Writing children

My thing about children marysues was definitely the issues people mentioned about children solving things that have the adults baffled. I HATED Anakin in the Corellian Trilogy! Him and the whole feel the force and save the world thing was so obnoxious. I also had beef with Champions of the Force, bratty little Jacen and Jaina whipping around with a lightsaber while sucking their thumbs. I mean, come on!

But on the other hand, I have the pet peeve of the other extreme: really stupid kids. I mean, there are actually authors out there who have these reportedly brilliant, marysue kids and then have them talking babytalk or saying things that no person with an IQ higher than Forrest Gump's right earlobe would ever say.

There has to be a happy medium.

I love the person who mentioned children and their different perceptions of personal boundaries. My one and only serious attempt at writing a child Jedi was in Strands of Time and we had Alia, the character there, in a very realistic role as an eight-year-old.

 

Ender's Game's children were suppposed to be precosious--they weren't supposed to be real children! That's the entire point--they weren't allowed to be children because they were being trained to fight in adult wars. You're supposed to forget that they're only children. I, for one, absolutely love this book and the way that their characters are created.

Writing children? I write teenagers. I think I would understand them because I am one--that's why most of my main characters are teenagers and they, in my opinion, have myriads of problems that they have to work through before they solve the problem or whatever, and they get help from adults, unless they're like one of my protaganists, who don't trust adults.

~Laine

 

Laine basically stated what I wanted to say about Ender's Game. The book is all about how these really smart kids function in their own microchasm as they prepare for war - the exercises are supposed to weed out the best military commander from all of them. They wouldn't be picking commanders from eight year olds if they weren't special.

Jae Angel

 

I HATED Anakin in the Corellian Trilogy! Him and the whole feel the force and save the world thing was so obnoxious.

I found him one of the better handled child prodigy. Yes, he was brilliant with machines, but that was all he was brilliant with. His social skills were a bit behind, and he couldn't read yet.

And I loved that he was still a little boy. He stayed up late and was cranky the next day. He sulked, he had temper tantrums and was generally a kid.

 

True about the little boy thing, but I was coming off of the Jedi Academy Trilogy and superprodigies were so obnoxious!

 

My one and only serious attempt at writing a child Jedi was in Strands of Time and we had Alia, the character there, in a very realistic role as an eight-year-old.

OK, I may sound like a traitor, since I was one of the co-authors for SOT's sequel, but let's be honest, Alia was a bit of Mary Sue. I mean, an 8-year-old girl rivaling with Darth Maul in a duel? Saving Qui-Gon from dying? She was a good character, but in some parts, she was such a Mary Sue.

OK, enough rant.

 

yeah, mar, she was a bit of a MS just for the sake of plot and letting ishy write a lot of fun duel scenes, but i mean, remember the girl who watched her grandparents meet and was giggling, who said things like "holy hothballs", and had no sense of diplomacy? Definite 8-year-old.

 

Okay, so let's say I've got characters who are supposed to be brilliant AND Jedi. Is it alright to count them among Ender and his friends? I do NOT want them to be allpowerful, but if SOME of them, are SOMETIMES acting very adult....

Will it be annoying? Unrealistic? That's the one that really bugs me. I had no probs with Ender's Game, cause of the premise that these were supposed to be the most brilliant children on Earth. Hmmm....

I think I just answered my own question. (With y'alls help a course) Thanks! ~M

 

Holy hothballs is teh cool!

 

True about the little boy thing, but I was coming off of the Jedi Academy Trilogy and superprodigies were so obnoxious!

Ah, that explains it. I read the Corellian Trilogy after about five "Solo kids? They have kids?" books, so I rather liked their role.

 

Holy hothballs? almost as good "Hey, sweetheart, wanna see my lightsaber?" "Only if it's jammed where the twin suns don't shine."

 

Sorry, shameless plugs for the few times that i write something funny. Holy hothballs and the 'see my lightsaber' eschange are both mine.

 

*shakes head*

Ish, Ish, you can't even remember your own line?

It goes like this:

Han: Hey sweetheart, wanna see my hydrospanner?
Leia: Only if it's lodged in a place where the twin suns don't shine.

 

*Shakes head.*

Mar, mar, can't you realize I'm just trying to keep you talkative?

 

Oh my God, it's true!

*shuts up and leaves*

 

I work in child care. Have done for a while now. I think someone mentioned that the key to writing children is watching them. When I write them I constantly ask myself: would my kids [that I work with] say/do this? why/why not? what might make them say/do this?

The children I spend a good part of my day with are ages 5-11. For children younger I ask my sister who works at a daycare, and for older I try to remember, but that works out as hit and miss.

I think the important thing to remember about children is that they do know more than they let on, especially as they start to get a little older, but they still don't see the world that adults do. For them it's a little more black and white (in very simplified terms), and the grey gradually creeps in.

A lot of them have great imaginations, but still struggle with more abstract ideas, most specifically the 'how' and 'why'. They're very good at the 'what'.

Child prodigies (ie Mary-Sues) annoy me no end. I don't care what super powers a child has, or what their intelligence is, they're still going to act human and childlike. I have yet to meet any real life prodigies, but I have worked with highly intelligent children, and I have to say they were often more difficult than normal intellignce children.

As for cutsey, too young children, the less said on that the better. But I find some of the older ones use it to try and be cute. It's more annoying than anything.

So that's my long winded way on writing children. You have to excuse me, I've just done holiday pogramme. I love it but it's intense.

 

For human children, at what age should a child no longer be called a 'child'? Or referred to as a 'kid'? (As in: hey you, kid, come here).

 

It depends on what context you mean. I'd stick to anyone twleve or under as being a 'child', and then move on to teen or something.

Unless it's an insult and then it'd depend on who was saying it. In that case it could be anyone younger than them.

As for using 'kid' well that's up to you.

It's all open to a lot of interpretation.

 

Question for some minor details, can give me some adverage heights of children (both boys and girls) at different ages? Such as, how tall would you say 10 year old Anakin would be? What about 13/14 year old Anakin?

sg

 

sg, that really just depends on the child. When I was 13 (not so long ago ), there were boys that were almost 6" and boys that were not yet 5" (who later sprang to over 6"). So the pubescent years are really open to interpretation, since we only see Anakin at 9 and then at 19 I just distinctly remember being 5'6" or so and taller than most guys in Jr. High, only to stop at 5'8" in high school and be shown up by most of them

As for writing children... I really don't know how I write them or if it's anything to be emmulated. The only thing I can note is that I feel like children in stories written by adults often seem older than they're intended to be to me. The same goes for movies a lot of the time, when the magical age of kids seems to be 12 but they're always played by 15 year olds. I've actually written quite a few stories featuring children (SW and otherwise), and I always try to remember what it was like to be that age. That might not be as easy for some of the, erm, older writers here But just observing and being around kids helps a lot.

I'm actually surprised that I've written kids so much, because I don't like kids, generally

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

So for those who do write stories with child characters, what's your secret?

I've only really written children in my series and my novel fic. I let myself "fall" into their mind to clear it actually.

Ben is the current talking child in my K/J series, Depths of the Heart. Jag and Tahiri had a child of their own, but Deri is still essentially a newborn so not a lot of speaking for her . Ben brings levity and innocence to the series. It's such a dark set of fics right now, that an insertion of even a touch of innocence brightens it just a little. It gives some hope even though they are dealing with some major things right now. When I need that break essentially in the darkness of the fic, I let myself fall into the mindset of a toddler who is learning to talk more and looks at everything with innocent eyes.

In my novel length fic Oskio Preskania Fracio, there were an assortment of young children, pre-teen and teenagers mentioned, but the primary one I actually wrote was Sola Durron. She was used as means of hope for Kyp and Jaina while dealing with two of their adult children being thrust into the past with Jag and Tahiri's eldest son, and knowing what fate had in store for them while in the past. It was also a means to let Kyp know that he was not a bad father even though there was a major rift between him and one of his twin sons that needed to be mended.

I also like children so getting into the head of a child is easy for me cause I'm fascinated by the actions, antics and way of thinking they have. I observe them often when they come into the place I currently work at. It's often times very amusing to see their innocence while looking around.

~~Jilly

 

Interesting topic for a discussion. I'm currently writing Obi-Wan at 13 and I really don't know whether I write him realistically.

I'm tutoring a 14-year-old and I try to look to his behaviour for guidance. I always try to remember how much I hated it when someone treated me like a baby at that age. In my opinion most children think much more about the world around them than we give them credit for. I try to keep that in mind when writing them.

 

When I'm writing Vessel, I tend to have my characters, who are nine-to-ten in the parts I'm writing now, act older (or more Ender-ish) when they are when around spirits and other children, and more on-age when around adults.

Anyone remember the pre-born in the dune chronicles? *shiver*

And the kids in Ender's Game were smart, and had big vocabularies. and were really swell strategists, but they did still act like kids to some extent, which is what is so great about them.

Kids are hard to write. I end up basing them on my cousins.

 

Hello! One of the stories I'm working on at home has children in it but my problem is I either make them seem to young or WAY to old! I'am trapped in the world no middle gound! How do I find the right area of behavior to put them at? I dont have any young ones in my family to observe at all. I can write teenages (ya that makes sence seeming as my school is filled with them...)but that is no help! Okay the real question is how do you write a 3-5 year old child?!?
-Adina Leeora*