Coming of age is never easy. You might have been the popular kid in school, armed with academic excellence, physical prowess, and all the right social graces. You may have been an outcast, or homeschooled, or only in school for a little while. No matter where or how you grew up, there’s a season in which you come of age. You made the transition from child to adult; you grasped that there’s a world out there and a destiny that might be yours.
In this article, I’ll explore the topic of coming of age stories, a classic genre filled with great stories like Perks of Being a Wallflower and Lady Bird. To better understand this, I’ll take a look at two key aspects of a coming of age story, and give you a Story Weapon on how you can use these elements in your own work.
Coming of age stories or “Bildungsroman” follow a young character’s transition into adulthood, highlighting the formation of their identity and how they navigate significant rites of passage. By exploring how characters choose who they want to be and how they face pivotal life moments, these stories reveal the emotional and moral growth that defines growing up.
What is a coming of age story?
A coming of age story, also known as a Bildungsroman, is a genre that tracks a young character’s journey from youth to adulthood, focusing on their psychological and moral growth. This kind of story usually has the protagonist learn valuable lessons, navigate societal expectations and their own identity in that context, and lose their innocence in some ways.
“Divorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony — a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.”
– Erica Jong
Creating an identity
One of the wonders of adolescence is learning that you’re not everything; you’re something quite specific. Most of us learn this while being jostled around at school. We see people like us and a lot of people that are decidedly different from us. Slowly, often without realizing it, an identity begins to take shape.
A key aspect of any coming of age story is the moment when a character chooses a group or a style. This helps define the microcosm in which their triumphs and failures take place. It narrows the lens of the world enough for something interesting to happen.
For you, that might’ve been when you chose to double down on your sport in high school. It might have been when you gave up on doing well in classes, or started dressing differently.
Let’s take a look at some examples of how this manifests in fiction.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
A big part of becoming something is deciding what you don’t want to be. This is exemplified beautifully in a tense moment from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when Harry tries his best to not be put in Slytherin. He doesn’t know very much about the other houses and doesn’t know yet that he’s brave. Still, he crosses at least one option off the list as he thinks, Not Slytherin, not Slytherin, and begins the journey to creating his identity.
Dead Poets Society (1989)
In this film, Neil takes the advice from his teacher to seize the day. After being stifled by his parents and the formal environment of Welton Academy boarding school for most of his life, he chooses to audition for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He throws his lot in with a more poetic kind, and finds an exuberance in being connected with people like him.
Superbad (2007)
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg started writing the story for this screenplay as teenagers, basing it on their own high school experiences. In Superbad the main characters have their identities wrapped up in each other. The whole story plays out almost like an extended break-up. As they head off to different colleges, they’re forced to accept that they can’t rely on each other to affirm an identity. To enter into relationships and step out into the world, they have to grow into their own people. And they do.
If you’re writing a coming of age story, it’s worth asking what plays into the identity of your character. Like all of us, they’ve inherited a background and a set of expectations. Perhaps their parents put pressure on them or their friend group has a certain style. Maybe they’ve always been gifted in school or they’ve had trouble academically.
Whatever the premise, it’s important that your characters have the option to choose and change through their own volition. What inspires that change or where that inner voice comes from is entirely up to you. You might even ask yourself; what is your identity, and when did it begin to form?
Rites of passage
Our cultures as human beings are rife with rites of passage. They help us process emotions as a group and mark changes. There’s a reason we jump the broom or wear a certain color to funerals. These traditions help us join a long lineage of people just like us, growing and changing just as they did.
One of the reasons adolescence and early adulthood are so memorable is that they’re full of little rites of passage. There’s prom and college admissions. There’s your first apartment and your first kiss. There’s the first time you leave home and your first tattoo.
The way we face these rites of passage and our relationship to them says a lot about us. Did you win prom queen or did you skip the dance to do something else? Did you get into the college you wanted or did you head straight to work instead? Did you leave home at all? These questions and their answers are important for your characters and their development.
Let’s look at a few examples of rites of passage in works of fiction.
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
There’s no better introduction to the fruits of life than your first love and your first heartbreak. The story follows Elio and his fascination with Oliver, which grows into a romance. Elio discovers all sorts of things about himself as he learns about this other person. He discovers his queerness, among other things. It ends with Oliver’s departure and this advice from Elio’s father:
In your place, if there is pain, nurse it. And if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out. Don’t be brutal with it. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!
How to Train Your Dragon (2010 and 2025)
Here the rite of passage ends up being the final exam of the dragon-fighting class. The protagonist Hiccup is tasked with killing a dragon. He refuses to do so and instead attempts to subdue it; the situation goes awry and Toothless, the injured dragon that Hiccup has befriended, rushes in to save him. The rite of passage is turned on its head. Not only does Hiccup refuse to kill a dragon, he’s saved by one.
Captains Courageous (1937)
Here’s an older example some of you might not be familiar with. Harvey Cheyne is a wealthy and spoiled boy who is accustomed to getting his way by lying, manipulating, and bribing. His small world starts crashing down on him, however, when he gets suspended at boarding school. His single, absent father takes Harvey on a boat trip to Europe to try and build a relationship with him. Harvey falls off the luxury liner, however, and is picked up by a fisherman named Manuel. What follows is a transformation from entitlement to integrity as Harvey learns how to earn his place in the world through hard work and moral growth.
A key moment for Harvey is when he catches his first fish, a large halibut, in a race with one of the schooner’s other fishing teams. Manuel beams with pride, but the act of catching the fish is not the true rite of passage here. At that moment, one of the dorymates in the other boat, Long Jack, gets tangled and caught up in lines and hooks. Harvey smugly tells Manuel that he had sabotaged the other team by tying up their fishing lines and messing with their bait the night before.
Manuel takes the halibut and says: “You still alive and strong, huh? That good. You go back. You tell other fish: ‘Manuel ain’t got no fisherman in his boat. He got no dorymate. He just got cheat.’ And I no catch big, strong, honest fish like you that way. Tell them good and loud.”
After releasing the fish and taking Harvey back to the schooner, Manuel doesn’t tell on Harvey, or imply the boy’s guilt to the other fishermen in any way. Instead, he ignores Harvey. With that, and the sight of the hooks deep in Long Jack’s arm, the shame weighs down on the boy so much that Harvey confesses what he had done.
This marks a huge turning point from where Harvey started at the beginning of the story. As Harvey tells the truth, Manuel rushes in to keep him from harm, saying, “He admit the whole thing like regular grown fella.” From that point on, Harvey lets go of his pride and opens his mind and heart to learn what makes a man of integrity.
Your story weapon: Extending the metaphor
Part of the reason that coming of age stories work so well is that we’re always growing. We may “come of age” literally only once, but every story is about peeling back the layers of the self and finding something new.
You may be writing a classic coming of age story, and these structural points will be helpful. You may be writing something completely different. Even if your story is about older characters or aliens or immortal, non-aging beings, there may be a way to use the coming of age format.
Though our identities form most in our youth, they change constantly. When someone decides, for example, to start working on their addiction, joining a support group is a change in identity. The first time they speak up in a meeting is a small rite of passage. Getting married, getting divorced, losing a spouse, having a child, losing a child, getting fired, starting your own company–there are endless sources of growth and change in our lives. With each, we join a new community of people who’ve had the same experience. As you continue to grow and change, ask yourself how you’re coming of age this time. As your characters grow and change, ask them the same question.
Transformation is a great and powerful story element in any format. Join one of my workshops to learn how you can make your story more compelling: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day.
