Writing children

3 to 5 years old is a great age. They are mostly past the terrible two's and they can speak and express themselves much better. This is often when they get sent to preschool. They are pretty happy, cute and extremely active at this point in their lives. I know mine were very bubbly and just filled with questions. They get into fights with their siblings but get over it quick. But it all depends on the circumstances of how they are raised. If they don't have a good situation, then you're going to get strong moods and a lot more whining, or bullying. Mostly their priority is to play, play, play. Hope that helps.

 

I just wrote a story for the Purges challenge in which a 5-year-old child befriends a woman, only to find out that she was a Jedi Master and inadvertently betrays her to her death. It was one of the greater challenges I've ever done for two reasons.

1) The girl I based it on does not speak english, so all the dialogue stuff I used to model her talking had to be translated slightly from the Spanish.

2) I couldn't use my usual dramatic excuses for not saying things. Kids don't always think about words like sigh, gasp, growl, etc. Examples:

Sigh: She returned with two fizzy kikujus and a very sad expression. "I'm sorry," she said, doing that noise Mami always made when something didn't go her way or she found a big red stain on her new dress, "but it's a very serious problem. It will take a fizzy kikuju, two grilled mada sandwiches, and..."

Gasp: Mami made a scared noise

Hiding tears: Liset looked very sad for a moment. No, that wasn't right. She always looked sad if you saw her eyes, but this time, she turned away and sounded like she had the sniffles.

Murder: "They found Ara," she said, "and they hurt her. They hurt her a lot and she died. I can't see her again and I don't know if I'll ever see Yrin, either."

Sum-up the purges: The next time that Pai called, Maura asked where Ara was now and how much it would cost to see her.

And this time, Liset couldn't say she wasn't sad. She was crying too hard to say that.

"Remember I said some mean people don't like us?" she whispered. "They want to hurt us?"

"Yep," Maura whispered back, terrified of what she would say.

"They found Ara," she said, "and they hurt her. They hurt her a lot and she died. I can't see her again and I don't know if I'll ever see Yrin, either."

Maura liked to talk a lot, knew that you could always make people happy if you talked right, but now she couldn't talk. She wanted to cry, but she gave Liset a big hug instead.

"A lot of my friends got hurt," Liset finished so quietly that Maura almost couldn't hear her.

"But they won't hurt you?"

"I don't know," she told the truth. "They've hurt me a lot already."

"But why?"

Liset's hand went to Maura's braid, tugged it gently. "Do you know what a Jedi is?"

"An enemy," Maura hissed automatically.

Liset looked more hurt than before, but she shook her head. "An enemy is a bad guy. Do you think I'm a bad guy?"

"No, you're my best friend," Maura corrected her impatiently.

"But I'm a Jedi," Liset said in her ear. "Everyone wants to hurt us because someone told them we're the bad guys. We have to hide until they stop wanting to hurt us and we can't see our friends. I was like your Mami. I had three little girls and a boy that I loved a lot, and their Pai that I loved even more, but they got hurt like my best friend Ara."

"But that's..."

She wanted to say mean, but it wasn't a bad enough word and she didn't know any others.

"It's mean, it's very mean," Liset repeated, "but I can't help them."

Maura stared at her hot chocolate and suddenly wasn't thirsty anymore. "I want to help."

"That's why you're my best friend," Liset said finally. "You help me because when I talk to you, when you tell me I'm your best friend, I feel like I have my girls back."

My favorite thing to write--They only went to Blumfruit's one more time before Maura said she wouldn't go if her friend weren't there. Mami spent the entire time on the commlink and Maura cried as she ate her grilled mada sandwich, not quite knowing why--was based on me. I can remember being seven and having been bullied and I came home with my older sister and we ate grilled cheese and my tears made it all soggy, but I couldn't make myself stop crying.

 

I so love the Forum index! Found this thread in about 5 seconds.

Question - can anyone recommend good books (not necessarily Star Wars novels) in which children are written well? I'm interested in many different ages, but one in particular is around the age of 12.

 

you know, I think a good resource for writing children would be children's novels . . . when I read your question, the first thought that popped into my head was Beverly Cleary - those "Ramona Quimby" books. They're written from the POV of the child, for children, so you see the simple language and the way kids think about things.

~Abby~

PS: In Harry Potter, the first two books the kids are 11 and 12 years old

 

Got kids? Got siblings? Baby-sit?

There you go. Watch and learn. No two kids act exactly alike, but they all have a few common similarities. That makes building a unique character off of a simple base easy!

Or, if you answered 'no' to all of the above questions, my only advice would be to change that. Get married. Hook mom and dad back up. Join the Baby-sitter's Club. Fine. You decide which of those sounds most tasteful. ( )

Have fun with it. Kids can be profound, but keep ages in mind. A ten-year-old character should not act like a two-year-old, and vice-versa. Be creative! Try a variety of kid personalities, maybe between somber/quiet and sarcastic/loud. *shrug* It's up to you!

Just play around with it for a while 'til you're comfortable with it, find a beta, then post. You shouldn't have any problems.

 

And please, please, PLEASE remember that most children are not geniuses who can miraculously save the day!!!!

Children (real ones) occasionally mess up, get into trouble, and get punished.

The best fanfic with a realistic child portrayal that I ever read was All-Wan's Jedi Dreams, hands down no contest!!

 

Abby - That's a good point about children's books. (I'd been thinking more along the lines of older-ages books.) Ramona Quimby - now that makes me nostalgic for elementary school. I've read some of the HP books, I've been looking for more perspectives.

Daughterofflame - Great, now I gotta get married and have kids to answer my question. I'm the youngest in my family, and I hardly ever baby-sat, so I'm awful with the children thing. At my job I see a bunch of kids at different ages, and I'm horrible at determining ages too. (On second thought, maybe it's best I don't have kids ... ) But maybe real-life experience would help me a lot, as you suggested.

Renata - I'll have to check that fic out, thanks for the suggestion!


Does anyone else have suggestions for novels that have good writing of children? Either children's books or adult books?

 

Books with children in them...none come to mind at the moment. But I'm sure I can think of a few. And you might want to check out picture books- since they are written for children, they are often portrayed realistically.

As for my own experience in writing children, I just had to write Leia as a two year-old and a short scene with Luke. Leia I always imagined as being more articulate and out-spoken and so I don't really have to mess around too much with her dialogue. Luke I wrote as sounding younger...

I think a lot of it depends on maturity. By the time I was four I was using complicated legal terms, yet I had a problem pronoucing them because of that. Therefore some people thought I had a speech problem, when it was only my vocabulary was too mature for my tongue.

A young child who has gone through a lot will be more mature than a child that has been pampered. You really need to think about their situation in life before trying to portray them, in my opinion.

 

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing. Peter is 12 years old, IIRC. And he has a very annoying little brother ( I can't recall his age right now) whose nickname is Fudge.

 

And Fudgemania. I read those books when I was a kid Of course, I don't exactly recall how well the children are portrayed because I was a kid at the time and not great at judging things like that The Little Women series is good at portraying children, though (including the books Little Men and Jo's Boys).


-sj loves kevin spacey

 

The kid's name was also Fudge -- at least that's what he called himself

The Ramona series by Beverly Cleary is also a fantastic series with very young children in them.


I work in a daycare now and I"ve always been around kids, so a lot of how I write them comes from watching my kids interact everyday. I work in a nursery with babies 6 weeks to a year old and sometimes I have to cover for other teachers who aren't there once in awhile and so I work with toddlers to four-year-olds. It's a very interesting combination because they are developing so much during these years.

 

Does anyone else think that the children of the GFFA are actually much more mature and smarter than Earth kids? I mean, we have a teenage girl elected Queen, after all. And other young children handling dangerous weapons like lightsabers, not to mention Anakin's talent with building and fixing things in PM.

sg

 

Well, I think it's just cultural differences. Anakin is more advanced in some ways because he's been a slave and had a tough life. He's had to have skills to survive. And as for Padme, her culture grooms young people for leadership. A few hundred years ago, it might not have seemed that strange to us for a 14 year old to be Queen, either. And in non-Western cultures, 'children' are often busy actually working to have food and things.

Western culture often doesn't have a marked age of adulthood, which is usually around 12-14 in other cultures. 18 is probably the closest thing, but it's not nearly as official as in other cultures or even in Western culture more in past times. I think that's probably one of the reasons we have a lot of really immature teenagers, because they're never really recognized as adults or required to take on real responsibility until later.

With GFFA kids, I think it's especially important to consider the cultural background they come from (even if it's one you make up). They're still going to be kids, of course. You wouldn't want them to be too mature or immature or it just gets unbelievable. But you also kind of have to think outside the box of your own experiene a bit, I think.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing. Peter is 12 years old, IIRC. And he has a very annoying little brother ( I can't recall his age right now) whose nickname is Fudge.

- Omigosh, now that was a great one! I read that in the 4th grade, and then once, when I was out shopping with my then-three year old, I saw the book in the bookstore and bought it for nostalgia's sake. When I read to the part where Fudge had the meltdown in the restaurant and poured his bowl of peas over his head singing, "Eat it or wear it!" I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Definitely well written child characterization.

I was also going to suggest "To Kill a Mockingbird", which is all written from six year old Scout Finch's perspective. The story is thus simplified and there's no pontification. You're just left to see the story from her POV and it gives the whole thing a much more powerful impact than if it had been written say, from Atticus' POV.

The thing with kids, I find, is that in real life, they're not usually the movers and the shakers in their families, at least not until they're older. So, they shouldn't be in a story either. It's okay to have one or two scenes that are influenced by the actions of a small child but to have a story with many many scenes all saved by a deus ex machina who still wears size 24-36 month rompers is just too unbelievable.

 

Seriously, kids can be great fun to write. I've got a short story that is all about a girl up until she turns 12. But she didn't have a normal childhood. Her mother wasn't in the picture, and she didn't have any friends. But I wouldn't say that she's a MS.

But I'm writing another one where the whole point for the story is for two kids to tell a silly story. So it's a bit nutty, and they're almost Sues.