{"id":466,"date":"2011-04-26T08:09:08","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T14:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=466"},"modified":"2011-04-26T08:09:08","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T14:09:08","slug":"an-extended-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=466","title":{"rendered":"An Extended Childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam asked me an interesting question the other day when we were out for lunch.\u00a0 She wanted to know why I tended to focus my stories on young characters.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They age throughout the series into adulthood, but they start out in their teens or younger.\u00a0 Mitheil<\/em>‘s title character is ten at the start of the series, and will be twenty when I write the last one.\u00a0 The Free Spirit<\/em> series starts out with teenagers in the first book, college students in the second, young adults for the third and fourth.\u00a0 My Children<\/em> series…well, the word “Children” in all of the title kind of speaks to that.\u00a0 The characters will be young adults by the time it finishes, but still “children” after a fashion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So why do I do it?\u00a0 One thing I pointed out to Sam was marketability.\u00a0 The success of Harry Potter<\/em> is an easy demonstration of this principle.\u00a0 Going further back, Narnia<\/em> or even the Wizard of Oz<\/em> series demonstrated this well enough.\u00a0 People like to ready about kids doing heroic things as much or more than they like to read about adults doing the same.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They can swing a sword or fire a gun or otherwise brute their way through a problem.\u00a0 Children, however, simply don’t have the mass (usually) to brute their way through anything.\u00a0 They must<\/em> get creative to survive a sticky situation, and I think it is that creativity which gives these stories their charm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This last bit, I think, is a significant part of why I write from a youthful point of view.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There’s two challenges in writing from youth, though, and these challenges inspire me.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The second difficulty is the creativity they need to get by.\u00a0 Mitheil, for example, thinks his way through his encounters, which means I<\/em> have to think my way through his encounters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is, of course, another reason I like to write from youthful points of view.\u00a0 I think it was Mark Twain who said, “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.”\u00a0 I have taken this quote to heart.\u00a0 I may be approaching fifty (in a little over two years, eek!) but I tend towards younger ways.\u00a0 I like cartoons (mostly anime), cereal for breakfast, and occasionally like to (briefly) pretend I have one superpower or another.\u00a0 There’s quite a few movies in my DVD collection which are aimed at kids but I shamelessly enjoy anyway.\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 I may be far removed from youth physically, but I still act like a kid plenty.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So there’s my extended reasoning for writing about young characters.\u00a0 The full explanation is pretty complicated, I am sure, and a psychologist would likely have a field day exploring it.\u00a0 There’s none at hand so I can only give the above thoughts on it.\u00a0 Meanwhile, I have to fly off and save the day.\u00a0 See you tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam asked me an interesting question the other day when we were out for lunch.\u00a0 She wanted to know why I tended to focus my stories on young characters.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":467,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}