This was originally true of my works because of the JRPG/Shonen inspiration but I ended up aging up a lot of my characters that were like 16/17 to 19-20, though there's still a few explicitly kid members of the party.
In my own case, I decided that as much as I felt disturbed by the presence of child soldiers, in the bleak near-future setting I had established, the absence of child soldiers would make no sense.
The story stays with them into adulthood, however.
spoiler
And the proxy war waged by their former leaders becomes their actual revolution instead. I think the payoff was worth the setup, even if it hurt to write it that way.
Yeah my story is multigenerational (ive sort of mentioned this before to you I think?) so it tells the character's stories until they die (actually, even past that point, since an afterlife is involved, lmao sorry my story's scope is way to massive to deal with) and then a new generation takes over and such. I'll definitly have to think about including themes of war trauma, especially for the characters who are not grown when the story starts. Also a lot of the main characters have been training for war since early adolescence (and one grew up in a prison camp) even if they are young adults when the story starts, so I'll have to deal with that theme as well and the fallout that has on their psyches. Interesting to think about. Thats why I like talking about it. Brings up new themes I realize Ive underbaked. Which just ads more to the scope lmao but there it is.
Scope is definitely tempting to dive into; a very early draft of my old work used a different character's perspective for every single chapter.
I did write it that way for as long as I could but I gave up when there were so many fine details, so many important potential character moments, so many story beats that I had to sacrifice to pursue the scope I was originally reaching for.
I couldn't paint any particular trees to my liking because I had such a forest left to paint, metaphorically.
If you can do it, awesome. But I decided to focus on one primary character. Well, then two. Then three. I guess a vestige of the old approach came back there.
I was thinking of doing POV chapters too but I'm not sure that works in Kinetic novel form because I want the charachter on scene, though I could have only one charachter expressing inner thoughts per chapter and just bounce around as necessary? Not a new character per chapter though no.
The other problem is some key characters have secrets lol. Which I'm not sure how to handle. Like it would seem kinda suspicious to have those characters never have POVs, or have their story be told through the eye of a bodyguard or something when other characters are not.
I think I'm probably still going to do something POV-esque because I do want SOMEONE giving personal perspective on events and I dont know that I want it to just be a handful of them. I guess i'll just have to be careful with the scope of WHO is getting POVs so its not so broad that its really suspicious when a particular character isn't.
I wonder if you could do a sort of conditionally-unreliable narrator where from a character's POV they almost reveal their secret but not quite for the reader, and then when it shifts out, it can still be a surprise when it's finally delivered.
Secrets pay off best, usually, when they're from someone else's POV when they finally are revealed than the secret-haver.
I can't even knock that trope too hard considering the core cast of my own novel trilogy is (or at least, starts as) child soldiers, too.
This was originally true of my works because of the JRPG/Shonen inspiration but I ended up aging up a lot of my characters that were like 16/17 to 19-20, though there's still a few explicitly kid members of the party.
In my own case, I decided that as much as I felt disturbed by the presence of child soldiers, in the bleak near-future setting I had established, the absence of child soldiers would make no sense.
The story stays with them into adulthood, however.
spoiler
And the proxy war waged by their former leaders becomes their actual revolution instead. I think the payoff was worth the setup, even if it hurt to write it that way.
Yeah my story is multigenerational (ive sort of mentioned this before to you I think?) so it tells the character's stories until they die (actually, even past that point, since an afterlife is involved, lmao sorry my story's scope is way to massive to deal with) and then a new generation takes over and such. I'll definitly have to think about including themes of war trauma, especially for the characters who are not grown when the story starts. Also a lot of the main characters have been training for war since early adolescence (and one grew up in a prison camp) even if they are young adults when the story starts, so I'll have to deal with that theme as well and the fallout that has on their psyches. Interesting to think about. Thats why I like talking about it. Brings up new themes I realize Ive underbaked. Which just ads more to the scope lmao but there it is.
Scope is definitely tempting to dive into; a very early draft of my old work used a different character's perspective for every single chapter.
I did write it that way for as long as I could but I gave up when there were so many fine details, so many important potential character moments, so many story beats that I had to sacrifice to pursue the scope I was originally reaching for.
I couldn't paint any particular trees to my liking because I had such a forest left to paint, metaphorically.
If you can do it, awesome. But I decided to focus on one primary character. Well, then two. Then three. I guess a vestige of the old approach came back there.
I was thinking of doing POV chapters too but I'm not sure that works in Kinetic novel form because I want the charachter on scene, though I could have only one charachter expressing inner thoughts per chapter and just bounce around as necessary? Not a new character per chapter though no.
The other problem is some key characters have secrets lol. Which I'm not sure how to handle. Like it would seem kinda suspicious to have those characters never have POVs, or have their story be told through the eye of a bodyguard or something when other characters are not.
I think I'm probably still going to do something POV-esque because I do want SOMEONE giving personal perspective on events and I dont know that I want it to just be a handful of them. I guess i'll just have to be careful with the scope of WHO is getting POVs so its not so broad that its really suspicious when a particular character isn't.
I wonder if you could do a sort of conditionally-unreliable narrator where from a character's POV they almost reveal their secret but not quite for the reader, and then when it shifts out, it can still be a surprise when it's finally delivered.
Secrets pay off best, usually, when they're from someone else's POV when they finally are revealed than the secret-haver.