To ask you to tell me about 14/15 year old girls

[Cheeseandlobster]

I am finally writing a novel which I have wanted to do for years. My main character has a 14 year old daughter and I have realised I don't know a lot about them. I really don't want to be one of those authors who gets teen speak/music/interests/fashion wrong. I was a 14 year old girl once and I was a bit of a goth which isnt what my character is. She is probably a bit more trendy, used to be sporty (maybe lapsed though now), has moved away to a new area with her mum so is a bit moody/ uncommunicative.

Please tell me about girls this age now, or rather in 2019 as I have been agonising about including covid too and decided not to.

What type of music / bands might they like?
Do they like gaming?
What sort of clothes might they wear?
What phrases / slang might they use?
What social media? I understand Facebook is for oldies so I am assuming Instagram and Snapchat?
And anything else at all. For example how do they hang out these days? Ds is 19 but when he was 14 he was so antisocial and insisted that people his age communicated via their X box headsets. Thankfully he is more sociable these days

I appreciate teen girls are all different and not a homogenous bunch but anything will be helpful as I am a bit lost with this. Thank you

My 14 DD -

Communicates with friends via WhatsApp (messages, voice messages, video calls(

Tik Tok
Discord
Insta
Snapchat
YouTube
Doesn't do Facebook as it's for old people

Love Love Loves Stranger Things

Enjoys a good movie

Not particularly into music.

Uses earpods

Spends most of time in her room.

No longer into make up but likes tidy hair, often a highish ponytail occasional head scarf.

Straight leg cropped Jean's. Oversized tops. Chunky branded trainers.

Generally a nice polite girl but will not back down in an arguement even when factually wrong. Doesn't know when to stop.....

Mine is obsessed with all things Japanese. Loves My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan. Enjoys cosplay and creating mange art. She also loves drinking tea - she has all sorts of fancy teacups and teapots. She uses Instagram, TikTok and Pintarest and Crunchyroll for watching anime.
You might do best to avoid slang because it dates so much but I hear simp a lot! There is also a lot of talk about what pronouns he friends choose to use.
She wears quite "preppy" clothes - lots of layers - shirt over soft jumper or t shirt over long sleeves. She also has dungarees and converse trainers. She wears lots of bangles and has made a necklace by stringing the tabs from coke cans onto a chain!
Hope that helps!

@MarkRuffaloCrumble

Social anxiety and gender identity worn as a badge of honour - very socially aware and righteous.

Answers messages with K as apparently she’s too lazy to type the O first. Or sometimes KK

All of this!! I could have written this about my DD

Ok. This is a really interesting thread, but I’m going to suggest you need something different. It’s voice you’re going to need to portray. For that, I’d consider reading some recent YA fiction with characters at that age and a strong voice.

These authors are good (top three are funny-ish. Last three relentlessly miserable):
Simon James Green
William Sutcliffe
Clare Rees
Holly Bourne
Sara Barnard
Sarah Crossan

DD 14 Snapchat, Instagram (loves mini hedgehogs at the moment) look up Darcey/darcy the hedgehog) tiktok. Loves the sickly sweet smell of so body sprays.
Costa loves the iced drinks.
Loves makeup prefers mophe pallets & benefit mascara and brow gel.
Sheet face mask obsessed, would love a fridge in her room for beauty stuff.
Streaks obsessed with maintaining the days with friends has nearly 200 with her best friend. I know a friends sd had a massive meltdown because the internet’s wrnt down at home, had no data and lost her streaks.
DD witnessed a recent fight between 2 girls in her year there was the expected hair pulling and scratching but I did laugh when she said it included ripping off of eyelashes.

I have a 14/15 year old girl. She's a bit introvert but a bit out going. A good girl. Definitely no drinking smoking sex, not fussed by boys. Has dramatic tendencies. What type of music / bands might they like?
G*eorge Ezra, Billie Elish, Lewis Capaldi, pop mostly, some 80's early 90s

• Do they like gaming? Likes to play mine craft, roblox, searching mystery games What sort of clothes might they wear? Joggers, leggings, baggy T-shirt not fussy What phrases / slang might they use? Says 'like' and 'bruv' a lot. Recently started swearing out loud What social media? I understand Facebook is for oldies so I am assuming Instagram and Snapchat? Snap chat, tik tok and Instagram

Use Apple pay
Prefer restaurants where you pay for yourself eg GBK, Nandos
Favour TikTok
Use DPOP & ASOS for clothes
Anxiety is a common problem 😞
Enjoy crochet, drawing, baking, skate boarding and roller skating, Netflix
Become Plant Parents
Smoking is not very popular but alcohol and nitrous oxide are
Being heterosexual is boring

Wow - this really is so interesting and there are some common themes coming out. I really appreciate you sharing this. Teens in general seem a lot cleaner living and more socially aware than my friends and I ever were at that age. We used to be into metal bands, goth clothes (I still love the music though!) but we used to smoke, drank cider in the local park en masse, were not that into politics. I felt quite lonely as a teen in my house and was massively attached to my friends so I think I would have really liked the having a friend constantly in the background.

@Curioushorse that's a brilliant suggestion. I am off to the library Monday so will have a look at some of these

If you're reading books (which is a genius suggestion) I'd recommend Simon Versus the Homosapien Agenda too.

@Nataliafalka we live in SE London and a couple of groups DD belongs to she is one of only a couple of white teens. She can't help but be aware that if they're travelling home through a Section 60 area that it's unlikely she'll be stopped whereas her black and brown friends may be, just because of the colour of their skin. She notices when things are very white (and male) and will question why but is also conscious of the white saviour issue, especially in films.

Hormones - insecurities - obsessed with SM and celebrities = 1st niece.
Sporty - intelligent - driven - extremely shy on the face of it = 2nd niece.
Introverted- gothic - anime - pan sexual - women's rights - trans rights- woke = my Daughter.
The 3 are very different.

Not read it all. My 15 year old sounds different to a lot of these though

No makeup
Watches YouTube videos
Discord for dungeons and dragons
No bras
Likes climbing
Politically aware and inclusive/kind
Stands up for what she believes
Vegetarian
Hot on waste and doesn't want us to buy anything!
Doesn't care about clothes, only wants stuff from charity shops

@SE13Mummy Yes yes. My 19 y.o niece travelling from Liverpool ferry to London her 2 black friends stopped by immigration held for hours until Irish immigration could confirm Irish nationality.
Racism awareness definitely.

Yes mine also only says K or KK rather than ok 😂

Oh and never put an x at the end of a text message. That's really just for 'people from the olden days'

My nearly 15 yo is not at all woke she's more like Catherine tates teenager - all attitude, winds me up about being a vegetarian and voting labour and very right wing/ sun reader values 😱it's like anything really - they're all individuals, the things that seem fairly fashionable are the contouring, lashes and screen addicts, and the standard teenage girl thing of drowning their body in layers whatever vthe weather.

I’ve namechanged as I’m an author and don’t want dots joined.

I would strongly suggest your protagonist be a character with whom you identify. Otherwise there’s a real risk she won’t be credible. Now, that isn’t to say you can’t write about things you don’t know, for this you must do much, much research but even then I would apply that to secondary or even tertiary characters rather than as a entirely central theme to the book.

However, with central human characters, if there is just one tiny detail that jars even one reader’s eye, it could derail your entire narrative.

I find this with dialogue, too. A hugely important element and it must feel natural. One element that hits a bum note can date the book or distract the reader.

If you really can’t relate to a teen girl, could you perhaps write the protagonist as an adult looking back to teen years but with an adult slant? That could allow for some humour (be it dry or blackly comic, depending on your narrative).

But of course, this is just me and my method. The characters are vast in my books and detailed and I workshop them for months and months and so to me, their authenticity is paramount.

These are making me laugh. There really is no such thing as a typical teen. Mine enjoys writing and love to engage with novelists on social media - Tick Tock seems to be the favourite, which would be a good way forward.
Mine at 14:
Only wore black,
Sleeps a lot,
Obsessed with the Far East - BTS, Stray Kids, Manga and Aname (no idea on their spelling!)
Would happily live in a cave eating Pot Noodles with her favourite pet.
Jekyll and Hyde personality
Loves Horror novels
Hates having her photo taken
She is 15 now and has stated to use full words again.

Oh and you can never open your curtains!

A change of bedding needs massive eye rolling and any incursion into her bedroom is treated with suspicion and hostility.

I had a dd who was 14 in 2019.

No make up. Long hair, nike joggers, nike airforce, tight tops.

Beautiful and confident.

Snap chat and insta .Not sure tiktok was so popular then (she is into it now).
She likes rap music - very much into AJ Tracey then.

Spotify and netflix the most important things to her. Jane the Virgin, vampire teen things, werewolves and How I met your mother.

Group of female friends and some boys. Boys all tiny and immature and she was bit scathing of them. Girls all frighteningly (apparently) confident. All had long hair
Selfies all the time.
Happy to game but not obsessed.
Bubble tea, uber eats (macdonalds sadly),
Slang but I asssume it dates and is also particular to the location.
No alcohol although I think it was starting to appear at gatherings
Very feminist although this may be down to me and her (girls) school.
Everyone seems to be bisexual.

My Dd was 14 in 2019.
Was and still is obsessed by all things Korean, started by her obsession with K-pop. She was a huge fan of BTS at the time and always spends a fortune on CDs. She started cooking Korean food at the time, as part of her Duke of Edinburgh, and she dreams of visiting South Korea.
Doesn't wear much makeup, and lived in joggers / skinny jeans and hoodies /crop tops.
Not sporty at all, we have to drag her out when we want to go for a walk.
Was a Scout at that time ( she had previously been a girl guide but got bored). Gave up Scouts because she didn't get on with the other scouts her age.

Touchy. Very touchy. But is fully entitled to give her opinions as harshly as she sees fit.

Likewise, enjoys a debate but only insofar as she is correct and cannot consider changing her views whilst you should do just that.

Behaves like an entirely different person or indeed species when with friends or anyone outside the immediate family.

Finds her parents physically painfully embarrassing for existing at all. Unless she wants money or a lift in which case she can be charm itself.

I have two dds, one is 16 and a quarter, and the other will be 14 in a few weeks time.
Obviously the pandemic has changed their lives so this year has been very different as they haven’t been in school for over a year. They are close and like to chat about things, they watch TV together, cuddled up on a sofa. The younger likes natural history programmes or programmes on other cultures, such as Sue Perkins’ travels in Asia. We live in a rural village and they most enjoy being outdoors, the youngest loves to bodyboard and would be in the sea all day if she could. The 16 year old like to photograph nature. She listens to music quite a bit, mainly bands from decades ago.
Neither of them have tik tok, the eldest has Instagram for close friends only, and they both use Whatsapp for a small group of good friends. (They have group face time chats with their friends now where they would normally have got together).
Both are strongly supportive of female single sex spaces and are highly critical of the whole TWAW mantra.
The eldest wears some makeup but not all the time, usually just mascara and lipstick -no foundation or highlighters, no crazy eyebrows...the younger doesn’t wear any. Neither colour their hair. No boyfriends yet but the oldest has several good friends who are boys.
No gaming.
They love costume dramas and old films.
The eldest reads a lot, classics mainly. The younger reads more non fiction, travel journals and comedy. Clothes wise the eldest says that not being in school or with friends has allowed her to wear what she really likes and not worry what people might think. The youngest too, but she still worries more about standing out or looking different. Her friends are all very conforming, I think that is typical of this year (year 10 in school). They relax into themselves a bit more when they get to 16. I can see the shift now, the worry about standing out and wanting to fit in at 13/14/15, and then the moving out of that at 16. My eldest has a lot of older friends which helps perhaps.

They both worry about school work and stress over exams. That is their main source of stress, alongside all the fear and worry of the pandemic. They also both worry about the environment and care about it deeply, they worry generally about the world, wars and conflict, terrorism is a big fear that puts them off visiting cities.

@BiggerBoat1

Oh and you can never open your curtains!

A change of bedding needs massive eye rolling and any incursion into her bedroom is treated with suspicion and hostility.

Haha I joined a writing class a few months ago and we had to write a scene. My scene involved the protaganist trying to get her daughter downstairs for a meal and the bedroom curtains were closed so I at least got 1 thing right

@Takesonetowriteone

I’ve namechanged as I’m an author and don’t want dots joined.

I would strongly suggest your protagonist be a character with whom you identify. Otherwise there’s a real risk she won’t be credible. Now, that isn’t to say you can’t write about things you don’t know, for this you must do much, much research but even then I would apply that to secondary or even tertiary characters rather than as a entirely central theme to the book.

However, with central human characters, if there is just one tiny detail that jars even one reader’s eye, it could derail your entire narrative.

I find this with dialogue, too. A hugely important element and it must feel natural. One element that hits a bum note can date the book or distract the reader.

If you really can’t relate to a teen girl, could you perhaps write the protagonist as an adult looking back to teen years but with an adult slant? That could allow for some humour (be it dry or blackly comic, depending on your narrative).

But of course, this is just me and my method. The characters are vast in my books and detailed and I workshop them for months and months and so to me, their authenticity is paramount.

Thank you for taking the time and a name change to advise me. My main protagonist I definitely identify with. There are also flashbacks to her teenage years in the nineties which again I can definitely identify with. Its the modern teen, the daughter, I have been struggling with.

I am definitely going to do some young adult reading too as I am very keen to avoid some of the pitfalls you have mentioned. I am an avid reader and it only takes that "Yeah right" moment for the whole book to lose credibility.

What genre do you write? I am writing a psychological thriller though I am unsure if that market may be a little saturated now.