Sam asked me an interesting question the other day when we were out for lunch.  She wanted to know why I tended to focus my stories on young characters.  The answer I gave was kind of muddled, I think, and I think I tried to point out that I write stories about adults, too.  As I thought about it, though, the three major series I am writing at the moment are about or at least start with characters who are young.  They age throughout the series into adulthood, but they start out in their teens or younger.  Mitheil‘s title character is ten at the start of the series, and will be twenty when I write the last one.  The Free Spirit series starts out with teenagers in the first book, college students in the second, young adults for the third and fourth.  My Children series…well, the word “Children” in all of the title kind of speaks to that.  The characters will be young adults by the time it finishes, but still “children” after a fashion.

 

So why do I do it?  One thing I pointed out to Sam was marketability.  The success of Harry Potter is an easy demonstration of this principle.  Going further back, Narnia or even the Wizard of Oz series demonstrated this well enough.  People like to ready about kids doing heroic things as much or more than they like to read about adults doing the same.  Adults, after all, have had some experience with life by definition, so even though the odds may be stacked against them, there’s an idea which tells us, at least subconsciously, they can handle it.  They can swing a sword or fire a gun or otherwise brute their way through a problem.  Children, however, simply don’t have the mass (usually) to brute their way through anything.  They must get creative to survive a sticky situation, and I think it is that creativity which gives these stories their charm.

 

This last bit, I think, is a significant part of why I write from a youthful point of view.  Certainly, I know marketability is important, but as my current odds of commercial success are limited, it’s hardly reason for me to write from any particular point of view.  There’s two challenges in writing from youth, though, and these challenges inspire me.  The first is getting the point of view correct, making social situations awkward without going too far and limiting the characters’ knowledge to what youth know.  The second difficulty is the creativity they need to get by.  Mitheil, for example, thinks his way through his encounters, which means I have to think my way through his encounters.

 

There is, of course, another reason I like to write from youthful points of view.  I think it was Mark Twain who said, “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.”  I have taken this quote to heart.  I may be approaching fifty (in a little over two years, eek!) but I tend towards younger ways.  I like cartoons (mostly anime), cereal for breakfast, and occasionally like to (briefly) pretend I have one superpower or another.  There’s quite a few movies in my DVD collection which are aimed at kids but I shamelessly enjoy anyway.  I’ll buy them and, on the rare occasion I get them at Wally World instead of Amazon, I’ll make no excuses like “It’s for my kids.”  I may be far removed from youth physically, but I still act like a kid plenty.

 

So there’s my extended reasoning for writing about young characters.  The full explanation is pretty complicated, I am sure, and a psychologist would likely have a field day exploring it.  There’s none at hand so I can only give the above thoughts on it.  Meanwhile, I have to fly off and save the day.  See you tomorrow.