Writing an Aging Protagonist in a Novel Series
So, you wanna learn how to write a series about young’uns for young’uns that grows along with them until both the books and the readers become old’uns? This is quite a formidable task, and asks a lot from both the reader and the writer.
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You need to not only have an idea worth exploring for multiple installments across many years, but you need to have an audience willing to grow along with it and experience the maturation as the characters do, even if merely a hypothetical one. But you also need to understand what growing is, and by extension what life is, which, in case you didn’t realize, is a bit of a daunting question.
My name is Matthew Donald, and I’ve written two series of books so far, one finished (Megazoic) and one ongoing (Teslanauts). Both of these series take place over at least a decade and both feature the development characters are forced to go through across many years of linear time. The main characters start out naive and eager but unequipped to deal with the trials and hardship the harsh world of reality has in store for them, but like all of us they have to go forward through these trials regardless of what they would like or want.
Life is not comfortable. Life doesn’t always go exactly the way you plan. We all go through tough and thorough beatings of harsh reality, and sometimes they may be traumatizing, forming core memories that haunt us for the rest of our lives. But through these tribulations, we don’t just become better people. We become… people.
To start off a series with a younger protagonist, it would be best to show the naivete in an endearing manner. A boy who yearns for battle. A girl who yearns for adventure. A they who yearns for romance. These folks are at the stage of life where they look at the big, fat, complicated planet we call home and are like “dang, that’s cool!” rather than “geez, that sucks!” like we all eventually do.
Check out Matthew Donald’s Teslanauts here:
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This isn’t to say that it’s necessarily wrong to believe that the world is cool, because it is. It really, really is. But when you’re young, you often don’t see the nuance of society. The blood that marks the grounds of conquered lands. The exploitation of psychological tendencies by politicians and megacorps. The purpose of it all. Why are we here? What’s the point of living? A young person doesn’t care about any of this. They don’t wonder about the meaning of life. They just live.
As the series continues, and more and more hardy experiences are thrust upon our young protagonists, the complexities of life should become not only more apparent, but more aware by our hero. There are so many milestones that we go through as growing adolescents that become foundational for the adults we later become. Our first bully. Our first best friend. Our first kiss. Our first time. Our first felony or slightly less severe mistake. The first time we disappoint our parents. The first time they cry about how proud they were of us.
If it’s a more action-driven narrative, then there’s a whole slew of different experiences a young protagonist might go through, such as our first spilled blood, or our first time witnessing someone die. These events should ideally happen gradually throughout a person’s life, but maybe a whole parade of them happen all at once and psychologically bombard our poor protagonist. The point is, through these things, these people grow. They get punched down and then stand back up. They become stronger, either mentally, physically, or spiritually. They keep going, or maybe they don’t. It all depends on the kind of story you’re trying to tell.
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However, just because life can be a mess and a half, and just because we all go through terrible times and often feel like we’re soon to be witness to the point that all of human history has been building toward, that doesn’t mean we should all permanently regress into cynicism. The world may suck, but it’s also amazing. It’s complicated, and through that complexity is beauty.
And perhaps the most adult, mature thing a person can do is, even after we go through the hardships of maturation, we maintain the zest for life we had as kids. We watch the sunlight glisten through the leaves of trees. We hear the beautiful calls of singing birds. We smell the delicious fumes of a local sandwich shop. We dance until we drop. We sing until we stop. We live until we die.
To grow with your audience, you must understand all aspects of life, the good and the bad, the simple and the complex. And you must channel this through your words and through your characters. Life may be short, but it’s also the longest thing any of us will do, so keep living it, and show that life through your writing as your series progresses. And read more books. I recommend my books if you’re interested. Not that I’m biased or anything.
Check out Matthew Donald’s Teslamancer here: