How Old Are My Characters…?

So it’s a question which has been put regularly on this blog, and which I haven’t answered because… well, I kinda kept getting distracted, I guess… pretty feeble, but true…

How old are my characters?

I’ve been surprised by how widely the views differ on this, and perhaps more interestingly, why they differ on this.  The producer of the film (there is a producer, this does not, I hasten to add, yet guarantee there will be a film) calmly assures me that Matthew Swift, one of my main protagonists, is in his early twenties.

“Are you sure?” I asked, a little befuddled by this.

“Absolutely.  It’ll sell much, much better.”

One or two other readers have offered a similar view of Swift’s age – not based on how old he might actually be, but based on how old I was when I wrote the first book.  (It was my third year at LSE, so what… 20, 21?)  I’m really not sure about this assumption, as it seems to imply that I’m not in a hurry to write anything except what I know.  Whereas, as often as not, I go to great length to write my characters as far from what I know as I possibly can, as much to protect myself from over-exposure as for the sake of the narrative.

The simple truth of the matter is, I don’t give Swift’s age in any precise detail, at any point in the book, and there are a few sensible reasons for doing this.  Firstly, I don’t see why it’s that important.  In some novels, the age of a character is vital – there’s one in particular, currently sat on my editor’s in-tray, where it’s narratively essential – but that’s another story.  He doesn’t read very young, I think, nor does he read especially old, but inhabits that grey area in between fickle youth and cynical age where, if you want to, you can imagine pretty much whatever you want and it doesn’t necessarily have a huge impact on his character.  I suspect that this greyness is an extension of my own bugbear on this theme – who cares how old I am, if my words and my deeds are tempered not so much by time, as by who I am?  I’m pretty sure that when I was 15 I thought that drowning puppies was a bad idea, and frankly time hasn’t altered that belief.  Sure, my voice has changed with the passing of years, and so will Swift’s, but would it really make the heart of his character different if the words he spoke were in the mouth of a 25 year old, or a 40 year old?  I’d hope not…

Secondly, with long running characters, as Swift is certainly becoming, there is a danger in inflicting too precise an age upon them.  Look, for your best example, at the Simpsons.  After the decades it’s been running, the kids should have grown up and moved on, yet they remain frozen in time.  I’m not saying any of my characters should or shall ever remain frozen in time, merely that imposing a very precise age immediately makes it something you have to address and deal with, and I’m not yet sure that’s something that’s hugely important to the books.  One day it could be very interesting to see Swift get physically older, maybe even start taking out a pension, should he live so long, but in the mean while it’s not of huge narrative importance, so I try not to muddy the water by discussing it.

Finally, it’s good to have a few options open.  Once you specify a character’s exact age, there is a general implication of an exact backstory behind it.  Sure, Swift has a backstory, and an extensive one, but it is something to be unfolded in drips and drabs and which, frankly, hasn’t yet been of much relevance to the stories told in the Urban Magic books.  Nor am I in a tearing hurry to unfold it, as telling it all at once is a little silly unless it adds something more to the story.  The trick, it seems, is to approach your chosen area with absolute determination, but always leave patches of grey on the periphery where yet more ideas may develop, and Swift’s exact age falls very much into one of those peripheries.  The question whenever you give information about a character is why – why is this important?  And if it is important, what are you going to do with it?  Swift changes and develops over the books, his character evolves, but that evolution has very little to do with his age and a lot to do with stuff happening at him that’s beyond his control.  Until the question of time becomes a vital one in his life, I shall therefore continue to keep his precise age in something of a grey area, simply because I don’t yet need to nail it, and when I do, I’ll have a very, very good reason…