It’s not easy to write from a teenager’s perspective. On the one hand, they’re still children with an immature view of the world. On the other, they’re getting close to adulthood, so you can’t write those characters the way you’d write a younger person.
Today’s teenagers face many adult challenges, too. They may work, take care of younger siblings, and do a lot of household chores in addition to their schoolwork. And that’s to say nothing of teens who play sports or are involved in other extracurricular activities. All of this is in addition to the emotional and social pressures of growing up and finding a place in the world, especially a world in which social media plays a big role.
How did all of this happen? For almost forty years, psychologists and other experts such as David Elkind have argued that young people – even as young as preschool-aged children – are pushed too hard, too soon. Whether it’s teaching academic skills to very young preschoolers, confiding in a pre-teen about a date one had, or the wrenching decisions that pregnant teens need to make, it all adds up to a lot of unhealthy pressure. What’s more, these experts argue, young people are just not cognitively and emotionally ready to assume adult responsibilities; yet that’s what society sometimes expects of them.
Certainly, there’ve been some major changes in the ways that teens are portrayed in crime fiction. Agatha Christie, for instance, wrote several novels and stories that include teen characters. Evil Under the Sun is one example. Sixteen-year-old Linda Marshall gets involved in a murder investigation when her stepmother, famous actress Arlena Stuart Marshall, is murdered during a family holiday. On the one hand, she is involved in a case of murder. On the other, she doesn’t contend with many of the pressures today’s teens face. She worries about her appearance, she wishes her father had married someone ‘sensible,’ and so on. But she doesn’t assume adult responsibilities, and she’s not portrayed as being adult-like. She’s a teenager with an immature perspective, and that’s how Christie wrote her.
If you grew up reading the Hardy Boys mysteries, then you know that they, too are portrayed as teens. They do solve mysteries, and that poses some danger. But they have a stable home life, and they don’t face pressures such as raising younger siblings, working full-time, or some of the other challenges that today’s teens face.
More contemporary novels show a lot more of some of the pressures that challenge today’s young people. Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s attorney sleuth Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, for instance, has a son, Gylfi, who becomes a father at the age of sixteen. He and his partner, Sigga (who is fifteen), now have the pressures of trying to make a home together, preparing for a baby, and a lot more.
There’s a clear (and sometimes harrowing) depiction of modern teen life in Brannavan Gnanalingam’s Sprigs, which involves the students who attend an exclusive New Zealand School. Members of the school’s rugby team have a party after a game one night, and it ends disastrously when a fifteen-year-old party guest is gang-raped. As the novel goes on, we see some of the issues that today’s teens face: social media and the opportunities for bullying; the pressure to do well in school; drinking and drugs; and, of course, the school/social culture in which the gang rape happened. There are many other novels, too, in which we see some of the brutal realities of what it is to be a modern teenager.
I tried to capture some of those challenges in Streets of Gold. The main character is fifteen-year-old Staci McKinney, who’s left home to escape her stepfather. It’s bad enough that she’s on the streets. It’s even worse when she witnesses two men dumping a body and they see her, too. The novella touches on some of the pressures that teens face (e.g., getting thrown out of their homes because of a remarriage; trying to make adult decisions, even though they’re still children). It’s not an easy time, even for teens who have homes. And writing about it means real thinking about the way these young people are portrayed.
Of course, the way teen life is portrayed in crime fiction depends on other factors, too. Sub-genre, era of the story (in historical fiction), and plot all impact the way the characters and their lives are depicted. That said, though, today’s novels seem to acknowledge the argument that Elkind and other, like-minded experts have made. Teens are often forced to grow up quickly – sometimes too quickly. This puts enormous pressure on them and can lead to real problems. When it’s acknowledged in fiction, that pressure can add tension and suspense to a story and can make that story more authentic.
Thanks very much for having me as a guest!
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Soul Asylum’s Runaway Train.
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Margot Kinberg is a mystery novelist and Associate Professor. She writes the Joel Williams series, the Patricia Stanley series, and other fiction. She also blogs about crime fiction and serves on the judging panel for the Ngaio Marsh Awards for crime fiction.
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