It’s April again and that means it’s time for the A to Z challenge and this year, my theme for the A to Z Challenge is characters and narrators.
Y is for Youth
wordswag/pixbay
Many novels favor the young characters.
My genre (romance) nearly specializes in young heroines, aged from about 18-26 years old. Heroes of this genre, however, have the luxury of being older, some as late as their mid 40s.
Why are so many stories focused on younger characters?
Maybe some of it has to do with the road to self discovery, loss of innocence (yes, that’s sometimes literal in romance novels), and bucking our family’s or society’s ideals of how we should be.
But authors shouldn’t turn their back on older characters and should use them for more than just guiding forces for the younger characters. After all, characters – like people – don’t stop on the road to self discovery or stop facing down obstacles simply due to the aging process. If anything, some obstacles can cause more turmoil when we’re older than when we’re younger.
I enjoy reading stories with characters of all ages and all backgrounds – as any character, regardless of their current lot in life, can be relatable and interesting…and more, they can have a story to tell. 😉
ProlixMe 
The ‘Utes. I think so many stories revolve around youthful characters because well…they dumb. They dumb as hell. From Romeo and Juliet to Harry and his crew, the youthfuls make a lot of obvious mistakes that add to the drama of a story, and the naivete is easy to explain away as “Well they didn’t know any better.” Young characters are fun, but I like the old grizzled ones best. Dunno what that says about me.
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lo. the ‘utes, they do tend to get into trouble. Maybe another reason why they’re so popular is that they allow some people to relive certain times in their life – a time when they were innocent and things were more simple. While I like any and all kinds of characters, I have to admit, there is a market for the more simpler, innocent times in life.
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