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Found something wild about character ages in popular fiction
Was scrolling through a writing stats blog last night. Apparently the average age of protagonists in bestsellers is 32. But most writing advice tells you to start in your 20s. I dug into the data. It's from a 2023 survey of 500 novels. So which side is right? Do readers prefer younger or older leads? What's your take on this?
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the_charlie3d ago
32 is the average for bestsellers? That's way older than I expected considering every writing guide preaches the young protagonist thing.
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diana_moore753d ago
The Harry Potter books averaged around 11 for the protagonist, but they also had plenty of older adult characters doing the heavy lifting. My guess is that 32 might be so high because bestsellers include a ton of thrillers and mysteries with grown-up detectives, not just YA.
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