Writing for generation Z ?

[Teresa Edgerton]

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.

Good point, Swank.

 

[JS Wiig]

I'm a Gen 'grumpy old man'

Mind if I join ya? My Gen Alpha kids constantly remind Gen X me of my oldness and my grumpiness.

“The Komodo dragon is angry because he had to leave his burrow” as my 7 year old puts it.

 

[Astro Pen]

My living peers (as readers) are diminishing.
I worry that to the kids of today I probably sound, unwittingly, as antiquated as the likes of Verne, Wells and Dickens did to me.
I realised I was writing conversations and verbal interactions supposedly set in the future, but it was a future arena that simply won't exist linguistically.

So:
How can I plausibly write about the future using the English of the past?

 

[Steve Harrison]

By the time I manage to sell a book to a publisher, there are a couple of new generations available to buy it.

 

[Vladd67]

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.

As I understand it
1945 - 1965 : Boomers (Baby Boom)
1966 - 1986 : Generation X
1987 - 2007 : Generation Y (Millenials)
2008 - 2028 : Generation Z (Zoomers)
So if you were born in the late 50s you are a boomer and according to some responsible for all the world's ills. As an early Gen X my group tend to be ignored and forgotten in the inter Generation arguments, we just sit on the sidelines eating popcorn.

 

[JunkMonkey]

My living peers (as readers) are diminishing.
I worry that to the kids of today I probably sound, unwittingly, as antiquated as the likes of Verne, Wells and Dickens did to me.
I realised I was writing conversations and verbal interactions supposedly set in the future, but it was a future arena that simply won't exist linguistically.

So:
How can I plausibly write about the future using the English of the past?

Steampunk? Time travel - the old manuscript found in a trunk/dictated by a stranger, met by chance in some exotic clime? 'Lost works' by long dead authors?

Or camp it up. Turn the archaisms up to eleven and let rip.

If the story is good and the characters engaging an audience will find it.

 

[sknox]

One can talk about generations, but I don't think it's really about that. I think it's more about youth and age. Young people are idealistic; older people tend to be harder of heart. Not all, by any means, but we're speaking in broad strokes here. The characteristics of GenZ are, to my eyes, not all that different from the values of young people in any generation. Those values will shift over time, so that what started out as transformational slowly becomes business as usual. I don't regard that as unfortunate. It's the human experience.

The only real difference is that every generation has its slang, its music (at least since the advent of mass communication), its fashions. All of that is highly transient, not least because every teen cohort is replaced every few years.

For writers, if you want to capture one of those fleeting moments in your prose, go right ahead. It's a moving target, but there's nothing wrong with trying.

 

[JunkMonkey]

The only real difference is that every generation has its slang, its music (at least since the advent of mass communication), its fashions. All of that is highly transient, not least because every teen cohort is replaced every few years.

And often come round in a circle back to where they were a couple of generations before. Daughter Number One discovered 70s punk via Riot Grrrl bands like Bratakus and was more than impressed that I, ageing old fart that I am, not only knew who bands like the Adverts and Stiff Little Fingers were but I had met more than a few back in days I helped run a club and had boxes full of 7" singles of the period. She had all the X-Ray Spex ones out of my hands before I could blink.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

. Daughter Number One discovered 70s punk via Riot Grrrl bands like Bratakus

I have known Bratakus since they were about seven... it's amazing how often they are now cropping in strange places . Two young women that exemplify the best of their generation.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I have known Bratakus since they were about seven... it's amazing how often they are now cropping in strange places . Two young women that exemplify the best of their generation.

My daughter is a big fan. Has selfies with them of which she is proud.

 

[sknox]

I went in the other direction. Some time back in the 1990s I collected a bunch of things from my grandfather who was going into a nursing home. Among these were some tapes that I listened to on the drive back home. Benny Goodman, Dorsey, Miller, and some early Duke Ellington. Not only did I think the music was great, I was struck by how close to rock and roll some of the tunes were (e.g., One O'Clock Jump). I went through a whole big band phase and had many delightful conversations with my father-in-law, who grew up on that stuff. For me it was discovery, for him it was memory.

 

[Mouse]

As I understand it
1945 - 1965 : Boomers (Baby Boom)
1966 - 1986 : Generation X
1987 - 2007 : Generation Y (Millenials)
2008 - 2028 : Generation Z (Zoomers)
So if you were born in the late 50s you are a boomer and according to some responsible for all the world's ills. As an early Gen X my group tend to be ignored and forgotten in the inter Generation arguments, we just sit on the sidelines eating popcorn.

Oh. I thought I was a Millenial (which I never understood, because I thought that should've been people born in the 2000s) but apparently I'm Gen X?! So now I feel even older.

I own a shop and all our staff are under twenty (so, depressingly, I could be their mother). Apart from the fact that none of them seem to go outside much* (all gaming, innit) there's not a lot of difference between "them" and "us" (as it were). They've even invited my husband paintballing with them one weekend - he's just one of the lads. Even though they're 17/18 and he's in his 40s. There's really not much difference - we're all human, in the end.


*they've asked before now what we used to do with ourselves before the internet.

 

[redzwritez]

I think it depends on the person to be honest. The way that younger generations use media has changed and it's changing the way many of us interact with books. Honestly, I'm not sure whether that's a bad thing or not. There are many people that would rather watch the movie than read the book but on the other a lot of the people that do use things like booktok and YouTube to share the books they love. Audiobooks are also a lot more widely available and used by people. I don't think younger generations have stopped reading, they read and they enjoy books in different ways. A lot of young adult novels don't have a lot of slang in them and when they do, I've noticed, it's often slang that has been around a long time like using the word "cool" to be mean something good.

I think getting younger beater readers would be a good idea but one thing about slang and the way we use language is that it is always changing. In the future, who knows what we'll say or how we'll communicate. I'm not sure if that helps you but for some reason it was the first thing I thought when you said "cyber punk future."

 

[psikeyhackr]

. As an early Gen X my group tend to be ignored and forgotten in the inter Generation arguments, we just sit on the sidelines eating popcorn.

Too old to be brain damaged by the internet and too young to be made cool by the Beatles. LOL

 

[Vladd67]

Oh. I thought I was a Millenial (which I never understood, because I thought that should've been people born in the 2000s) but apparently I'm Gen X?! So now I feel even older.

I own a shop and all our staff are under twenty (so, depressingly, I could be their mother). Apart from the fact that none of them seem to go outside much* (all gaming, innit) there's not a lot of difference between "them" and "us" (as it were). They've even invited my husband paintballing with them one weekend - he's just one of the lads. Even though they're 17/18 and he's in his 40s. There's really not much difference - we're all human, in the end.


*they've asked before now what we used to do with ourselves before the internet.

Talking of paintballing a few years ago a group of us had a go and we were on the winning side. Some of the 20 something lads on the losing side we had an unfair advantage because of our age, we were all pushing 50, hardly an advantage.

 

[Toby Frost]

Young people are idealistic; older people tend to be harder of heart. Not all, by any means, but we're speaking in broad strokes here. The characteristics of GenZ are, to my eyes, not all that different from the values of young people in any generation.

I think this is very true. Perhaps because this forum skews slightly older than average, there is a certain amount of tutting at the youth of today. However, every generation thinks that the next one has ridiculous clothes, awful music that's just noise, absurd beliefs, and so on. It's hardly a new opinion. And it seems to me that the old are much easier to manipulate politically than the young, but I won't go into details.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I gotta wonder about Gen Z.

When I was in 8th grade Vietnam was becoming a big deal.

Vietnam was nothing compared to climate change and they must be hearing about it a lot more than I ever heard about Nam. How many will figure out that it cannot even end in their lifetimes?

 

[.matthew.]

One can talk about generations, but I don't think it's really about that. I think it's more about youth and age. Young people are idealistic; older people tend to be harder of heart. Not all, by any means, but we're speaking in broad strokes here. The characteristics of GenZ are, to my eyes, not all that different from the values of young people in any generation. Those values will shift over time, so that what started out as transformational slowly becomes business as usual. I don't regard that as unfortunate. It's the human experience.

This is a very good point and there's a Churchill quote that may cross the line but would be applicable here

That said, I'm somewhat a millennial and even I see the stark differences between those older than myself and those younger. It's not necessarily tied to the arbitrary generations but I've definitely noticed a far more self-centred but more outwardly compassionate take on the world from those younger than myself. I've gone out of my way just slightly to help people at various times and it's been treated as totally unprecedented charity to the younger, whereas those who've been around for a while would consider it to be barely common decency.

I've worked with a lot of them over the years as well, and even aside from social media, the fad seems to be to act as moral preachers without ever actually sacrificing anything to achieve a better world, while expecting that everyone else should be the ones to do it instead.

However, every generation thinks that the next one has ridiculous clothes, awful music that's just noise, absurd beliefs, and so on. It's hardly a new opinion. And it seems to me that the old are much easier to manipulate politically than the young, but I won't go into details.

It really seems to me to be a new opinion. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but there were plenty of generations that hardly changed at all from the previous... basically the entirety of human civilization. If something is causing each generation to shift so abruptly, there's probably something iffy going on. You also have to ask, if a supermajority of an entire generation conforms to a new and radical social order, then how are they not the ones being politically manipulated? Particularly if many have only a surface level understanding of what they claim as their ideology.

But yea, this thread is getting a little close to the edge and I have to restrain myself, me thinks...

No more commenting on this one from me

 

[Elckerlyc]

Well, back to the OP than.
Do we read Jules Verne or H.G. Wells because their language was aimed at a future generation? Do we even expect them to have written in anything that was not the language that was their own, the language they were comfortable with and knew how to shape and form so it would say what they intended to say?
And why bother about writing for a particular generation? Would Jane Austen have expected her books would still be read 2 centuries later? And be understood and appreciated? Yet she did write in the only language she knew how to write in.
It is the reader who should shape themselves to the language of the writer. Just as we still read the classics, despite their archaic way of writing. Because we know and accept how they spoke and wrote back then. It is, in a way, familiar terrain to us. And even if we make mistakes, our ancestors are no here to laugh at us.
None of this works the other way.

 

[Omits]

Ignoring the tricky problem that after Gen Z we run out of letters, the currently slang will probably be dead in a few years courtesy of the next generation, except for a few words and phrases that will settle into standard usage. I seem to remember that once a year the OED announces the new words or usages that have survived long enough to be included in the next edition of the dictionary.

The media tend to latch onto the occasional word and then it gets replaced. Most will disappear but I think there is a certain pace going now where the NexGen (Next Gen) have to invent their own.