You’re Only As Old As The Author Thinks You Are

The other night Kent worked on a scene in which the POV character happens to state his own age. But the rainbow showed a different age for that character. It was only a matter of a couple of years, but which was right? This led to both Kent and Jen digging through notes and coming up with yet another number (!) before eventually tracking down the character’s date of birth and confirming that what Kent put in the scene (based on what Jen had put in the stub) was correct all along.

Having done such exhaustive pre-work for all four Ghost Books means we’re very well prepared, and it also means we’ve given ourselves a bit too much to keep track of sometimes. Maybe the note on the whiteboard was the result of faulty arithmetic, or perhaps this person’s birth year got shifted later, while we were working on one of the other rainbows for this project. Anyway, it’s a pitfall of creating tons and tons of notes: some of them are bound to contradict each other.

It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we’d put in the “wrong” number, but it’s worth getting it right. Creating a world that draws people in relies on logical consistency. Even though age is a less tangible trait than things like height and eye color, it’s still an important physical detail. Characters’ ages give readers a way to reckon the passing of time in the story. And if a fuss has just been made over some other character having aged ten years, well, we would need a damn good reason to say that meanwhile this character had grown fifteen years older. Or, to suggest that he didn’t know his own age!

A writing partner is someone who helps you keep it all straight.