“We readily feel for the suffering child, but cannot see the child in the adult who, his soul fragmented and isolated, hustles for survival a few blocks away from where we shop or work.”
Gabor Maté has been a major influence in my life as a person, but as a writer, this quote settled under my skin. We as readers are far more lenient on children’s and YA fiction, which is possibly why it’s so popular amongst all ages. Both genres give us space to overlook character flaws. We expect the youthful naive hero to grow as we read and have an arch into “maturity” or finding their strength to overcome the antagonist. When we read adult fiction, we hold far less space for moral or behavioural flaws. Often, the antagonist in adult fiction is a version of people we know in reality. We criticise adult characters and adult fiction openly, harshly, because we do it to each other in the light of day.
“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.”
This stands for characters as it does with people. If a writer only gives you surface level change, then the story means nothing. I believe the best stories are written for us to relate to a character’s journey towards the truth of themselves, no matter if it is adult, YA, or children’s fiction. Some stories are meant to take us outside of ourselves. Fantasy, children’s books, and YA distract us from the harshness of adulthood and reality, but there are these other stories that get under our skin. Some books are meant to meet us where we’re at; they remind us to not loose our innocence to trauma and time.
