Hey, I'm a huge fan of your blog, your tips really are invaluable! Do you have any tips for writing from the POV of a child? I normally write in close third person. Thank you! xx
And youâre probably going to have to do a lot of research, especially if you donât have an actual child to observe. So what Iâd do isâŠ
- Learn how developed a childâs brain is at the age you want, because that will dictate how they process the world. This is the most important pointer I can give you, because everything else is relative to age.Â
- Theyâre unwise and naive, not unintelligent. Children are smarter than you expect, but they tend to process things in an imaginative way that can make them look âdumbâ, or they lack the knowledge to know whatâs really happening.
- Parents shape their world and how they see things. School can too, but home life is the biggest factor in how a child thinks about the world.
- Watch vocabulary and how itâs used. Sometimes children pick up advanced words, but thatâs generally tied to schooling and upbringing. They tend to mimic the parental figures in their life and that can occasionally mean using words that they donât truly understand, so they use them incorrectly (though perhaps not in 100% wrong context).
- Research the actual mistakes that kids make in speech because the ones people commonly think children make arenât usually accurate. Thereâs almost no âcaveman speakâ like âme thinkâ, but unclear plurality rules can cause confusion. For example, âdataâ is plural on its own but a child of a certain age may not pick up on that because it doesnât have an âsâ at the end, so they say âdatasâ if they want to pluralize it.
- Find the line between âannoying to readâ and âtrue to the storyâ. Letâs be honest, most readers really donât want to read about all the tangents that a kidâs brain can really run off to. They also donât need to be confused by the fact that a lot of kids have a very poor sense of time (like thinking something happened âyesterdayâ when it was really 3 days ago). Itâs perfectly acceptable to âmatureâ exposition wording when writing from a childâs POV, but you still keep the perspective in mind. So you can cut out tangents, associations, avoid run-ons, etc. but you arenât going to writing super-advanced sentences.Â
Good luck with your work!
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
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