posted
Before writing my current novel I never wrote for children at all. I'd always wanted to, but in order to get the most from my creative writing classes I always explored the grit, the humor and the thrills of stories aimed for the adults who would be reading and critiquing my work.
But now I'm nearing the end of my novel's first draft and am starting to worry about my lack of experience with writing for kids, specifically. I haven't been paying attention to whether or not the vocabulary is too difficult, or if certain things may be inappropriate for 9-12 readers.
I recently finished a high-energy scene that takes place in an animal testing laboratory. When it was over, I sat back and realized "my 10 year old hero just saw a dead lab mouse and several drug-affected mice... and it's a 'good guy' doing animal testing, not a 'bad guy'."
It made me worry. I started questioning myself, and I considered changing the whole scene, even though I knew the scene was working exactly how it needed to. I don't want to be the kind of writer who talks down to kids and sugar coats life, but I also don't have enough experience with writing for middle-grade to know where to draw the line.
posted
Bambi's mom dies in a forest fire. Simba's dad is murdered by his own brother. And that's Disney. I don't think kids were particularly traumatized by that. Kids are resilient.
What needs to be considered is how does the protagonist react to it and what is the underlying reasoning behind the animal testing. If the scene is too graphic and the tone too dark, then it might be considered inappropriate for that age group.
quote:Bambi's mom dies in a forest fire. Simba's dad is murdered by his own brother. And that's Disney. I don't think kids were particularly traumatized by that. Kids are resilient.
Please. Disney cartoons or the stories of Hans Christian Andersen are more bloody than movies made by Quention Tarantino.
quote:Please. Disney cartoons or the stories of Hans Christian Andersen are more bloody than movies made by Quention Tarantino.
Don't get me started on Grimm's Fairy Tales. Their stories are populated by murderous step-parents, cannibalistic witches, self-mutilating social climbers... Good times
[This message has been edited by redux (edited March 26, 2011).]
quote:But "self-mutilating social climbers" I don't recall off hand which story that one was.
In Cinderella, the two step-sisters were so desperate to be queen that they resorted to self-mutilation. One step-sister cuts off her toe so her foot will fit in the slipper. When she is discovered, the other step-sister decides to cut off her heel and hopes her trick will go unnoticed.
posted
But in a lot of your examples, the "bad stuff" is always associated with "bad guys." I'm worried about that leap from "bad people do bad things, good people do good things" to something more morally ambiguous.
It'd be a no-brainer if the bad guy had been doing lab testing and hurting animals, but this is the hero's stepsister and the hero even helps save the animal testing project from being sabotaged.
The animal testing is for an overall good cause (curing addictive behaviors), which is what the bad guy is trying to stop.
I guess, thinking about it, Harry Potter is geared for middle-grade and there are a handful of morally ambiguous characters...
quote:It'd be a no-brainer if the bad guy had been doing lab testing and hurting animals, but this is the hero's stepsister and the hero even helps save the animal testing project from being sabotaged.
I don't see a problem if the scientist is shown as having respect for life and possibly showing some sadness or remorse that only through animal testing can the greater good be achieved. I would personally be upset if the animal testing is cruel and gratuitous, especially if a better means of achieving the goal exists. It also depends on what the goal is. It better be a noble objective, and not animal testing in order to create a longer lasting shade of lipstick.
posted
Read a lot of middle grade. It'll tell you more than we can about where readers' tastes are. Ask a good children's librarian for the most popular (and the best in her opinion - not often the same things) books for middle grade readers. Most are short so you can read them in a day or two or three. For moral ambiguity, try The Mysterious Benedict Society. For drama, tension, kids solving mysteries, Chasing Vermeer. Adventure - Magnificent 12. Mystery/sci-fi - Found (Haddix is author, I think.)
For vocabulary/language, you really don't have to do much to adjust for the middle-grade reader, just write in a straightforward manner and make sure you're not trying to be too tricky with extremely elaborate world-building or plot twists (plot twists are fine, just don't get too complicated as you want the story to appeal to all readers of that age, and middle grade readers vary wildly on their actual reading ability/speed/comprehension.) And don't get too long. 50k, 60k words at the most.
My biggest complaint about middle grade books is that many of them *do* talk down to the kids. I'm the parent of a 9 year old (voracious reader) boy. You don't talk down to my boy, big no no in my book. He can take it. I steer him clear of books with themes that are a bit mature (e.g., Hunger Games, even though he's perfectly capable of reading it, I just think the themes are dark and depressing enough that I'd rather he wait, and he's okay with this.) But if it's shelved J/JH in the library, he has free rein.
Oh - and a note about Harry Potter - most librarians break the series at book 4, shelving books 4-7 with the older books. In some libraries this means YA. Others the first 3 books are "J" and the next four are "JH." (Just depends how the library is set up and how the librarians decided to classify the books, as this isn't dictated to my knowledge.) It's length and thematic elements, as I understand it. Book 4 is the first book with an onstage death, I'm sure that plays into the reasons.
posted
One thing I would ask that might be worth considering perspective wise, is we assume that something should be easy. Even when writing for adults sometimes I ask myself "Is that word to obscure?" I often want to use such words because its just a good word and I feel like if some writer doesn't use it eventually we will lose words like, copse. I think good riding is entertaining but it also increases the depth which the reader can see their own world. But at the same time you don't want them do have to reach for a dictionary every two pages, enough so later they want to look it up but not so much that they can't figure out the meaning by context.
But it's not just vocabulary, and this is where I think of kids. I watch some of these new stories for kids and it seems its always about "kids being kids." They have "kid problems" and they try to solve them in "kid ways." Which is sometimes appropriate, but I grew up with Old Yeller and Treasure Island. There you had kids who were striving with adult problems that were bigger then themselves. The story called them to grow. I think that's what made them great.
posted
Kids don't want to read about their peers. They want to read about who they want to be, which is that next step older, more mature, more capable, with more of the value of "a real person" to the rest of the world. There's been some research about this, tho I'm too lazy to google it up this instant. The point was -- always remember that your target audience WILL be the next step younger from your MCs, NOT your MCs' agemates.
I think this concept gets lost by adults, who are past that age of striving to grow up, and are more interested in their age-peers.
[My cynical little voice adds: In today's world we have so many nominal-adults who emotionally are like a 12 year old, that maybe the concept of an adult's age-peer has shifted, hence all this "kids being kids" stuff, which I agree is a huge downgrade from what we old folks read. -- Now get off my lawn!!]
[This message has been edited by Reziac (edited March 28, 2011).]
posted
One of the wonderful things about the English language is that there are so many different ways to say things and so many different words that you can use in the process.
Rita Mae Brown, in her writing book, talks a lot about how to use word choices in characterization, and that you can do a lot with the kinds of words you choose.
If a word seems "too obscure," is it because the idea is too obscure? If not, then you should be able to find other words to convey it.
It's a matter of looking for single-syllable synonyms for the words you think may be too advanced for middle grade readers, and as long as the idea isn't too complicated as well, you shouldn't have any trouble finding such words.
posted
Most of the MG/YA books I read are kids handling big problems with world-affecting possible results.
Ender's game, Harry Potter, The Magic Thief, The Hero and the Crown, A Wrinkle in Time.
I find these things more often in higher-end middle grade stuff (featuring main characters in the 12/13 year old range rather than 10 and 11) and YA, and more in speculative fiction than in generic fiction. There's a whole category in MG publishing for realistic fiction and the whole point is to write stories about average kids having average problems and solving them. I would dig further in the genre, there's plenty of great the-world-hangs-in-the-balance stuff out there. Many of us here read pretty deeply in these age ranges, you could ask a general question and probably get a couple dozen book ideas, easily.
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