for my humans.
Generally my monsters tend to be very old on a human scale, but to them age means nothing. (Talking about millions or billions here, folks.)
My animals, I generally like to keep around 3 years old or what might be considered a fair age for their species.
The youngest major character is 15 and the oldest is 24, and the youngest minor character is 12 and the oldest 45-ish.
One of my youngest major characters is 3…haha. Except I have them as a child for one of my other major characters so as the story progresses they'll get older. My oldest is about 1014. (Its a demon character) My usual character range is about 17-34
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