Okay I am a young person, who writes good stories. But is it okay if I write my MC as an older person? In third person though. I'm still a student and I am writing my MC's job to be what I want to pursue as my full time career.
It's not only okay, but it's expected that you try to write about characters unlike yourself. You won't always get it right, but you should try. In her 20s, Jenny Joseph wrote the poem "Warning", including the lines "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple / With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me." Her depiction of a strong, independent elder woman was so compelling that for decades she heard "Oh. I thought you were older." Now that she's in her 60s, I guess she probably doesn't get that anymore! -Frank
It is okay for you to write stories about ancient mythological Greek gods that have lived for longer than creation itself...so why wouldn't it be okay to write about an older MC? I'm just sayin'
Why wouldn't it be? Personally, I'd love to see an older person from a younger person's perspective. If you're worried, just do a little bit of research about the said career, etc (which might not be a bad idea anyway). Truthfully, I write fanfiction, and although I'm only 20, I find that most of the people I'm writing about are thirty, forty, or older! I say go for it, and good luck!
I'm a thirty four year old woman - first story was a seventeen year old boy, second and third a thirty year old gay man and fourth a hundred and thirty year old gay man lol We are all human, we are all unqiue and if you give a character humanity they will be relateable.
No, if you write about an MC that's not like you, the Story Police will burst into your apartment, haul you off and sentence you to 10000 years in prison. Okay, I am kidding. It can be easier to write about MCs who have your same age/gender/occupation/etc, but once you get the feel and tone of a certain character, it becomes really easy to write about him/her, no matter how different from you.
no one can tell you if it'll work beforehand... so write it, post a brief excerpt, and then we can tell you if you've nailed it, or not...
Most writers would be severely limited if they could not write outside of their age range. Of course, it's not always easy -- often it takes someone with a far deeper insight and much greater level of maturity than is the norm for their age, yet still, it's entirely possible. The fortunate part about writing as a medium is that, in large part, the defining factors which separate young people from older people can be greatly mitigated. When writing the part of a middle-aged character as a teenager, you'll have the time and ability beforehand to carefully think over each situation, and ponder how a person more mature than yourself would react in that situation. Of course, you'll still be lacking a great deal of experience, a fact that might show through to varying degrees, all depending upon how good you are at putting on a convincing mask for your audience. It is, however, far easier to stick with younger characters as your main protagonist and to allow the older characters to fill the lesser supporting roles. Teen and post-teen angst can be an incredibly difficult thing for a budding writer to hide. The more in depth you get with any character, the more you risk bringing your own personality issues to light within your creation. All characters are, after all, little more than extensions of ourselves. Don't forget that maturity is entirely relative! I've met kids with a better head on their shoulders than some adults, and "adults" still stuck with the mentality of children.
If we only wrote in our age range, we wouldn't have very many good juvenile fiction novels. The age of the MC in these books is typically between 8 and 14, writers this age do not have the finesse of writing that comes with years of experience. If you write only your age, you get sucked into relating the story too much to your own life.
