A few nights ago over dinner the Boy’s girlfriend told me she was “an original Harry Potter kid. I grew up with Harry.”

Golly, that stopped me in my tracks. (The first book—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—released in the United Stated on 1 September 1998.) I truly enjoyed those books, but I’ve spent many lovely minutes since that conversation imagining what it would have been like to encounter them as a sixth-grader.*

If you’re writing fiction (about eleven-year-olds, or members of the Millennial Generation, or their parents—or for those audiences), you might spend some time thinking about this too. You don’t want to sound dated. A Millennial character’s voice should sound … well, Millennial. (As should his or her name.)

One of the advantages of getting older—bear with me here; I’m well aware of the disadvantages, so I do try to find the upside—is having an accumulation of socio-cultural factoids with which to edit my authors.

Remember, we’ve talked about the importance of getting the details right (in Every Novel Is a Historical Novel, say, and Ringing True)—not just historical details but cultural details, gender details, nationality details, and so on. And with so much information—online encyclopedias like Wikipedia, as well as journals and articles and blogs—at our fingertips, there’s no excuse not to.

For writers of contemporary fiction, for example, an article in the AARP magazine says these items are almost gone from daily life: answering machines, tube televisions, phone books, bank deposit slips,** subway tokens, rolodexes, printed encyclopedias, film, and incandescent light bulbs. Hello? used to answer a phone call is almost gone too, as A. A. Gill points out in Vanity Fair, because the younger generations all text, rather than call at all, and the phone identifies incoming callers anyway. The AARP magazine also has a list of what is on its way out and will be gone in the next fifty years—such as road maps. I’m pretty sure printed newspapers will soon be gone too.

But wait, there’s more. If you really want to get it right, immerse yourself in the Beloit College Mindset List.***

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. … The list was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of [their own] dated references. It quickly became an internationally monitored catalog of the changing worldview of each new college generation. Mindset List websites at themindsetlist.com and beloit.edu, as well as the Mediasite webcast and their Facebook page receive more than a million visits annually.

Generational demographics are helpful—many of us more mature (ahem) folks probably encounter both Gen X and Millennials (often called Gen Y) in the workplace, with varying degrees of delight—but simple demographics are often too general. What are the birth years associated with Millennials, for example? You can find a variety of answers. (The Boy, whose birth year falls on the cusp of both, self-identifies as a Millennial. The fact that he and I recently had a conversation that included the words long-term career goals, career affects lifestyle, professional credibility, life aspirations, and quality of life clearly identifies him as such.)

So the Beloit Mindset Lists can help you understand the why of your characters (or coworkers). Compare, say, just one aspect of the Boy’s list (2006) to this year’s list (2019) and you’ll see why it matters:

Class of 2006: Cyberspace has always existed. (Cyberspace?)

Class of 2019: They have grown up treating Wi-Fi as an entitlement, and Their parents have gone from encouraging them to use the Internet to begging them to get off it.

Big difference! Check out the lists for more facts that will astonish or dismay you. More importantly, don’t be caught using outdated references in your fiction (or nonfiction, for that matter).

* Here’s what was delighting me in sixth grade: Edward Eager’s The Well-Wishers. It was the first age-appropriate novel I’d ever read.

** I didn’t know this until I watched my two favorite Millennials scan checks into their smartphones. Now I get it.

*** Thanks to editor Ramona Richards for this tip. It should be noted that Beloit did not consult Your Editor when they were naming the list; I would have informed them that mind-set is hyphenated. 🙂

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