BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Creation >

Writing from a child's perspective

  
 
Icicle
09:38 / 22.02.06
I've just started writing a story from a child's perspective. I'm finding it really difficult, it's one thing trying to get to know a character, but another thing trying to figure out what a child would do in a situation. Has anyone tried stories about children, on from the perspective of children, and how did they manage it?
 
 
ShadowSax
13:52 / 22.02.06
i did this. it failed. it was ok for a few chapters, a few scenes, but as soon as i wanted to start adding any kind of insight to the story, it failed. my solution was to alter the narrative so that the parts from the child's perspective were a portion of the story, not the main focus. so i had the child growing older, and coming back to him later, as an adult, someone who could speak.

this was starting from a child of around 6 or 7.

i'm not helping. how old? dbc pierre, interestingly enough, dicussed recently in books, is successful in this, his narrator is a high school student.
 
 
TeN
17:09 / 22.02.06
naivety is key...
and it's really fun to explore "mature"/complex themes from that point of view because it allows you to get through all the bullshit and be completely honest...
I'll post something I wrote a few years ago and abandoned. It's in the form of a journal, fyi... I was sort of inspired by Flowers for Algernon, which even though it isn't written from a child's POV, I'd still recomend for inspiration. I don't know if I suceeded or not, but at least it might give you some ideas:





December 12
Dr. Groves has asked me to start writing in this journal, so that is what I will do. I have never written in a journal before, and I’m not sure how it works, but I guess I should start out by introducing myself. My name is Lukus. I am 9 years old and I live at the Darwinian Center for Guided Evolution. I have been living here for as long as I can remember, and I like it here very much. Every now and then they do tests on me where they stick needles in my arm and it hurts and then I don’t like it. I don’t know why they do those tests and I tell them how much they hurt and why do I have to keep taking those tests, but they tell me that all the other boys and girls take the tests. But I never see any other boys and girls because I have to stay in my room all day and I’m starting to think that they don’t really exist, and that the doctors were just lying to me to keep me quiet. I have to stop writing now because Nurse Susan is here with my nighttime medicine. And after I take my nighttime medicine, I have to go to bed, but I will write more tomorrow.

December 13
I don’t like Nurse Susan. She is mean to me. Today she woke me up and told me that I had to take some tests. I asked if they were the ones that hurt and she said no. But they were the ones that hurt. I’m angry at Nurse Susan for lying to me and I told her so and she said that’s what I get for being such a brat. I don’t like Nurse Susan, I’ve never liked Nurse Susan. She’s old, and fat, and has gray hair, and Dr. Groves says that people like that are a threat to the system. I don’t know what the system is but I’m glad Dr. Groves doesn’t like Nurse Susan either.

December 14
I am happy today. Today a new nurse came in. Her name is Nurse Rebekah, and she is very nice. I asked her if she would be my new nurse from now on, and she said yes. I asked her what happened to Nurse Susan and she became very sad. She said that Nurse Susan passed away. I don’t know what that means, but if it means that Nurse Susan won’t be my nurse anymore, I’m glad that Nurse Susan passed away. Nurse Rebekah said that Nurse Susan was with God now. I asked her what a God was and she said that if I promised not to tell anyone, she tell show me tomorrow. I can’t wait for Rebekah to tell me all about God.

December 15
Today, I learned all about God. Nurse Rebekah told me lots of stories about him and gave me a very big book called the Bible. I tried to read some of it, but I can’t because it’s too hard and it has a lot of big words. I told this to Nurse Rebekah and she tried to explain the stories to me. She told me about how God made man and then made woman from man’s bone. I thought this was stupid and I wanted to know if God made me. She said no, but God made Adam and Adam is the father of everyone. I asked her if she was made from a bone. She said no, but Eve was and Eve is the mother of everyone. I asked Nurse Rebekah where she came from if not from a bone. She said she came from her mother and father. I asked if I came from my mother and father too and she told me that she wasn’t supposed to answer that. When she left, I looked up mother and father in the dictionary in my room, but someone had crossed it out with black marker. Tomorrow I will ask Nurse Rebekah what a mother and father are.

December 16
I don’t think I’ll ask Nurse Rebekah questions anymore. When I asked her the question about what a mother and father were she started to cry. She cried for a long time and beat her hands on the wall. She kept saying the same thing over and over again. “How could they let him be like this? Don’t they have any respect?” I wanted to know who they and him were, but I was afraid that if I asked more questions she would cry even more. Nurse Rebekah cried for a very long time and I got scared. I wanted her to stop so I asked her to tell me more stories in the Bible. She stopped crying almost right away. I guess telling those stories made her happy. She told me a story about two brothers. She said that their names were Cain and Abel, but those are stupid names. I made fun of the names and Nurse Rebekah got angry at me. She told me that if I didn’t stop she wouldn’t tell me the stories anymore, so I stopped. She said that one of them, I can’t remember which one, killed the other one because he thought he had a better gift for God than he did. This was even stupider than the brothers’ names, because why would you kill someone for something so small like that. It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t tell this to Nurse Rebekah though because I didn’t want her to get angry and stop telling me the stories. I like when Nurse Rebekah tells me stories. Some of them are funny, like the Cain and Abel story. She said that tomorrow she’ll tell me the story of the tower of Babel. Babel is a funny word and I hope this story has some funny names in it too, but I won’t laugh when I hear them, because I don’t want Nurse Rebekah to get angry.

December 17
Nurse Rebekah told me the story of the tower of Babel today. It was a short story and it didn’t make any sense. I was disappointed because it didn’t have any funny names. Nurse Rebekah said that there were people who tried to build a tower that touched heaven. She says that heaven is where God lives. But God got angry because you’re not supposed to do that and he made them speak different languages so that they couldn’t understand each other. I asked her how God was able to change their languages. She said that God could do anything he wanted. I asked her why God didn’t just change the peoples language before they started to build the tower, and she said that God knows what he’s doing and that I shouldn’t question his judgment. I don’t think God is a very smart person. If I were God, I would make everyone happy, and I would stop making the doctors give me the tests that hurt. Nurse Rebekah said that if I pray enough, the tests that hurt just might stop. I didn’t know what a pray was, so I asked her. She showed me how to pray and I did it. I don’t like to pray. It’s boring and I don’t see how it works. Nurse Rebekah says that God watches everything you do and listens to everything you say and knows everything you think. If God knows what I think, then why do I have to pray when I want him to do something. I think God knows I don’t like the tests that hurt, but he’s not doing anything about it because he thinks they’re funny, just like I think Cain and Abel are funny. Maybe if I stop making fun of the names in the Bible, God will stop the tests.
 
 
Icicle
07:12 / 23.02.06
I am writing a novel which will have two characters both of whom will start off at about age five and grow into adulthood.

I know what you mean about both the problem of naivety and insight. To me children are like little aliens, they see the world from a totatlly different perspective so to write about them, we have to forget everything we know as adults, and yet still make the writing intelligent and insightful for an adult audience.
Thanks for posting your piece Ten, the total naivety of the child is great, and I like the fact that you've stuck with simple vocab and ungrammatical words such as 'stupider.'

One book I've read that does a child's point of view well is'Jack' by AM Homes. It captures the uniqueness of a child's naive perspective on the world and brings out a child's insight, and inteligence, rather than adding an adult's hindsight.
I have just started reading another book about childhood, it is written as an adult looking back, and uses some very elaborate 'adult' language, which loses the immediacy of a child's mind.
 
 
ShadowSax
19:06 / 23.02.06
a close 3rd person might be good, where you can get into the kids' heads without giving up meaning. writing 1st person for kids that young is very delicate, trying to hold between realism and meaning, both can be compromised very quickly with a single misstep.
 
 
matthew.
02:45 / 24.02.06
Very important to remember about "ungrammatical" words: children unconsciously impose a grammatical system on the language they learn. That's why children say "brung" all the time. It's the famous "Wub Test" that sort-of proved this. So be careful when using supposedly "ungrammatical" words because children have a sophisticated and ordered system of grammar.
 
 
matthew.
02:56 / 24.02.06
I'm sorry, the Wug test, by Jean Berko Gleason.

"By the age of three and a half or earlier, they use the -s agreement suffix in more than 90% of the sentences that require it and virtually never use it in the sentences that forbid it"
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. pg 44.
 
 
Olulabelle
22:56 / 24.02.06
It's an obviously thing to say but have you tried spending some time around children and observing how they think and speak? My son is 8 and I've become quite good echoing things he might say. They read words wrongly, which is quite important too - For about 3 days my son has been telling me about the 'Org' in his book that he's reading (I've just agreed that he can read for half an hour in bed everynight now he's 8) and I only found out today that it's in fact an Ogre.

They ask very strange sounding questions that actually have good grounding such as, "Mummy, what is the world?" (at age 5).

If you have any opportunity to hang around children for a bit, do that. You'll get some fabulous bits of conversation you can lift, too.
 
 
Icicle
09:42 / 27.02.06
Luckily my story is in the 3rd person so I don't need to get too caught up in how they use grammar, or what they're thinking.
The point of view of my narrative seems to shift at times, and I just hope that this reads okay. Sometimes it is more subjective, going into a few of the childs thoughts and then it goes further away, becoming more of an objective narrator.
Yes, I don't know many children, and this is a problem, but my boyfriends' a teacher so hopefully I'll be able to go into the school to help out.
 
  
Add Your Reply