How Old Should My MC Be???

[Margaret]

Welp. I need help. (It rhymes!!!!)

I have a YA Kinda-Dark Fantasy novel with a protagonist that is 13 yo. Some of my Betas pointed out that she may be too young to be marketed for YA and it may be harder to find agents.

Ayla was sold by her uncle into human trafficking and she spent a year in a cage, tortured. She is taken into a magical world and there, she manipulates and kills anyone that stands in her way to rise above everyone else. But she also is very scared and has panic attacks often. She also is a little crazy from the experience.

Throughout the series, she manipulates her way to becoming the Queen of the Underworld/Hell (she’s human and is around 15-16 then). I wanted to make her young to show how dangerous children could be when given the chance and show the journey on how a little human girl could become an Evil Queen.

However, I don’t want to make any agents or publishers not want to represent me because of this small thing. I don’t know if the story would be the same if Ayla is 15 or 16 or even 17 in the beginning. Does 16 count as young?

Welp, welp, welp.

Thanks in advance,

Margaret

[Keith]

With the caveat that I don't write for YA, so my suggestions may be bunk, perhaps don't nail down the age when you query or in your blurb. You could use 'teenager' or even 'young teenager' and wait to decide about the final age once you've got an agent/publisher. It was a _very_ long time ago when I was a regular reader of YA, so can't speak to the relevance of age, but I will say that any hero's (anti-hero) journey needs to feel plausible no matter what the age, so if your MC is competing against Hell's best (worst) you'll need a plausible reason why she's capable of taking them out.

[Margaret]

Hi Keith,

I think you have a very good idea about deciding the age with my agent. They probably will make it older as teenagers don’t like to read about characters that are younger then them. She doesn’t face Hell directly, more gaining the trust of lesser demons and slowly working her way up (while getting chased by giant man eating birds lol). Since I’m developing it more slowly and interweaving it with other storylines, I’m hoping that everything is balanced and plausible.

Thanks a bunch for your advice :)

[Keith]

Getting a powerful allie that will support your MC through the learning curve is, I believe, a valid way of approaching the issue. You'll need a good explanation for why the allie chooses to work through your young MC (for instance, a long ago prophecy), but that shouldn't require much.

And if you localize the places you mention your MC's age to a few places, altering their age won't require any substantial rewrites.

Good luck!

[Margaret]

Thank you so much! I had thought of giving my MC a mentor guide but was worried that it would fall under the YA old mentor troupe. I think I’m going to keep note of where I mentioned her age and change it if necessary.

[Keith]

Tropes become so because they work effectively. Perhaps, rather than ignoring it, you can put a novel spin on it?

[Margaret]

True, I have many YA typical troupes in my novel that I have spun around. Now thinking about it, the MC has many outside help although not the typical mentor. First the rebellion try and make her succeed in the tournament she is forced to be in because they thought she was the lost princess and they wanted to use her. But she wasn’t the lost princess so they try to kill her but a demon manipulates a deal with the MC that enabled her to survive. Most of her help was because other people wanted to use her but it still kept her alive. I’m not sure if it counts though.

[Keith]

I think that could work fine (a more serious version of Forrest Gump), but making it clear in your blurb/query could be challenging. It's been said (better than what follows) that coincidences can be used to generate conflict, but not to resolve it. If you come up with a satisfying overarching explanation for why your MC can wind up as good as she does, then you're good to go. The story challenge isn't that they wind up good, it's that they survive the training process. Having a shadowy figure pulling strings in the background to ensure her survival could be interesting, as long as you allow at least brief peeks of the figure pulling the strings, so when it's revealed at the end it doesn't smack of deus ex machina.

[Margaret]

Woah, I hadn’t thought of that. But I think I’m fine as although there were outside help, the MC survived mostly by her wit (and lies). While the rebellion was manipulating her, she was also manipulating them. When the time comes for querying, I’m going to struggle a lot on how to summarize what my story is about 😂

[Keith]

I'm quite sure I spent more time working on my blurb than I did on my first draft.

PM me if you'd like a link to a blog article I wrote summarizing how I've helped people write blurbs.

[Margaret]

Haha and sure!