How do you talk from a baby's perspective?

Alright so people have done childrens perspectives before but what about babies who are under one year old?

How would you go about it?

What is the difference in perspective of a nonforce sensitive baby to a force sensitive baby?

 

Are you telling the story from the baby's point of view? Or an adult watching a baby? It would make a difference....

 

I think it would be difficult to do an infants POV, because you'd have only feelings to deal with and no real language per se. Attention span is extremely short so you'd be moving from one thing to the next often.

As far as any difference, I don't know how much awareness there would be of the Force at that age. I prefer to believe they are the same as any other child, but that's just me. I think increased sensitivity to the world around them, might actually make them more cranky.

 

Well here's what i wrote so far.

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It was cold and dark, the comforting presence that held her had paced her down into something soft and was slowly withdrawing. Her shining blue eyes stayed focused on the retreating presence till she could see that person no more. She blinked and a tear escaped her eye. She heard voices, footsteps and then silence. Wrinkling her small face, she let out a small cry. Footsteps approached and someone she felt unfamiliar with approached her and lifted her into his arms.

?Shh little one. Don?t be afraid, you?re safe.? The unfamiliar person said in a soothing voice.

She felt herself being carried away and soon fell into a peaceful slumber.

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Basically it is the perspective of a baby being seperated from its mother. The baby is about 6 months. Its not going to be very long but i'm trying to set up a certain mood so that readers will be drawn into the story of this girl who is the central character.

 

Try not to be so specific ... rather than saying the baby heard footsteps, describe the footsteps. Again, when you said the person left, stick with "presence", because the baby wouldn't have a concept of what a person was.

Basically, you'd have to do a lot of description. A baby doesn't have the words, only feelings, images, etc. Warmth, comfort, colour, light, coldness, textures, fear, hunger, etc.

For the words that the adult is saying, that's tough because the baby wouldn't understand a lot of it. If it's absolutely necessary to have the actual dialogue there, then keep it. But if you can get away with describing the tone of voice, ie. as warm, soothing, etc, describing how they make the baby feel (secure, safe) would make it much more real.

Hope that helps! PM me if you need any more advice

~Abby~

[EDIT]- I apologize for how unorganized that reads...urk. Anyway, yeah ...

 

How a baby thinks... I've never really thought about that before. But yes, I imagine that it would be just feelings, instead of any real coherent thought.

Interesting idea, though, writing from a baby's perspective.

Anyway, I think that would be interesting to try out sometime...

 

Or the baby could be Stewie Griffin and talk rather eloquently

 

Ya gotta start by completely deconstructing your environment. Babies stare at everything, and everything they stare at is new and different. If you can describe a lamp, a bed, a desk and a door without telling us what they are or what they do, you'll be on your way I think.

Along with that, babies are discovering themselves also. If she starts crying - does she know why? Her face is scrunching up - is she aware of this or not? If she is, does it make things better, or is it an uncomfortable feeling that she doesn't like, making her cry more?

It was said that you should stick with 'presence'. That may still be too abstract here. A mother, to a baby, would probably be the object that moves on its own, has a thing on the top that looks familiar and pleasant, and does nice things for her. That's sorta the way you gotta think here. Everything has to be roundabout. It'll be tough, but, eh. I got faith in ya.

 

One other thing to recall is that children don't aquire object permanence until well after their first birthday. So if something is out of sight, (or hearing etc) it's gone.

The pyschology experiments on this are rather amusing. You have tapes and tapes of the adult hiding a ball and the one year old being bewildered, and then suddenly the kid gets to the point where he or she starts looking for the ball. The toddler has finally mastered the idea that an object can exist even if he or she can't percieve it.

So an infant would be frightened or upset at the idea of a parent leaving, and a force-sensitive child would probably be more upset, picking up on the parent's emotions. But any concept of wanting that person to come back is beyond them. Wanting the accompanying emotions, maybe, but an infants capacity to remember much of anything is very limited.

~Lurker

 

The POV of an infant, huh? That would be really hard, since babies really don't have a clue about what's going on around them--at least not in a way that's going to be useful for plot exposition.

You *could* try bookending the infant's perspective with the POV of an older character who provides some context. I.e., Obi-Wan escaping to Tattooine with baby Luke, thinking, "Thank the Force he won't remember any of this," and then write the collection of impressions that Luke's getting out of the situation. Babies are actually really quick to pick up on the emotional tone of their environment--I imagine a Force-sensitive baby would be even more so. You could get some mileage out of that by having adult-perspective sections in which the characters are fronting each other, pretending to have feelings they don't, and then switch to the baby's POV to see what's *really* going on. It would still be rough doing 3rd-person-limited POV with a kid under a year, because they're not going to know most of the words people are saying, and probably couldn't even differentiate characters by name, unless it's "mom" and "dad," or some other adult s/he could be expected to know intimately. For that matter, kids don't even have a sense of "me" before about 18 months, so you couldn't have baby Luke wondering what's going to happen to him as Obi-Wan takes him to Tattooine. He'd have no concept of the future, and no concept of "him," just a haze of semi-disembodied emotions and sensations.

I was about to say that the youngest character I ever did real 3rd person limited with was 5, but no, I tried it with a 2-year-old once. That scene was a hallucinatory flashback, however, and it was supposed to be a jumble of surreal images:

Instead, he was very interested in trying to catch the lovely white birds that liked to flock around the pool. He thought their long snowy necks and long beaks would feel smooth and cool to the touch, like the pool water itself. But no matter how peaceful and still the birds looked as they stood gazing at the falling water, they always twisted their heads around sharply when he moved toward them, and then they would spread their wings and fly away. The very few times he *did* manage to get close, his mother had called him and told him to come away. If he didn?t hurry to her when she did that, his father would take him by the arm and pull him firmly out of the water, while scolding him about needing to learn to listen.

I kind of liked the bizarre fusing of the birds and the water, as if they were part of the same thing, and the stubborn insistance on trying to grab and physically examine anything interesting.

However, if that had been in a part of the story that needed to make sense, I'd have had to write in the 3rd person omniscient POV. I sort of did that with a 3-year-old:

The little boy remained silent and continued to fidget while he tried out the idea of becoming someone who could stop bad things before they happened. He had the dim idea that if he said yes to the Master?s question, nothing would ever be the same again. But then, nothing would ever be the same no matter what happened. Sameness had been torn apart by the blast that destroyed the child?s city, and he was learning to adapt to ?different.? Perhaps different wouldn?t be so bad if it gave him the power to help.

A kid that young is not going to be able to describe a dilemma that clearly--he only vaguely senses that there *is* a dilemma. I have the "narrator voice" stepping in and kind of translating what's going on in the kid's head into "adult-speak," and that seemed to work all right for this section.

Unless you're intentionally aiming for mixed-up, surreal imagery, 3rd-person omniscient is probably the only way to write from the perspective of an infant without making him/her unrealistically precocious.

 

I have never written from a baby's perspective. Actually, I try to avoid kids under the age of seven or so, because usually they end up talking like middle aged british noblemen.

Not good! >_<

Babies are difficult because most don't know the names for things. Talk in warm, cold, shapes, colors. But instead of blue, do something like "the color of the sky outside my world" or something... Sorry. I'm not much help in this case.

 

Even fairly young babies seem to be able to get the connection between some sign language and getting what they want. So they might "understand" more than we can tell they understand. One baby-signing site said that they don't usually "respond" before 7 months but that they would understand before they could sign for themselves. My cousin's little girl was signing full sentences (as much as signing is ever full sentences, I guess, I don't really know sign myself) before she was a year old.

Actual verbalization skills take longer than hearing and understanding ones.

Here is some possibly helpful information from a speech and language site:

Birth
Language learning starts at birth. Even new babies are aware of the sounds in the environment. They listen to the speech of those close to them, and startle or cry if there is an unexpected noise. Loud noises wake them, and they become "still" in response to new sounds.

0-3 months
Astoundingly, between 0-3 months babies learn to turn to you when you speak, and smile when they hear your voice. In fact, they seem to recognise your familiar voice, and will quieten at the sound of it if they are crying. Tiny babies under three months will also stop their activity and attend closely to the sound of an unfamiliar voice. They will often respond to comforting tones whether the voice is familiar or not.

4-6 months
Then, some time between 4 to 6 months babies respond to the word "no". They are also responsive to changes in your tone of voice, and to sounds other than speech. For example, they can be fascinated by toys that make sounds, enjoy music and rhythm, and look in an interested or apprehensive way for the source of all sorts of new sounds such as the toaster, birdsong, the clip-clop of horses' hooves or the whirr of machines.

7-12 months
The 7 to 12 months period is exciting and fun as the baby now obviously listens when spoken to, turns and looks at your face when called by name, and discovers the fun of games like: "round and round the garden", "peep-oh", "I see" and "pat-a-cake" (These simple games and finger plays will have regional names and variants). It is in this period that you realise that he or she recognises the names of familiar objects ("Daddy", "car", "eyes", "phone", "key") and begins to respond to requests ("Give it to Granny") and questions ("More juice?").

hth

KD