Writing for generation Z ?

[Danny McG]

It will always fall out of style within a few years anyway.

Quote from Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies 1992 :-
“The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo*, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.”

Footnote:-
*Cool, but not necessarily up-to-date.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

It will always fall out of style within a few years anyway.

Right on, daddio. You're one hepcat

 

[.matthew.]

Another big pitfall of writing for Gen Z is that your social values are not theirs, and it will show in your writing unless you challenge yourself.

I've mixed feelings about this. It's distressing that the latest generation has diverged so far from what came before, but perhaps more important is that the older generations have to change to appease them.

I'm going to say that @Margaret Note Spelling was bang on though, write for yourself and keep your fingers crossed your writing will appeal to at least some of them.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've mixed feelings about this. It's distressing that the latest generation has diverged so far from what came before, but perhaps more important is that the older generations have to change to appease them.

I can't go into social politics here, but suffice to say we all carry a ton of cultural baggage that shapes our outlook. Older generations were exposed to a degree of inequality that was regarded as normal then but often no longer acceptable, but even today society still promotes casual discrimination on a daily basis as normal and acceptable.

IMO Gen Z's are more likely to notice and challenge this, but it can be very hard for older people to do so in their own outlook and therefore writing. That's another reason why I mentioned most readers being over 40, because these people are less likely to have different cultural baggage than yourself. If you really want to write for Gen Z I would think you would have to be extremely socially progressive, but don't expect Gen Z to want to pay money to find out.

 

[Juliana]

IMO Gen Z's are more likely to notice and challenge this

As the mother of two Gen Z kids, I honestly think they're an amazing generation, all jokes about emojis and texting aside. I have so much awe for the morals and attitudes and beliefs of many of todays teens!

 

[Swank]

Another big pitfall of writing for Gen Z is that your social values are not theirs, and it will show in your writing unless you challenge yourself.

Do you have an example? When I watch current popular movies, I don't see new and unfamiliar social values coming through. Does Gen Z not watch this stuff as well? Spider-Man movies don't seem drenched in social progressiveness nor casual discrimination.

 

[sknox]

I wonder if any author wrote "for" their own generation. Generation F ('40s and '50s)? I think this all may have started with my own boomer generation, with people writing for the beats and hippies. Or for what they thought comprised beats and hippies.

Speaking from memory here, the ones who felt like were writing for me, back when I was a teenager, were in reality writing for themselves. They spoke of their aspirations and frustrations, laid them out, and I (and many others) responded to that.

That said, Ken Kesey's brilliant novels--both Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--are not discernibly "for" the 60s generation, but both resonated deeply. The same goes for any number of other generation-specific classics.

I'll say it again: write for yourself. You have an audience out there, so if you write for yourself you are also writing for them.

The real audiences are the timeless ones: romance, murder, mystery, adventure, fantasy (more timeless than SF, imo). If you want to write "for" a market, I'd aim for those and not worry about being age or culture specific. Unless, of course, you're writing for your own culture or sub-culture.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Write great characters, good stories and don't talk down to them. Treat them with respect and give them the diversity they are used to, They're teenagers/early 20s not aliens. It's basically the same as I wanted as a teen. The big difference with modern teenagers is you have to earn rather than impose respect and that includes in the writing. They don't seem to mind if I use fab and cool as long as I get the concepts right. Sick is a really old one, I first heard it via a young support act at a Joan Armatrading concert. The t-shirt says was 2010. He'll probably be over 30 now.


.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

As the mother of two Gen Z kids, I honestly think they're an amazing generation, all jokes about emojis and texting aside. I have so much awe for the morals and attitudes and beliefs of many of todays teens!

Me too - I have three of them and I wish I'd had their understanding of the world as a teenager. They challenge me all the time and they're usually right. Not to mention in the UK their punctuation and grammar skills are way better than every other generation since the sixties. Schools are teaching grammar more seriously again. I love having beta readers in their late teens/early twenties as they pull up my basic grammar skills and keep my writing more current.

 

[Mouse]

I don't think 'sick' (meaning good) is as new as all that. I remember it being used when I was at college and that was in the late 90s, early noughties.

One of the characters in Hollyoaks described something as 'peng'. I have no idea.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

As the mother of two Gen Z kids, I honestly think they're an amazing generation, all jokes about emojis and texting aside. I have so much awe for the morals and attitudes and beliefs of many of todays teens!

Seconded. They are such an amazing, empathetic generation. They’re a force to reckon with

thirded I see now. maybe Generation X did a decent job of nurturing, despite being dumped at the doorstep ourselves

 

[.matthew.]

In the context of this thread, those led by emotion are easily manipulated by them. Instead of writing a grounded story, you could instead opt for outrage and fear and they'll eat up the story in its entirety.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I don't think 'sick' (meaning good) is as new as all that. I remember it being used when I was at college and that was in the late 90s, early noughties.

One of the characters in Hollyoaks described something as 'peng'. I have no idea.

Given the age of the young man comfortably and constantly using it (poor kid was terrified - it was one of his first gigs and he had a full theatre), that would be about right. I reckon he was about 20 in 2010. I vaguely remember it in occasional use towards the end of uni in 96 (Winchester) but I live in North Scotland and it took longer to catch on here.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

In the context of this thread, those led by emotion are easily manipulated by them. Instead of writing a grounded story, you could instead opt for outrage and fear and they'll eat up the story in its entirety.

which they and who? Who is doing the manipulating and who is manipulated? Who will eat up the story in its entirety?

 

[.matthew.]

which they and who? Who is doing the manipulating and who is manipulated? Who will eat up the story in its entirety?

In this case, writing for a generation raised to value emotion above all else could mean writing stories that focus much more on emotion and less on a complicated plot.

So I sort of mean you could effectively skip a lot of worldbuilding and ignore multiple POVs. Instead, make it all about the characters and their specific struggles, most likely with an emphasis on how the characters are treated by others.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

In this case, writing for a generation raised to value emotion above all else could mean writing stories that focus much more on emotion and less on a complicated plot.

So I sort of mean you could effectively skip a lot of worldbuilding and ignore multiple POVs. Instead, make it all about the characters and their specific struggles, most likely with an emphasis on how the characters are treated by others.

So basically as writers we have to up our game and get better? That's a really good description of Flann O'Brian, Will Self etc

The summary of this thread is that Gen Z are better at basic English skills and read more deeply than previous generations. Could it just be they are better educated rather than more emotional? I have to say the kids on my course have a much better grasp of deep meta fiction than us older folk. Their work ethic is impressive too. It's quite telling we started out with a mostly middle-aged group and going into the fourth year we will have more under 25s.

 

[.matthew.]

So basically as writers we have to up our game and get better? That's a really good description of Flann O'Brian, Will Self etc

I'd say less about getting better and more about changing the style of the work. For me, I sit somewhere in the middle ground of what I want to read, but the heavy fantasy/sci-fi tomes do tend to fall lower on the list of my preferences, despite my love of all things lore in books.

From the few readers I know in the later generations, this trend seems to go even further, with the heavy reads being a big turn off and the shorter character driven books being more popular. This might be because of the growth of fan fiction, a shorter attention span, other media intruding on their time, a growing tendency towards being led by their emotions... or something else entirely.

But, from a sales perspective, what seems most popular - if that's what you're going for - are shorter, more emotionally charged books, with a heavy emphasis on the feelings of the main character(s), which can safely come at the expense of good plotting.

I've been chatting with a couple of people about this and it does seem that they don't much care about the plot as long as they can identify with the characters. So, they're looking for their dopamine rush from characters instead of tightly paced writing. To me, it all feels very superficial and vain, but one person I spoke to only wanted to read books with female leads, which I suppose isn't uncommon in any generation, but they were adamant they could not identify with - and would not read - a male protagonist.

 

[Swank]

This thread reminds me of ones about the supposed difficulty of writing women characters.

I do not think Gen Z are aliens, and I do not think that good writers are thoughtless punters with poor English skills and little empathy. So I think I'm going to stop watching this thread because the generalizations about groups of people remind me of other kinds of generalizations about groups of people.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I have no idea what 'Gen Z', 'Zoomers', 'Boomers', 'Generation Alphas', Generation X', 'Millenials' and all those other media-generated labels actually mean (if anything other than demographic exercises to give advertising executives the illusion they know what they are talking about.) It's not as if humans have a fixed breeding cycle that means we only produce young every X number of years like salmon.

What am I? I was born at the end of the 50s. My kids 40 years later. We skipped a generation.
I am the same age as a lot of kids' schoolfriends' grandparents. Does this make my kids whatever the hell came after whatever 'my' generation is called? or are they whatever 'generation' the kids they are at school with are called?

It's nonsense.

 

[Danny McG]

I'm a Gen 'grumpy old man'