How to Write a Baby Characte in Writing

With their alluring mix of innocence, alertness, selfishness, and idealism, child characters tin create all kinds of interesting opportunities for irony, symbolism, graphic symbol identification, and sense of humour. Simply figuring out how to write child characters is territory fraught with potential pitfalls.

This topic has been on my mind a lot these concluding few years, since both my recently published dieselpunkStorming and my upcoming historical superhero taleWayfarer feature prominent roles filled by eight-twelvemonth-old kids. In writing these characters, my goal as been uncomplicated: avoid the following bad example, which is permanently and regrettably imprinted in my brain.

I tin't remember the name of the book (which is probably just also), but I however blench every time I retrieve of its opening paragraph: a cutesie piffling daughter cozying up to a stranger, with an, "Ah gee, mister."

All besides ofttimes, this is how we're tempted to write our child characters. But, please, resist the temptation. Not only are these sorts of children 2D caricatures, they're likewise a wasted opportunity. Wielded with power and understanding, your child characters tin transform your fiction.

viii Guidelines for How to Write Child Characters

Consider the following eight dos and don'ts of how to write kid characters.

4 Don'ts of How to Write Child Characters

1. Don't Make Your Child Characters Cutesy

At that place'southward only one Shirley Temple–and I sincerely dubiousness her "ohmiword" would take been every bit cute when conveyed on the stark black and white of a novel's folio. If your child characters are going to exist beautiful, they must be cute naturally through the force of their personality, non because the entire purpose of their beingness is to be adorable. Forced cutsiness rarely works any better than forced humour.

2. Don't Brand Your Child Characters Sagely Wise

"Out of the mouths of babes" may have its moments of truth. But–with the rare and organic exception–don't plow your child characters into little fonts of wisdom. It'due south true kids take the benefit of seeing some situations a lilliputian more objectively than adults. Merely when they beginning calmly and unwittingly spouting all the answers, the results often seem more clichéd and user-friendly than impressive or ironic.

3. Don't Brand Your Child Characters Unintelligent

Don't misfile a child's lack ofexperience with lack ofintelligence. Don't have your kid characters offer wide-eyed "I dunnos" or stand up effectually with a finger in their mouths and a blank expression on their faces. It's fine if they don't know what's going on, but don't forget for a minute that their brains are whirring backside the scenes, trying to figure information technology all out.

4. Don't Have Your Child Characters Apply Baby Talk

In writing child characters, the aforementioned rules apply to their dialogue equally to the apply of any kind of dialect: don't corruption it. Don't spell out their lisp. Don't brand a habit of letting them misuse words. And, at all expenses, avoid "ah, gee, misters."

4 Do's of How to Write Child Characters

1. Write Your Child Characters as Unique Individuals

Don't e'er put a "child character" into your story–anymore than you lot would "an American graphic symbol" or "a female character." Create a fully realized private who has a reason for existing beyond mere accessorizing.

Adults often tend to lump all children into a single category: cute, small, loud, and occasionally annoying. Look beyond the stereotype. Remember yourself at the age of your child character? Think how smart, determined, curious, andindividualistic you lot were? A fob I like to employ to go myself back into the child mindset is to look at photos and videos of myself at the correct age.

2. Give Your Child Characters Personal Goals

The single ingredient that transforms someone from a static character to a dynamic character is agoal. It tin can be like shooting fish in a barrel to forget kids have goals, considering when we think of goals, our adult brains tend to remember of lofty things like earning a one thousand thousand dollars, finding truthful love, or saving the planet. In fact, even so, kids are arguably fifty-fiftymore defined by their goals than are adults. Kids want something every waking infinitesimal. Their unabridged existence is wrapped upward in wanting something and figuring out how to go it.

Consider Harper Lee's enduring Jem and Scout Finch and their decision to lure their reclusive neighbor Boo Radley out of his house then they tin can see him. If I had to option one unmarried reason whyHow to Kill a Mockingbird is and so enduringly beloved, I wouldn't choose its powerful themes. I would instead point to Scout Finch's passionatedesire for something or other on every single page. This, all past itself, is what makes her such a fascinating and dynamic grapheme.

iii. Make Your Child Characters Smart

I look at my two-year-quondam niece and I run into a brain every flake as intelligent as my own looking back at me out of those big brown eyes. She may notknow as much as I do, but that doesn't mean she isn't equally smart.

Now, of course, you lot don't have to go out and write a agglomeration of little Einsteins. But don't make your child characters "dumb on purpose." InWayfarer, I had a blast writing the human relationship between my 20-year-old country male child protagonist and his eight-twelvemonth-quondam street-savvy sidekick Rose. Their different lifestyles and educations placed them on basically level ground, despite their age differences–which created all kinds of interesting story scenarios.

Kinda like Dickens' e'er-epic Artful Dodger:

4. Don't Forget Your CharactersAre Children

Nearly of the pitfalls in how to write kid characters have to practice with making them as well simplistic and childish. Simply don't fall into the opposite trap either: don't create child characters who are essentially adults in little bodies.

One of my favorite passages of all time is from Louisa May Alcott'sLittle Men, in which the petty boys ruin the little girls' tea party. One of the boys, banished from the room, lies down on the floor to heed nether the door as the girls are comforted past being told the boys are surely distressing, to which this item miscreant bawls, "I ain't!"

Perfection.

The cute dichotomies of childhood offer so many wonderful opportunities for creating subtext and irony inside fiction. Employ them wisely and with every bit much insight and understanding as you'd apply to any of your adult characters. The result may be one of the most powerful characters you lot'll ever write.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Have you always written a child character? What was your chief concern in how to write child characters? Tell me in the comments?

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Source: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/how-to-write-child-characters/

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