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@writergirl101

Hey, it worked :b (I really should learn how to use the forum emojis… all I can manage is the smiley face, haha)

I think the best way an author can do all of this (innocence, realism, the good, the bad, and the ugly) is to really grasp who their characters are as people and reveal that to the reader. The reader should come away from the story knowing what truths are true for each character, what motivates and inspires them, what they find fault in. A child character might believe that everything will turn out in the end of the conflict. An older character might foresee a darker ending, but the reader will know how they reasoned this. One example I find interesting is Brandon Sanderson’s characters in the Stormlight Archive. One character, Jasnah, is an atheist, while another, Shallan, is a devout believer in one of the fictional world’s religions. They have a few different discussions about their beliefs, each character arguing on behalf of their convictions, and at no one point does the reader feel the author’s bias. Vorinism is truth for Shallan and atheism is truth for Jasnah. Their convictions about this, their reasoning behind it all, makes them feel just a bit more real… So, in a roundabout way, we best keep the fairy-tale quality of innocence in stories by making that truth for one (or perhaps many) of the characters, but make it feel real by balancing it with others whose truths are different. At least, that’s how I try to do it within my own writing, though I definitely don’t always meet the mark.

@imwritehere1920

Thanks for responding and adding to the discussion! 🙂

I’ve never read anything by Elizabeth George Speare, but I also do remember reading books, feeling deeply touched by them, and wanting to be able to create something similar. Like crying while reading Little Women (I still do that!). Often, though, that would end up in a very angsty story, the only purpose of which was to elicit an emotional reaction xD