Writing Intelligent Teenagers

This seems to be a problem with writing teenagers, that the writers make them adults in teenaged bodies. Currently, I'm writing a teenager who is supposed to be intelligent, but I feel like I'm falling into this trap. For instance, at one point he develops superpowers. He decides to hide his powers. I feel like someone who was a teenager wouldn't do that. They would be more likely to show off their powers and try to impress their friends. Am I wrong?

No; sounds about right.

Okay, so how should I fix this? One idea I have is that when his powers first manifest, it results in a terrible accident, like he could kill someone. Thus he hides his powers for fear of getting caught or doing something like that again.

Anyone might do that, adult or teen. If you want to write teenagers realistically, then you have to get the dialogue right. To learn how to do that, you read many examples. Here is one where the teen characters are written well.

What is his exact age? An adult or a teen would hide their powers if it almost killed someone. The question you should be asking is what kind of person is your main character? All of his actions and thoughts should correspond to who he is and how he would react. Is he dumb and arrogant? If so,he might be too full of himself to hide his powers even if someone almost died. Or did this near-death experience make him realize how irresponsible he has been in life? But if he's an intelligent teenager with a normal sized ego, he would probably use his powers more carefully and try to learn to control them.

Adding to the above post: it very much depends on their situation and background. Say the teenager is in the habit of not drawing attention to himself, for whatever reason (maybe they are bullied or have strict parents or something), or maybe they're very concerned with fitting in and conforming to others. There are undoubtedly more situations that you could think of. A teenager who went through such a situation could be a lot more hesitant to set themselves apart from others in such an obvious way. It all depends on their mindset, on how they are used to handling mundane but similar problems. I don't think you even need a power-related accident in the backstory for this.

I've always been confused by the 'Teens act to much like Adults' criticism. How is a teen suppose to act like? Are they suppose to mistake alot of mistakes?Because there are many adult shows that do that (The flash for one).Are they supposed to used alot of slang?Because the ones that do intend to do it poorly

The criticism has always comes across to me has to vague to be useful to a writer too be honest

edited 11th Feb '17 9:43:26 AM by DeanCole

Teens are not miniature adults. As characters, they express unique elements because they represent a particular point in the life span. They have not yet fully resolved who or what they are going to be, and have not had the time to fully experience the many compromises and responsibilities that society imposes on older adults. Consequently, teens as characters both need and have the freedom to explore aspects of development in a way that wouldn't come across as realistic for older people. Themes such as sexuality, personal ethics, individual strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears of the future, mortality and risk take on a special poignancy for teen characters. In stories, they typically are innocent in ways that more experienced characters would not be, and yet constantly struggle to shed that innocence (with varying degrees of success). At the beginning of the story they are in, they can be more childlike, by the end, almost adults. Writing a teen character is an opportunity to explore what is sacrificed and what is gained as one grows older.

Yeah, writing teens can be rather difficult if you're not one yourself... though the main things to keep in mind are that teenagers usually have a hard time conceptualizing the consequences of their actions (the part of the brain that deals with that is actually not fully formed), and there's also a tendency to have a grandiose attitude towards specific matters of interest while being surprisingly naive about many things.

These characteristics get taken Up To Eleven if they have powers and aren't in a superhero story, and thus I find it fun to explore that. For example, I have a few teen characters in this one story I have planned that revolves around psychic powers. The youngest of them is a sixteen-year-old girl who wields an Agony Beam and she's supposed to be an Anti-Hero, so in place of her proudly using that power out in public, I have her constantly tease people about using it and be a huge Deadpan Snarker overall. (And in another story idea that involves vampires and other creatures of the night, she actually wishes to become a demon, obviously not thinking about what that would entail.) One of the other teens still is in childhood mode for the most part, being a Wide-Eyed Idealist who is very excited about gaining telekinetic powers, but nonetheless is perfectly capable of functioning independently.

There's also always your own experience as a teen to fall back on, especially since those years function very differently depending on the individual and the society/family they grew up in. I did that myself when coming up with ideas for the aforementioned characters, citing in their case my actual wish to have psychic powers and brief habit of joking about putting spells on people. (Yeah, I was quite crazy as a teen.)

edited 14th Feb '17 1:08:24 AM by ladytanuki

I think one of the better depictions of a precocious adolescent I've read in fiction is the narrator of Robert Aickman's "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal". While she is clearly intelligent and knowledgeable, the titular girl is also prone to doing things like repeatedly using words she is fond of in contexts which are correct in denotation but a bit off in connotation, or misinterpreting certain situations in a way that is meant to imply a certain worldliness but is contradicted by a naïve understanding of certain details. Which is to say, she's a very believable middle school girl, which only makes where the story ultimately goes all the more unsettling.