Age Discrimination?

LUCY BURDETTE:  I’d been working along on my latest manuscript and thinking about a plot for another book in the Key West series, when it occurred to me to wonder whether I was really qualified to write about the inner life of a 20 something? Or even a 30 something? On the other hand, I realized that I’d never had a main character over the age of 40. Hayley Snow is in her twenties, nearing thirty (maybe) and Cooper Hunziker is in her 30s. 

One theory to explain the phenomenon might be that this is what publishers want. And they believe this is what the reading public wants. Another might be that I write about an age in my life that is strongly imprinted in my memory, maybe a time when I went through important changes. What do you think Reds? What age do you write? 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My main characters range from early fifties to late twenties, but i have everyone from grandparents in their eighties to little kids in my books. As someone was in college and was a young working single during the Regan years, the hardest ages for me to write are the twenties and thirties. Despite slang and social media, teens have not altered much since my day, probably because the job of those years - figuring out who you are and how you relate to the world - is the same. 

But Millennials have gone through a whole different kind of youth than I did - online from an early age, graduating during the Great Recession, burdened with school loans and social expectations that bear no resemblance to what I had to deal with. I'm lucky in that I have kids between the ages of 18 - 26, and I have godchildren aged 29 - 35, so I have a lot of sources to help me get it right. I'm comfortable with writing Hadley Knox, who's a mother of two and in her mid-thirties, but I'd really have to stretch to write a main character who was, say, the Smithie's age. I'd want to spend a lot of time reading fiction with twenty-somethings before I tackled it.

HALLIE EPHRON: I like to write generations of women, young and hip and old and prickly. YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR has three generations -- a 30-something, her mother, and her grandmother. Or working the other way, a woman in her 70s, her daughter, and her granddaughter. In THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN I've got an 80+ year old with her neighbor's daughter who's in her 30s. I feel like the different perspectives sparks misunderstandings, conflict. 

Besides, older women are hot. Right now. And not just on the BBC. ( (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Pelosi, Janet Yellen, Angela Merkel, Helen Mirren, Glenn Close...) 

LUCY: And that reminds me Hallie, that Hayley Snow’s roommate, 80-year-old Miss Gloria, is probably the character from the Key West books that I hear most about!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I was talking to a big time person who should know (not an author) who says the best age for a character in FICTION (the kind we're talking about here) is about 33. I don't wanna debate it--I'm just saying that's what she said. She says that's who readers want.  Mid-forties is too old for a main character.  Agree or not--but that's from pretty on high.

 I'm most comfortable writing from the viewpoint of--and this is so odd--kids who are about nine.  The difficult age for me is that 30's group--because a thirty-something now is SO different from 30-something me. But I do love to get to be that age again, through fiction--because of course you have to channel how they feel, and understand how that's the result of their particular experiences.

A main player in THE MURDER LIST is referred to as "a grandmother " by a court clerk, and indeed she is. She's also treated with super-hyper-partronizing kid gloves by a judge.  But when I parsed out how old she really was, she was, um, my age.  Ahh.

JENN McKINLAY: I've never really thought about it. My characters pretty much arrive on scene with their age already established. My protagonists range from 25 to 35 because those seem to be the big life change years where the relationships are the big ones, the career choices are solid, etc. The supporting cast is always diverse in age and ethnicity and sexual orientation. I try to get into the head of each character so that they are authentic. Mostly, I try not to overthink it. 

RHYS BOWEN: my main characters seem to be young women in their twenties, apart from Constable Evans who was in his late twenties, and Hugo who was in his thirties. I'm lucky because most of my stories take place in the past so I don't have to worry about what is current or what young people want. I have plenty of young female fans. I have received fan letters that say " I've just seen your photo and until now I thought you were the same age as Lady Georgie. I have to say her first person voice and Molly's voice came to me so easily and naturally.

I would not want to write a book starring an elderly woman. It's much more fun to be twenty again!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My four main series characters range between late twenties, mid-thirties, and early forties (since they are aging VERY slowly) but I've always loved writing all ages. Even my first novel had a stroppy fifteen-year-old and a couple of elderly sisters. I adore Hallie's Mina and Lucy's Miss Gloria--I certainly don't have a prejudice against reading books with older protagonists. And I guess it's a good thing nobody told J.K. Rowling she couldn't sell a book with an eleven-year-old protagonist...

Reds, any thoughts about this? And what age characters do you prefer to read about?