The rising generation is beginning to discover its creativity. Millennials are starting to get involved within multiple industries where new ideas, words, emotions and characters are emerging from the primordial soup of teenage angst, turning into something far more concrete and valid. The question that arises when a new generation picks up their pens and brushes, however, is “what will they create?” My answer, at least from the perspective of one of those millennials, is that we will be creating new foundations of stories that would otherwise remain stagnant.
Our generation is challenging normalcy at every level. We are breaking down sexual, gender, racial and social barriers faster than anyone could have imagined. The world around us has been changing dramatically for some time; some aspects of it are good while others are frightening. For instance, millennials of all faiths are leaving their religious and political upbringings in search of something new. The world around us is becoming increasingly secular. We are creating even more in response to that.
This new concept of the world is where our creativity comes into play. As millennials begin to write, we shape the world around us, making it a place very different to those who came before us. Instead of a continuation, our stories will be a new beginning. We love our wandering, lost, and broken heroes. We love our multifaceted villains whose ideas and desires are understandable and human. And we will be creating those characters on a deeper and more intimate level than ever before.
The obsession with happy endings is drawing to a halt. We don’t mind seeing the “good guy” fight a battle against another hero, or herself for that matter. Millennials are no longer afraid of pointing out the very human aspects of our characters. Shying away from things like mental illness and disabilities is no longer a problem, as this generation is able to create people in very human and relatable ways. The men and women we read about in books and watch on television will be different in the future than the ones today. They will be more human and more beautiful than ever before.
Instead of being a disjointed amalgamation of differing positions and sides, our generation largely comes together to try and make change. Many of us seem to want radical shifts in culture, in language, and in education, so that our minds will be better prepared for the world that we will help create.
A major shift is coming, no matter how hard the entertainment industry wants to fight it. They can release the same tired love song, the same played out comedy, but keeping the next generation from thinking for themselves and writing the next great novel or film or song will not work. It cannot work. Millennials have seen too much.
We grew up with the falling of the World Trade Center. We watched the Boston Marathon get bombed, watched children slaughtered at an elementary school. We know better than anyone what it is like to see innocence taken, to see a world crumble. And we are prepared to fix the brokenness, even if we must break more things in the process.
The rising generation is beginning to write. Nothing will be quite the same when they finally stop.
