The keyword in this photo quote is change. No one is the same person today that they were twenty, thirty, forty, or more years ago. All our life experiences bring changes, some of them good and some not so hot.
When you're writing fiction, if your protagonist does not change from the beginning of the story to the end, you probably don't have much of a story. Maybe we can use both change and learn. He/she changes or learns something from whatever happens between the opening and closing paragraphs.
If you write a personal essay without telling your reader how whatever occurred either changed you or what you learned, you're writing more of a slice of life. The key element of the personal essay is the universal truth that you learned or how what happened changed you.
Even children's fiction should illustrate a change of some kind, be it ever so subtle or a smack-you-in-the-face kind. Don't think kids don't see it. They do.
Memoir writers also should show how what they experienced changed them and perhaps how it influenced life after what happened.
Change is definitely a part of our personal story just as it is what goes on around us. The town you live in is not the same town it was fifty years ago. Your high school has changed from the years you were there. Even religion changes in some ways as time goes on. Politics definitely changes. When I was growing up, stores were closed on Sundays; now it's a busy business day.
When you read your finished first draft, make 'what and who changes' as part of your checklist.
Ponder on how you have changed as a writer from early days on your writing journey to the present.
Great advice! We don't stay the same. We do change, even when we don't realize it. Usually we know when it's a downward or upward spiral. For our characters, it should be clearly noticeable to the readers.
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