I'm doing a talk to some writing students who don't know much about writing for children specifically, and have decided to discuss this question. I wondered if anyone here had any thoughts on the topic? How is writing for children different from writing for adults? It could be anything that strikes you: approach, technique, underlying issues, commercial considerations...

Just some thoughts:

You could refer them to Terry Pratchett's discworld novels. Tiffany Aching, and Maurice and his Amazing Rodents, are written for 9-12 yr olds, while Monstrous Regiment is for YA, and most of the rest are for older teens & adults.
There tends to be more use of dialogue tags in childrens fiction, to explain the non-verbal signals the characters are giving each other.
There is also more scene-setting description because children have less life experience with which to furnish the fictional world.
Things are more black and white, rather than being morally ambiguous. - Horowitz's The Devil and his Boy shows prostitution and theft in a sympathetic light.
Usually one main pov character, who is a similar age to the taregt readership - not an adult.
There tends to be one main plot, centred on the main character, rather than several parallel plots.
A distinctive 'Voice' is important. Emily Diamand's Flood Child is particularly clever in having two distinctive pov characters. However, it seems less important for younger readers - I wouldn't say Michael Morpurgo is particularly good at 'voice', but he is good at the historical scene setting for his stories.

I'd say the first place in oneself to start in writing for YA/children, is exactly the same place as writing for adults. After that, you might think about simplifying for children but not in terms of emotion or theme; more to not include so much of the intellectual 'explanations' that adult fiction often seems to require.

I'm reading 'Writing and Selling the YA Novel' by K L Going at the moment and thought this was pretty good:

"No matter how old you are, you still experience emotions that are the same as when you were younger, but now you possess more life experience than you did when you were a kid, so you can put them in a different context. Writing books for young adults is a unique opportunity to channel both familiar emotions and unfamiliar experiences, exploring ideas that are meaningful to teens yet still relevant in your own life."

'Opportunity' is key here, I think. There's nothing worse than a YA novel (usually written by an author who normally produces adult fiction) where the writer tries to 'explain' life, at a distance, from his readers, rather than diving right in to his own emotional store and exploring it in story form.

Funnily enough, I'm currently writing a YA novel and an adult novel. I can honestly say the process is the same, of trying to get close to emotions that mean something to me then conveying them to a reader. The differences are really just to do with selection of language and things like the balance of details to dialogue.

Terry

Terry, can you say more about selection of language? I ask because that is the one thing I always get asked about, how to 'get the vocabulary right'. I always try to explain that for me it's about voice, getting the voice right and also remembering who the voice is speaking to. Selecting vocabulary isn't something I consciously do, but perhaps others do?
Thanks for your thoughts on this topic, both of you.
The keywords I always come back to when writing for children are 'concrete' and 'immediate'.

I think there tends to be an emotionally/morally more reassuring payoff in younger fiction, and the younger the child, the truer that is. In younger fiction the bad deed is almost always punished in some form. YA, not so much, but there's still usually a sense of just deserts in the end.

There is also that weird extra consumer layer with children's books, because of course virtually all children's books, and probably the majority of YA books, will be bought by parents not children themselves.

Therefore while pleasing the reader is the key issue, not boring or offending their parent is a practical necessity. While the child is very young or if they are a reluctant reader than the parent may be the primary consumer - choosing the books and reading them with the child so appealing to their taste is key. For older children they are probably choosing the books and reading them solo, but the parent is likely monitoring their choices and possibly being selective about what they actually hand over cash for.

I've not written for younger children, only YA, so I'm probably not very qualified to talk about the whole spectrum. But I would agree with Terry wrt to YA that on the whole, I don't think it's consciously very different from writing adult fiction (at least I've not found it so). You tell the story you want to tell, and try to tell it in the best way possible.

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Crossed with your last - I don't consciously select vocabulary either. I think if you are in the head of your reader/MC then you select the right vocabulary for the age without trying too hard.

I think if you are having to consciously tell yourself that "red" is likely a better choice of word than "vermilion" for an average 10 year old then it's probably not a vocabulary issue at all, but rather a symptom of a greater problem; you are not really seeing the world through the eyes of your character/reader.

Yes, I'd agree with that, Flora - it's about getting into your character.

Leila, this is a very interesting topic; it's really got me thinking. Basically, I agree with you: it's about voice first, which for me means immersion in one's characters. Then, you're selecting language as being the character, not as the omniscient author - which is the sure path to condescension.

It may be that some people find this hard to understand because they have trouble with the concept and practice of immersion. They want to know the rules instead, the exact mechanisms. I imagine that if Stephen Fry ever wrote a novel for YA/children it would resound with the constipated, intellectual strain of a man trying to 'reach' the children from the outside-in. This is conscious selection of vocabulary, and a most painful process for all involved. It might have worked in Victorian times, when the social structure insisted that an adult had important things to teach to children which the children would dutifully listen to. But it's not like that now, of course. If you want to teach children anything today, you have to prove that you're able to understand where they are first.

I think YA/children's books do still get published that don't contain a convincing voice. I'm thinking of a recent one by a famous adult SF/Fantasy writer (who I won't name because he's a really good guy!) which is a very bumpy ride, made so because you can hear his brain constantly straining to make sure he either over-simplifies the prose or, where it's complicated, 'explains' it so the kids won't not understand.

But with immersion, vocabulary selects itself. Then, it's probably more the case of rejecting the odd word that just doesn't fit, than worrying over those that do.

Maybe it helps if, as a writer for adults, your tone and style is pared down and direct, rather than intellectual and discursive.

I kind of agree on 'concrete' and 'immediate' but not if it means foregoing emotional resonance and implications (which I'm sure isn't what you're saying). I'm thinking of 'The Bridge to Terebithia', which is a short, direct book but absolutely heart-wrenching for adults and children.

Terry

Yes, Bridge to Terebithia is amazing - it had a huge effect on me when I was a child. I re-read it a year or so ago and was less affected, interestingly enough. Immersion is another good key-word.
I think some authors manage to make the omniscient narrator work very well, in a contemporary way, for example Lemony Snicket. Another book I loved which has a contemporary twist on the omniscient narrator is Shadow Forest by Matt Haig (won the Nestle prize, I think).

Hi,

I always start by reinforcing the similarities. That children expect complex characterisation and emotional depth and a blinding plot and can't bear being talked down to or preached at, and don't tolerate 'down wiv da kidz' inauthenticity.

The main difference I've noticed is that they want plot up front. Adults will tolerate or even lap up paragraphs of description about clouds and sea but children tend to want to know immediately about the figure climbing down the steps of the old herring smokery on the beach straightaway.

This is entirely subjective, but my pet bugbear is any insistence that children need simpler vocabulary. They so don't. Simple-ish syntax maybe, most but not all of the time. They love Lemony Snicket and Andy Stanton and people who increase their vocabulary. They don't mind archaisms in historical setting. I was reading Blackhearts in Battersea aloud to my boys and modernising some words. They were reading over my shoulder and told me to stop as they knew what blunderbusses were and what they didn't know they just asked. Same with Just William. They'd rather learn what a quarter of black bullets for a farthing means than be told a character bought a packet of mints for 50p.

For me the main thing is the author standing back from their accumulated world experience when writing, without consequently patronising the younger reader - something we don't worry about when writing for adults.

Thanks, guys. Cherys, I agree with you. Of course, publishers have other ideas! But children want to learn - and too often adults are afraid of challenging them in their books.
I just came across some articles in the online journal Write4Children (free access) that are very relevant, I think.

http://www.winchester.ac.uk/academicdepartments/EnglishCreativeWritingandAmericanStudies/publications/write4children/Pages/Write4Children.aspx


Look at Issue 1, Vol 1 for Peter Hunt's article, then Issue 1, Vol 2 for Katherine Langrish's response, then the latest issue for Peter Hunt's response to her. K Langrish's piece made me grin. It just sums up the gulf between critics and writers. I really enjoy analysing children's literature, but I keep it very, very far away from the actual writing of it! Two hats and never the twain shall meet, etc.

Leila thank you for that link - what brilliant essays! I must admit, I am very much of Katherine Langrish's school of thought (or perhaps, school of less thought )

I also smiled at her comment, "Children at school are often asked by teachers to draw up ‘plans’ for essays or stories. As a child I
always cheated, writing the essay or story first and doing the plan afterwards. I generally got high marks and no teacher ever seemed to suspect."

I was exactly the same, right through to my dissertation, and only changing to pure mathematics at A-Level saved me from using the same technique for maths.