Young Writers Society

In many adventure or fantasy stories (books, movies or other media) it's often children who play the main characters and the heroes. I understand that a story which is aimed at a young audience will use young heroes so the audience can relate to them. The same happens with war stories of (usually) male soldiers which of course needs to appeal to an older audience.

But let's head back to the story for the young(er) audience in which children play the hero/main characters. I might be over-thinking it all, or I'm completely missing the point, but why can't the adults be responsible for vanquishing the evil and saving the world? The adults are usually stronger, wiser and bear stronger magic and arms.

What kind of reasons could, for example, a medieval story (or other stories) have that "this" specific group of children are the ones who need to save the world by defeating the evil powers, and not the stronger adults?

When it comes to YA, it mostly boils down to how that audience wants to read about people their age.

Adults have a lot of things figured out that teenagers can't relate to. So many YAs are "coming of age" stories, which is often what teenagers relate to. It also provides a nice little escape for kids who want to dream of adventures. They can more easily put themselves in the shoes of somebody their own age than an adult.

Problems arise when the teenagers are more competent than the adults when they really shouldn't be, which unfortunately happens often. This is often known as the competence zone (warning, link is to TV Tropes) which is described as only people within the target age range for the show will be competent at anything.

So, really, it's 90% a marketing thing.

Ahah, this is where Hiyao Miyazaki's endless wisdom comes into it. The big word he uses is nostalgia.

Have you ever noticed how so much more adults read children's novels than children read adults novels? And how big a market there is for childhood biographies? And how many classics like Oliver Twist and Romeo and Juliet are based either in part or in whole during youth?

Many adults have a fascination for childhood because it's is such a unique time in our lives. We have endless hours to think and dream, without the worries and inhibitions to stop us from doing so. As a child, everything is enchanting or curios or terrifying. Everything is still new and possibilities are endless.

As teenagers we have the onset of emotions we never had as children. Rage and lust and paranoia and all that stuff. Lust is the big one, because suddenly there is a whole new aspect to our lives that wasn't there as children and that will play an immensely significant part of our most beautiful and painful memories for the rest of our lives- and teenagehood is when we're still full of excitement of the world, with the ability to experience it fully.

Childhood (and teenagehood) represents a time and state of mind when we could be passionate about things that as adults we wouldn't have time for. By reading a story based in youth and putting ourselves in the position of a hero we get to return to that state of freedom and carelessness.

It makes it easier for us to abandon our own world and slip into another one that can still be equally plausible.

As writers it's much easier to create and engross ourselves in a work of fiction if we return to that childish state where bills and jobs and headaches and sensibility don't play a part in it.

I can understand that reading about your childhood, or what you wished your childhood would have been like, is attractive. The story of Oliver Twist is easy to relate to since it happened in "real life", even if it was in a less modern age.

What I have here is a fantasy story with magic and stuff. Not something that's related to everyday life. I'm trying to find a reason why this group of children are the ones who slay the dragon, rather than the more experienced adults. Being "the chosen ones" is a bit cheesy and too easy to write in my opinion.

I think Tenyo answered that question with discussion about certain qualities of the psyche of children that makes people want to see them as characters, not necessarily about how their lives progressed.

Ah, I see.

One of the biggest justifications can be one of the thing Ten mentioned— less responsibilities. For me there's political corruption among the adults and the teenagers haven't been roped into it yet, therefore they're the best bets at rooting out the corruption.

There is also how certain professions have an expiration date. The more physical your profession, the younger your expiration date (most competitive gymnasts and figure skaters are under 25). Young fit tends to beat old fit, so long as the old fit's skill doesn't cut you down first.

Also teenagers are very good at this thing called healing. Also their morale can be higher. Adults take longer to heal and are more likely to be put out of commission from an injury, and are easier to injure.

I just find it easier to wrote my own age group!

Like it's been said above, adults are fascinated by childhood, and children want to read about other children. I think another reason many children are heroes is because people actually want to believe that there's a chance in this world people can be heroes. It's a lot less believable to have a child hero, because children are seen as weaker or less important than adults. So for writers, who are often writers of the unheard, writing about children saving the world is a way of giving people, especially young readers, hope. When I was younger, reading about the sisters grimm, who saved people from evil everafters, harry potter who was only eleven stealing the sorcerer's stone back from he who must not be named, Trixie Belden who solved mysteries at only thirteen... they all inspired me and made me think that I too could do wonderful things, even if I was only twelve. And that's an amazing thing.

We can say all day that children heroes are unrealistic and overused, but at the end of the day there's something that keeps us going back to them time after time, because no matter how old you get, you want to read about those kids that are doing things you dreamt about or dream about. You want to go back to those days, and those books teach you how.

Just weighing in here.

Often fantasy stories are set in a world similar to Earth's past, when youngsters tended to do a lot more physical work. It's more believable for a farmer to wield a sword because said farmer has built up his/her strength through manual labor.

That said, there are modern fantasies out there. Maybe your hero was in the Boyscouts or Girlscouts? Perhaps they're a twenty-something who's been through military training? Oh, the possibilities...