I write mostly characters younger than me, including as young as YA. I don't think I've had MCs that are significantly older than I am.
There have been studies done and, if I'm not mistaken, the conclusion was that teens think differently than adults (or children, for that matter). But whether or not teens are more honest? I'd be more inclined to infer that adults and teens hide their emotional lives in different ways. Also, your statement presupposes (and here I'll make as assumption which, if wrong, I apologize for; I'm inferring again) that adults have gotten past all their emotional baggage which most haven't. Not all of it, anyway. So, now we have to define what is meant by 'adult.' Are we talking chronological age or emotional age? And the reason this is important to the discussion is because most adults, having not shed their childhood baggage, get stuck at a certain age, emotionally. I think I've met only one or two truly adult people in my whole life, people who have no problem facing any situation without fear of having their emotional buttons pushed. As we hit middle age, these emotional problems often comes to the forefront... which is where mid-life crises come from. And until they're settled, it's difficult to move on and find the maturity we're all supposed to have mastered by age 30.
The image of a bunch of octogenarians playing twister will forever be burned into the inside of my brain.
My oldest "main" characters, whether in written fiction or stories in my head or roleplaying gamemastering, have usually been a life stage younger than me. Children when I was a teen, teens when I was a college student, college age when I was in my twenties, and so on. And it continues--now that I'm middle-aged, I have to push myself to have a character older than thirty.
There have been studies that show teens are incapable of forward thinking and their minds are wired to think of the "now". That's why no matter how many times you tell a teenager "if you do this thing that is wrong you will be punished" they still do it. They are not capable of even conceptualising the punishment. To them its this abstract thing that has no bearing on their life right now. As a result they tend to take more risks. Which is why people always say your teenage years are the best years of your life because you stretch the limits of your life.
Are you sure that you mean "incapable" as opposed to "statistically somewhat less capable than adults"? Plenty of teens are capable of forward thinking. Heck, I was too capable of it, from toddlerhood on; I could always anticipate dreadful consequences from practically everything I did.
I wouldn't say teens are incapable of forward thinking. Not by any means. But I do know that I was much more willing to take stupid risks when I was younger. I guess when you're young (and living a life that doesn't include trauma—like living in a war zone, or with a family that dies too frequently) you feel kind of invincible. Getting 'old' isn't something you think about much. Getting oldER, yes. You want to be able to do the things adults do—at least the stuff that looks like fun. But getting old and losing capabilities? No. You're too busy gaining them at that time of life. I suppose if you live in an extended family, and have older relatives that you see a lot, this will temper your attitude a bit. But I think you still don't quite see yourself in that place, or fully understand that you WILL be in that place sooner or later, unless you die young. Pete Townshend, of the WHO, who wrote the immortal line "hope I die before I get old" is 71 years of age, and still hasn't jumped off a cliff. Object lesson to teenagers. Angst is part of teenagerhood. You'll live through it! I don't know at what stage recognition kicks in, actually. I know I still don't envision myself as old and incapable. I accept that I will be—and pretty damn soon—unless I die first. But to actually put myself in that place? No, not really. The one thing that does happen as you get older, though—or at least it did for me—is that fear of death recedes. I still fear 'dying,' in that I don't look forward to the process. I'll be delighted if I just wake up dead, after getting all my affairs in order and cleaning the bathroom. But actually being dead? The idea doesn't fill me with the kind of horror it used to do. I guess a 'lifespan' makes sense, really. Could I cope with being immortal? I don't think so. I could cope with an extra 20 years or so, of fully active and pain free life. (A youngish middle age that lasts 20 years longer than it actually does.) But much longer than that? I think my brain would be really tired of living.
Apologies, forgive the hyperbole and the generalisation - incapable is probably too strong a word.. My partner studied child development and she showed me documentary in which they tested adults ability to think ahead versus teenagers ability. One of the tests involved a stack of rings and 4 posts. The test subjects were required to transfer the rings from the first post to the last in the same order using the least amount of moves possible. The results showed that teenagers were less likely to complete the task correctly than the adults. The reason is that the solution required forward thinking. You had to plan your moves in advance. It was to show in general that teenagers' brains are wired differently to be more in the present than to think of the future. That is not to say that specific individuals aren't more forward thinking but it was more of a general observation. Also it is not to suggest that it is a bad thing, in fact, they suggest it was beneficial as it allowed more spontaneity and pushed the boundaries of experience
No, it's no more difficult to write outside your socio-economic experience than to write beyond your experience of age...but the number of documentaries that are made of Tory MPs "living" for a week on benefits to prove just how generous they are, and being unable to do so, suggests that you need a degree of research/empathy to do either. Oh, for goodness' sake! Watch Three Day Nanny, where it takes very few repetitions of "if you do this thing that is wrong you will be punished" before a toddler gets it. It's not that a teenager can't understand the concept; it's just that he's reached a time of life where he no longer believe himself to be the toddler who has to do what he's told, and he's testing the boundaries of what he can get away with; will dad really withhold the car keys on Friday night? There was a recent study that suggested that older drivers were more dangerous (and should be made to re-take their tests) than younger ones. But when they reviewed it, they realized that the data they'd used (deaths/hospitalizations by age-group) was flawed; in fact, older drivers are just as safe (they compensate for failing faculties with increased caution), the reason for the increased deaths/hospitalizations was that they actually break more easily (brittle bones, complications from degenerative issues, etc.) but the accident rates for drivers under 25 were WAY higher...due to this increased propensity for taking risks. So, Angst is part of teenagerhood. You'll live through it! as long as you don't kill yourself on the M25. From my experience of playing chess against teenagers, they're VERY capable of planning their moves in advance! But I can believe that the teenagers were less successful at this task because it was "too easy", so they didn't take it seriously enough; they didn't want to waste brain-resources on something unimportant, so didn't think about it hard enough, and just relied upon a "this will do it" mentality. Reverting to chess, there's a manoeuvre called Philidor's Mate; any chess-player beyond a certain level will know it. Now, I've seen a position set up with a problem being asked "How few moves can you deliver mate in?" In this position, Philidor's Mate leaps to mind, and most people will say "4 moves". The actual answer is 2 moves. The point about this is that, once we've got a solution that works, we're unlikely to go back to basic principles and look for a better one (One thing I loved about Bobby Fischer was his annotation to one of his moves which was "A mistake; move x was much stronger", when the response to the move he played was that his opponent resigned!) but as adults we've got a bigger store of "pre-set" solutions. So it's also possible that the reason why the adults did better in this test was that they'd actually come across it - or something similar - in their life before and effectively had "seen the answers".
I could relate personal experience that backs it up... like running away from home despite all the dire warnings and ending up rejected by my family because they "just can't take this shit any more." And despite the smiley face, this is a true story. (The smiley is to show that I've pretty much gotten past it and learned to live without family.)
To start with I am not from the UK so I haven't watched those shows. But I agree that research and empathy is needed to write about just abouy anything but ourselves. But the point I wanted to make is that with research and empathy we can get to know and write from essentially any perspective and thus age isn't something that is harder to understand write about than anything else. I hope this answers your post as I am a bit unsure what you were gunning for.
The ages of my minor characters vary from late teens/early twenties all the way up to eighty-something (my protagonist's grandfather makes a brief appearance as part of a plot device). The ages of the characters whose perspectives the story is told from are in a much narrower range. Emily (protagonist): 30 - if I stick to the current plan regarding dates, the novel actually opens on her 30th Birthday. Ragnar: 33. Joel (my unintended antagonist): 32. Anja: not sure, but I want her to be slightly younger than Emily, so probably 27 or 28. And in my head she comes across as being a few years younger than that. "Matt" (placeholder name, may or may not write from his perspective): Slightly older than the others, probably around 35. Sigrun (Ragnar's sister, minor character playing a significant role): 32. I'm 32, so they're all a similar age to me. But I don't feel anywhere near that age, so for me, writing close to my own age is really hard.
Thank goodness the real teenagers I teach don't live this out. If they did my life would be hell on wheels. And if my teenage years had been the best of my life, Lord have mercy. How miserable.
*clears throat* Sorry to intrude, but I have the science for this. Your general idea is right, but the phrasing is not, with the result that it flirts with accuracy, but does not quite get to the meat of the matter. The truth is that teenage brains are not fully developed yet. Different parts of the brain mature and come into full operation at different ages, and our pre-frontal cortexes do not develop until we are into our twenties. This part of the brain is responsible for long-term speculation and logical decision-making with the far future in consideration. It reminds the body of consequences and aids the process of seeing potential outcomes from the various available responses to any given situation. In a teenager, the rest of the brain is eager to experience the world, but the pre-frontal cortex is not fully available to help them see the long-term results of these experiences. Leading to some very stupid behavior. Teenagers can learn not to do things that you tell them not to do. Of course they can. But it is easier to convince a teen not to do something if they can see a logical reason that makes sense to them now. They can understand punishment and negative consequence. As was said above, we learn that as toddlers. They are not always able to see past the allure of the activity to the resulting consequence, however. But let's be clear: many do. Many, many, many do. Not all teens are trouble-makers. I would venture to say that there is a silent majority of teenagers who navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence with some internal angst and a few hard lessons learned, but for the most part being good kids who make intelligent decisions. Teenagers are not incapable of being intelligent and rational. It's just that they're working with a handicap that adults don't remember having. They can still function in life, but some are more vulerable to their baby pre-frontal cortexes than others. Remember, it wasn't that many generations ago that one was considered an adult with adult responsibilities even in their teenage years. I don't want people thinking that they must always write idiot teenage characters making idiot teenage decisions.
I tend to write using characters who are around my age. Sometimes I write characters that are older. Rarely do I write exclusively about children, although I have written content that contain children. It really all depends on what I'm writing.
