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There is a point in every person's life that marks a transition from youth to adulthood and from freedom to responsibility. This moment is traditionally called a "coming of age." For some it is cultural, for some it is personal, and for others it is circumstantial. For some people these moments are so subtle that they don't even notice them as they occur, but rather reflect many years later that "I didn't really start feeling like an adult until I got my first job/graduated college/my parents divorced." It is a theme we see reoccurring across cultures, reflected in their history and their mythology and it is a theme in turn reflected time and again in the literary world.

Perhaps the easiest place to point out the coming of age story is in fantasy. Someone turns sixteen and "comes into their powers" or the innocent country boy is swept up in war and intrigue, forced to leave his naivety behind. Sometimes the "coming of age" can occur very young; a twelve year old who is raped, a six year old who learns he can stand up to boys bigger than himself. For some it could be as simple as moving into one's own place, or paying their own bills for the first time - it's all in the perceptions of the person in question.

My question to you is this: Do you include a coming of age in your stories? I don't just mean the actual event, but does your character ever think about it if it's something that's already happened? How does it/has it changed them? Coming of age is indicative of accepting the power as well as responsibility of adulthood , even for those characters that are still considered children. What sort of changes does this effect, how does it shape the characters? What sort of form does it take in your story ? Is it cultural (i.e. a Jewish bar mitzvah, or the removal of charms deigned to protect children in Egyptian ideology), circumstantial or personal? And of course, do you even think of your events in these terms or give them the significance attributed to it? Do you feel that this is an important consideration when formulating your characters?

Please discuss any and all aspects I’ve brought up and any I haven't as they relate to writing - either your own or the success/failure of attempts to integrate a coming of age that you've read elsewhere.

I'm not sure if I've given my characters a "coming of age" in any of my stories. At least, not in a kind of sense where they suddenly look at the world are realize "Hey, I've matured!". The majority of my characters mature without really knowing it.

I usually have my characters start out after they have come of age so that they are a solid character, and then they grow and develope to deal with situations.

My first thought when I saw the thread title was that it was misplaced GD material, but then I started reading it and noticed, "Hey, WF regular.", and realized it wasn't. sweatdrop

But yeah. On topic, I think it's pretty much impossible to write any story without including a coming-of-age aspect somewhere in there, since, after all, a coming-of-age moment is necessary for character growth, no matter how minute that growth is. Beyond that, it depends on the type of story how much emphasis is placed on the coming-of-age aspect. Dan Brown's Angels & Demons is much less focused on any coming-of-age interpretations than Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, for example.

And not all characters need it, either. With secondary and tertiary characters, you can get away with them being largely unchanged throughout the whole story, depending on their role in the tale. Gandalf in LotR, for example, doesn't really change at all throughout the story. He's always the wise old leader with a lot of inherent power. Contrast that with Bilbo, whose role is largely inconsequential but still pivotal, because he was a ring bearer. Because he was more intimately involved with Sauron's ring than almost any other character, it makes sense to show changes in him, even if he does only make three appearances in the whole story as a tertiary character.

Treasure Island is about Coming of Age. The kid blasts a pirates's face off with a pistol.

In regards to Dan Brown, I find it interesting that his main character in Angels & Demons and The DaVinci Code has almost the reverse of a coming of age moment. The whole incident with the well and the phobia that arose out of that (it's been a while, but I'm fairly certain that's addressed in both of the books) has - rather than propelling him forawrd into adulthood - been a moment which has caused a part of him to remain trapped in his childhood, fettered by the fear he has of enclosed spaces. While certainly a defining moment for the character, it ended up being something that stunted him rather than helping him to grow.

You, know I hadn't even thought of the other side of the coin when I made this thread, what trials we don't pass. It's certainly a valid point though and I'm glad you brought up that book.

But yes, there are certainly characters where the audience isn't clued in to what sorts of things they went through on their path to adulthood, either because the author doesn't feel the audience needs to know about that aspect of the character, or because we see through another character's eyes and that one is oblivious to the idea that everyone was young at one time.

Do you think that an author should know these things even if the audience doesn't? Or do you think it's just needless complication?