Many a query describes a novel as a “coming of age” story. I’ve never really understood what this means (coming of age of what?) but I never really had a problem with the phrase. At the very least it connotes a maturation process, which means a character is changing, and a character changing is officially a good thing.
But then a while back I heard (either erroneously or just oneously) that Miss Snark hated the words “coming of age.” And I thought, “Huh.”
Since that time, perhaps because I see it several times a day and perhaps because I have been influenced by Her Snarkness, my feeling about the phrase “coming of age” has gradually morphed from benign curiosity to morbid hostility. But then again, what if coming of age is a necessary term?
So… Can I get a ruling on “coming of age”? Two options below. Love or loathe. No indifference allowed!
I think of “coming-of-age” as kind of a genre in middle grade fiction. And I enjoy reading those kinds of books.
“Coming of Age doesn’t say much but it does remove certain things from the discussion. You couldn’t say coming of age for anyone over 25 years old. A 40 year old cannot “come of age.”
We would never refer to the novel or the movie “Bang The Drum Slowly” as a coming-of-age.” story. The protagonists are too old and too adult. Neither would we say that Tim Robbin’s character ( Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh) in Bull Durham comes of age. He certainly grows, but he’s already an adult. He’s already established. Adults grow and change their lives. Youngsters “coms of age” …
It sets the age of a protagonist and it sets the the protagonist’s personal situation or mindset. It says that the protagonist goes through a change and ceases to be one thing to become something else. It implies that the character learns about sorrowful things and loses the optimism of youth that sees everything as good.
The Red Badge of Courage can be said to have such a transformation. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer have such transformations.
In the IMDB description of “Stand By Me” they have the line: For some, it’s the last real taste of innocence, and the first real taste of life. But for everyone, it’s the time that memories are made of. This refers to the death of a friend that sparks the onscreen author’s story framing the journey of children into manhood. That type of transformation.
I would venture to say that Harry Potter 1-7 is a coming of age story but that Lord of the Rings is not.
Frodo remains a child with burdens. Samwise Gamgee is the one that changes. At the end of the trilogy, he’s raising children. The quest has changed him for the better. Frodo turns away from life.
Harry Potter learns and changes as the novels progress. We get to see the changes in him over the years as he struggles to understand his situation.
Even Harry’s cousin Dudley Dursley is not a dud. He embraces Harry when the family is sent away in the last novel. He demonstrates that he understands what is happening but cannot be of any help. That’s a coming of age. His Aunt and Uncle are just too old and too much muggle to understand. A generational difference.
I just landed an agent yesterday for a “coming of age” story. Not in the query: coming of age.
In the end, the best coming of age stories are not about actually coming of age. Simply, it is a side effect of the main conflict, which is what the story is about.
*nod*
And congratulations!
I’m not voting because I neither love nor hate the expression. If I have to choose, I might lean toward loathe because it’s certainly overused, and a lazy alternative for a description of the real conflict.
Perhaps a better term would be “Turning Point,” which can be used at any age.
An agent I met at a conference once described my book as a coming of age story which is something I had never considered using to describe it. But I found this phrase too cliche so I never used it in my queries.
I read this morning that Google estimates there are 1 trillion blogs or websites on the internet. More news as events warrant.
Sounds like a women’s lit. Ugh. On the other hand…what story isn’t Coming of Age? The question is…what age? The age of careerdom, the age of sexual discovery, the age of motherhood, middle age… the age of purple hats and purses.
I voted against it.
I honestly can’t say I loathe it, but I do tend to find myself recoiling from the term a little bit. I’m all for maturation for every character, but “coming of age” has, at least for current literature, become almost synonymous with teenagers becoming adults for me, and I want a little more plot than JUST some person growing up. I tend to be more interested in adults growing and changing at this point, and most of my reading choices (and the ages of my own characters) reflect that.
wow, we hate us some coming of age.
Looking back on my own life, my “coming of age” definitely involved sex. Not allowed in YA, I’d assume, so the whole concept to me is nonsense.
If coa includes having sex in a graveyard after picking beans all afternoon, let me know. I might have a story to tell.
Too much information, so I’d better post anonymous.
I think I hate the term mostly because of the implication that it applies only to young people turning adult. As if no other point in a human life is as important a change or merits a novel. Bleh.
Elissa, you made me think: How about if we give other age groups a break and combine two overused cliches to create “coming of a certain age” for women entering that part of life where they become both mature and wise?
uhhh…exactly what age is “coming of age?”..It could also be…40’s, 50’s, 60’s…there are novels that also address that age gender…people change at different periods of their life…
Ms. Snark, of course, is AGELESS!!!!
Here’s a better way of saying it (possibly this belongs on the favorite words post): Bildungsroman.
There.
As for me, I don’t hate the phrase, but I’m not fond of the connotations that come with it. Not my thing.
Loathe, because, to me the term seems a quick way to get out of describing what your story is actually about.
It tells me exactly what kind of a YA I’m going to get into, especially a movie.
I think: Freaky Friday and think, this is going to be fun.
(I suppose it could get old if every other manuscript you get is described that way. But then, not every one is right about itself, I presume.)
I think people say “coming of age story” because it sounds better than “a tale of puberty” or similar.
For the most part, I don’t enjoy tales of puberty, but I do understand why people seek pleasant ways to describe them.
I voted for “love” because I’ve found that I am drawn toward many books and movies that are described by their marketing people in that way.
However, I don’t use the phrase in my own queries anymore. So, it would seem that I don’t *completely* love it.
I love the phrase “coming of age.” It’s an old English phrase that originally meant that a person was old enough to take on adult responsibilities and/or take direct control of their inheritance. It has a charming, Old World quality. Think Jane Austin; it’s the kind of thing that she and her contemporaries would have used to describe someone. BTW, the age, usually, was 21 back then. COA (can I interest anyone in an acronym?) has been overused in literature, though, and now basically means that the person “grows up” in the story, regardless of their actual, chronological change. With this meaning, there are some great examples of COA stories in modern times: the original Star Wars trilogy is the one that stands out best for me. Are there some other great examples, both well- and lesser-known? New thread possibility!
Nathan, I believe the official term is “bildungsroman”. I think there is still a place for a TRUE one of those.
But most books labelled “coming of age” these days are navel-gazers. Blech.
I always thought “coming of age” simply represented moving from one phase of life to the next so it isn’t specific to one genre per say.
However, I’ll admit I assumed it was used mainly for a child moving into adult phase but I’m guessing thats wrong.
You people are very funny with all of your generalizations. As if everyone who uses the term “coming of age” is too lazy to think of something else! Although it is a cliche, it can be used well to describe certain aspects of the book in three words, and then something more concrete can be used to describe this character’s particular coming of age story. And for those of you who think it is unspecific (“What age does this apply to?”) it’s actually a specific term only used to describe the transition from teen (or occasionally preteen) to adulthood, the period during which a character discovers something(s) about herself and/or the world that inspires her to face things with a newly mature attitude. What she has to face depends on her specific character.
If I see “coming of age” on the back cover or the reviews it goes right into the pile with “epic love stories” “tragic loss” and “chosen hero.”
I don’t care if the character *is* growing up during the book. If the only plot you have is a character getting older I’m not going to stay interested for 300+ pages.
If coa includes having sex in a graveyard after picking beans all afternoon, let me know. I might have a story to tell.
Too much information, so I’d better post anonymous.
Anon:
There’s no such thing as “too much information.” That’s why we write.
To just_me:
Why would you assume that if it’s a story about a character coming of age (growing up, whatever), that that’s the only plot element?!?!??! The growing up is what happens as a result of the plot, it’s not the plot itself.
I think writers care about cliche phrases like this. But I don’t think most people in the mainstream would give it a second thought.
If you took the time to research how many successful mainstream books have been promoted with this phrase, you’d also find there was a very successful agent behind them. And the phrase didn’t bother them in the least.
And we really don’t know who Miss Snark was or what she represented, so it’s hard to take her advice on this topic seriously.
Miss Snark wasn’t giving advice so much as expressing a personal preference. That said, I would recommend taking her advice seriously, based on the number of other, non-anonymous publishing professionals who have validated what she posted over the years.
A few weeks ago, someone asked if anybody here followed the links to other posters blogs and read them. Heck, I don’t think most commenters here even read the other comments right here!
By the way, it’s also called a bildungsroman. I don’t know if anybody here knew that . . .
*posters’
When I rule the universe, blog comments will be editable.
I think writers care about cliche phrases like this. But I don’t think most people in the mainstream would give it a second thought.
If you took the time to research how many successful mainstream books have been promoted with this phrase, you’d also find there was a very successful agent behind them. And the phrase didn’t bother them in the least.
Mainstream….that’s a loaded word which is used in more then one discipline. It means something available to the public. Perhaps what made it ‘mainstream’ is the hype and buzz that might have generated enough interest to make it mainstream? Indie artists, and ‘mainstream’ artists. Agents have some authors who are more sucessful then others. It doesn’t mean that only the ‘mainstream’ authors and thier ‘mainstream’ books, are in two different stomping grounds. One might be further to the net though.
Mainstream was indie at one point.
I think ‘mainstream’ writers would probably care. Hopefully – even though they are making a ton of money as they’ve
become ‘mainstream’ – they care enough about their book to have an interest in how it’s packaged and displayed to the public.
It doesn’t matter who Miss Snark was though… she’s in the publishing industry. What that means is that she knows these things just as our host in these parts does.
Dear Mr. Bransford – I had been randomly lobbing bumbling queries out into the agentosphere for a while before I tumbled upon your blog by way of Snark.
Determined to become a “Nathanal Enquerier” I quickly concocted a profound and elaborate new letter which I first ran past a trusted friend, who, after eliminating Pages 2 though 5 and part of 7, inserted the fanfaric phrase “a coming of age story”.
I did not and do not entirely get what that means in general, nor how it applied to my tome in any case, but it had a certain je ne sais quoi – like as if my friend knew his jazzy memetic stuff – so I left it in place and fired the query off to you.
Then I began following your blog and reading the Bransfarchives, and in one post you linked to another blogging agent (with whom you apparently agreed – not Miss Snark)who had posted a list of top ten phrases which would get a query tossed in the crapper, including “set in the 1970s” and “a coming of age story”.
Imagine my shock and despair.
I thought my pants might never dry.
“Coming of Age”…it sounds like a bad Movie of the Week on Lifetime…
I love it. I loved LOTTERY, too.
Um, love it. You don’t f*ck with a bilsdungroman.