On Writing Children Characters · 12:19am Sep 19th, 2015
For a change of pace, today’s blog post is about something which I actually know about, rather than a fusillade of meandering speculation. I have an Associates of Science in Early Childhood Development, and am currently employed as a preschool teacher. In the interest of clarity and utility, I tried to limit the amount of specialized knowledge in this post. If anyone wants specialized knowledge from my field, then clarifications or questions are welcome in the comments, as always.
Writing children is one of the most difficult things for writers to do. It may be because children are one thing that everyone has experience with; after all, children are everywhere, and you were a child once. Conversely, it may be because children are so very different from adults; constant proximity with something or someone doesn’t necessarily provide insight into them. Even if the characters are written well, it’s difficult to fit children properly into a narrative. Whatever the reason, there are many common pitfalls that come with writing children. Here is some advice that I hope will help you avoid those problems.
Do not make their ages vague in order to avoid writing them well
This is the first item because it is one of the most common. The show itself falls into this trap, and it’s the main reason their children characters are so bad. Many writers intentionally avoid stating their character’s ages in order to give themselves more leeway. This actually has the opposite effect; it makes the character less realistic, strains willing suspension of disbelief, and calls attention to the character’s age.
Children see the world differently
Children do not see the world the same way as adults do. Their morality, trains of logic, and thought processes differ greatly from adults. What might seem like unintuitive or backwards logic to an adult is not the same to a child.
A simple and famous example is the conservation tests used by Jean Piaget; two identical, short glasses filled with water are put next to each other. Then the contents of one are poured into a tall glass. Children do not understand that the amount of water remains constant until a certain age, because the way they process information is not developed enough yet.
Children are still developing their skills and knowledge
Following from the above, children do not have the same level of skills and have not developed the same sorts of knowledge as adults. They also tend to apply old knowledge to fill gaps in new knowledge, but unlike adults they don’t always do it correctly.
This is most obvious with language, but is true of every thing. If you ever heard a child misspeak or misuse a word, it is because they are still learning how language works. Emotional self-control is another big one; children throwing “tantrums” often have no other way to respond to the situation, and can’t control themselves enough to stop.
Children have consistent personalities.
Children may act differently than adults, but they are still individuals with consistent personalities. A child who is shy or energetic or inquisitive is not going to suddenly change their personality every few hours (or paragraphs). Specific circumstances and moods can affect this, of course, but that is true of adults too.
Writing children is like writing adults: they both require consistency. You must consider how that specific character would react in that situation, not just make them act however is convenient to the plot.
Children can act like adults, but it's usually through mimicry
A common way of writing children is as smaller adults. For some time periods and cultures, where children are raised to be productive members of society as quickly as possible, this is not inaccurate. Children can and do act like adults, but most of the time this is a result of copying behavior they have seen. Just because a child mimics something, however, does not mean they mimic it perfectly or even convincingly.
If an adult is trying to sound cool, or speak with an accent, or something else beyond their experience, their flawed execution is often obvious to the audience. The same is true of children trying to act like adults (though often it is even more obvious).
These are just some of the most common pitfalls I see, covered in basic terms. Each of these points could be its own blog post, but hopefully this provides some things to consider. Even with my academic background, I explicitly avoid writing children into stories because of the huge challenges it presents.
As always, additions, criticism, counterpoints, and comments of all sorts are welcome.
If you have ever tried to write about the CMCs, Spike or other child characters falling in love without aging them up first, you need to reread this entire journal.
It seems like sound advice, but I think the issue is context. For example when writing about Scoot A Orphan or Scoot A Homeless (aka a child who is literally on their own), typically things change. If a child did actually have to be on their own, for an extended period of time, they would act quite differently than other children. In other words they would adapt to situations that are thrown at them and would probably "wise up".
Another issue is writing children ponies. I know it's become a common trope, but you have to admit that even in the early episodes the CMC acted quite differently from most human children, they acted smarter. Or they acted more mature at least, not always, but usually a child in elementary school wouldn't always speak with such fluent English and consistency until they got older.
Granted, I'm sure you've seen our fair share of stories that simply do everything wrong with children, or hell, even these characters. I tend to write about children on this site, but I've easily fallen into some pitfalls by forgetting that the character I'm trying to portray is a child. Heck often writers will have a story about a child see their goals through to the end, like any other story, but not all children do this. They give up on things quite easily and move onto the next. I think it's why a COMEDY tagged fic about a child, like any of the Crusaders, is a much better fit than a dark one.
I dunno why though, but writing about children, the challenge and the mystery on them, is simply fascinating. But I don't think I'm really an expert at writing child characters. Anyone of my stories could be picked at and taken apart until you, or anyone else, points out the countless flaws that they have. Still, I don't think writing about children is that complicated. Writing about them in adult situations now? That's tough.
As someone who works with children (albeit older (middle-school) ones) for a living, I'd like to confirm that few things are more annoying to me, personally, than a child being written as a short, stupid adult--and that's exactly how a lot of people write kids in their story. Or they skip the "stupid" part entirely, and the kids in their story are indistinguishable from the older characters outside of narrative assurances that they're actually young'ns.
If you're looking for feedback on the post itself, I think that everything you highlighted is absolutely right... but I'm not sure how helpful it would be to most authors, simply because a lot of your suggestions are fairly abstract. "Children see the world differently" is absolutely true, and the experiment you cited is a good example of that, but if I was an author trying to figure out how to make Apple Bloom feel like a "real" child, I wouldn't know how to apply that in a story.
Of course, that might be outside of the purview of this blogpost--it's not like one's obligated to provide a superior alternative when one has outlined a problem. But still, I think it would have been nice to see some sort of practical advice for authors, whether that took the form of concrete examples of how a child might react in a story situation, before-and-after text samples of badly-written children and improved alternatives, or whatever. Regardless, this is a good post, and on a topic that's very much worth examination.
3402167 By real, I assume you mean human? And in that maybe this blog post would be better suited for authors wishing to write children, in fiction, but not pony fiction. I just think the CMC in the show act too differently from actual children to be considered 100% realistic anyway.
3402162 Making Scootaloo an orphan (and similar cliches) has its own pitfalls. Leaving that aside, you're right that an orphan, homeless child, or child of a divorce does develop differently. That presents an even greater challenge than writing a normal child, though. A child who has been forced to grow up is still not an adult, and they can't be written like an adult would in the same situation.
The CMC act differently from human children because, in my opinion, they are not written well. As I noted in the blog post, the CMC, Spike, and other children characters in the show never have their ages specified, and that's a common writer shortcut to excuse bad writing. The CMC have attributes of many different age groups, and it makes them feel unrealistic and inconsistent. A lot of fanfic authors use the idea that horses age differently than humans to justify being contrary or erratic. This is just a different expression of the same Vague Age trap, though.
I would not call children "mysterious", but I am obviously biased by my profession
I absolutely agree that writing children in adult situations can be tricky, but so is everything else about writing children. The situations you described warrant the same amount of verisimilitude and knowledge as any other.
3402167 Well, I did note that each of the points warranted its own blog post. That note wasn't necessarily a declaration I would write such a series, but it's not out of the question either.
It is hard to provide blanket advice about writing children (as with all blanket advice, really). Context is important because there is a large difference between each individual child as well as different age groups. The difference between a four year-old and a five year-old, or between a fourteen year-old and a fifteen year-old can be subtle but is certainly present.
3402280 Oh I never said they should be written like an adult, just that they are forced to be a bit wiser with decision making.
As for the show, I believe they do things like that so things like Fanfiction, fan theory, fans can exist. If every detail of the show was spit out to us viewers then I don't think this Brony fandom would even exist in the first place. Compare the writing and design of this show, for example, to that of other children shows. Older shows, for example, tended to have too many assumptions left up to the viewer, which were usually children. Such as the main character being either an adult or a child, never in between. They didn't have to hide the age because it was very apparent what they were from the get go, either a child or an adult. MLP FiM is different though, hiding stuff like the ponies ages lets us fill in the blanks and come up with theories of our own. I guess you can argue that the Crusaders/ Spike are written poorly because of this fact, but I kind of disagree. I mean in the first two seasons the Crusaders acted childish and had childish worries about the world around them. Sure they got more mature and delved a bit too much into adult territory, but one can argue it's just the world they live in vs the one we live in. If that makes sense?
I fear I may be repeating myself, though, because I'm tired.
If anything, the behavior of young children is very much tied to their age, because they're learning and developing and changing a lot in the beginning. A seven-year old is very different from a five-year old. Conversely, a person in the 25-35 bracket should be largely developed by now and not change too much without drastic influences.
This goes for any developed character, of course. One of the anathema of writing is to warp the character's personality to fit the current plot - for example, having the previously-shy character run fearlessly into danger just because that needs to happen for the story. Work the other way around, or at least justify personality changes somehow.
So very true. Children can be well-read and educated for their age, but emotional maturity takes time to develop. (Though some adults don't develop it properly either.)
I have a story in the works, actually, where the protagonist is a child living on her own with no parental roles. She's been forced to "grow up" quickly with little time for playing or being a proper child, and has to pretend to be an adult most of the time. And that's the keyword - "pretend". She acts how she thinks adults should act, how adults seem to act according to her perception. It's largely being bossy, arrogant and confrontational, because to her, adults always have to take command and be in charge and try to be better than others. It works fairly well, but as a side effect she comes across as a really unpleasant person.
I will turn to you if I have questions about riding kids.
I think I actually have a decent example of thinking differently from one of my fics. The CMC are trying to help Screwball down since she's had issues with gravity not bothering to effect her and she's stuck floating in the middle of her store. They try several things and eventually get her down, and only then does she mention there was an easier way. Namely that the plan involved Sweetie using her admittedly weak and shaky telekinesis Sweetie could have simply grabbed her directly instead since she weighs nothing.
It's a clear case of A to B to C is the fasted route, but going with a plan that goes up to L simply because you don't know of the better way is ignorant, but not really stupid. Of course this particular example is something older ponies could do as well, but just trying the first thing that might work and not trying to think though if there is an easier or better fits with kids very well. Pinkie, Discord and Dash are the same way, but that childlike aspect is certainly a part of their character, though obviously with some variations between them. This is generally the sort of "dumb" kids are, there is a simple sort of logic to things, but nothing that holds up to reality and a more rigorous sort of proper logic.
I don't think most people are writing about four year olds. Writing about very young children brings about challenges of its own, and I doubt most people have beyond very vague memories of being toddlers, and of what it was like, which makes it harder still.
Of course, another problem is that children are highly variable. A bunch of TAG kids raised in upper-middle class families which teach you that everyone goes to college who isn't a loser, who instill the idea that reading is fun, ect. is likely to be vastly different from someone who grew up in a broken home in the ghetto.
And I suspect that a lot of writers - at least, good ones - were probably not normal kids, which is going to skew their perceptions of what being a kid was like. If they draw on their own experience, they're likely to skew it towards, well, being more like them.
As for the age of the CMC: I think the reason they kept it vague was to both allow more of the audience to ally themselves with the characters, and also to avoid tripping over dates. I don't think that the CMC are all that young; I think their original conception was to make them like, 7, but I think their later appearances have made it pretty likely they're older than that, and the whole cutie mark = puberty/coming of age thing seems to indicate they'd be 10-12ish.
Incidentally:
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This is contrary to my personal experience, but I went to a French immersion school which, while a public school, also had an entrance exam - everyone there was already quite literate. The kids there spoke quite fluent English from a very young age. But they were also all smart kids because no one else could really get in, which probably warped my experience significantly. But I don't recall anyone really having any trouble expressing themselves, or failing to speak fluently, even in first and second grade.
What I recall the most about being a kid was lack of knowledge and experience with a variety of things. A kid can absorb a considerable amount of knowledge, but experience is not so easily gained, so they haven't done as many random things, and so a lot of things that adults do can seem really cool because the kids have zero experience there and the adult has already lived many things. As such, parents and teachers were cool because they knew so much stuff and had done so many things and seemed to always have something else to pull out and talk about or show or just plain old do without thinking.
I think this sort of sense of awe at the world is often difficult for people to capture. Of course, not all kids were as curious as I was, but I remember that being a really big thing - adults knew everything, or so it seemed, so I needed to catch up as much as possible so I could be an adult someday.
And my god did I absorb enormous amounts of information. Kids are good at that - it is one of the reason why everyone seems to always remark on kids remembering the names of all kinds of dinosaurs, because it is surprising how much they can sponge up.
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I think this is because a lot of people are incapable of distinguishing between knowledge and intelligence, even in adults. People conflate ignorance with stupidity, so it is hardly surprising - writing about someone who is smart, but ignorant, is something a lot of people struggle with, and a lot of people also write "geniuses" as people who know a ton of stuff, as opposed to displaying actual intelligence.
3405009 My mistake. I meant American children. And obviously it depends on how they're being raised, but I remember having to repeat myself a lot, so others could understand what I meant, until maybe 4th grade or maybe late third.
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The French immersion school was in the US. Specifically, Eugene, Oregon. French immersion schools are basically where you take kids and dump them into a school where they spend half the day speaking another language, on the premise that children are more apt to pick up the second language.
It sort of worked.
But the point I was trying to make there was that everyone might have a different experience. I never had trouble articulating myself for as long as I can remember, and none of my peers struggled with it, either, nor did my brother. But I didn't spend time around normal people at that age (or, really, not until after I graduated from college, to be entirely honest), so my ability to say "X is normal" is, well, skewed. Other people may well struggle to articulate themselves until a later age.
Even if we're genuine with our personal experiences, others may disbelieve because their own personal experiences differed from our own.
3405236 All experiences differ, but it's entirely possible that you did, at one point, have issues doing it, but don't remember because it was at a much younger age than most. Meaning you would have learned to do it much quicker.
3405009 Yes, children do vary a lot (I noted that in my reply here: 3402280). There are, however, developmental patterns that can apply to most everyone (as a brief example, babies generally all start babbling with the same set of phonemes, regardless of what language their parents speak). More often than not, writers use these unique situations as an excuse not to write well. They use those background details to justify their character's behavior, rather than making it an organic part of their writing.
With children in particular, these shortcuts are extremely noticeable. Children act differently than adults. If a writer has a child character who had to grow up quickly, then that doesn't mean they can just write an adult with a smaller body.
Drawing from one's own experience is a vital part of writing, but so is being willing to investigate things that one does not have enough knowledge of.
As for the CMC, I still contend that their portrayal is inconsistent. They have the vocabulary and motor skills of older children, and the "cutie mark as puberty" analogy does back up an older age bracket. When it comes to their emotional skills they are much younger. The various aspects of their personalities do not match. They are inconsistent, haphazard. Spike is the same way.
That is why I do not and cannot condone the use of Vague Ages. It's a lazy shortcut. The value it might have for audience surrogacy is not worth the inconsistent characters it creates.
3402466 Yes, and that's one reason why picking a concrete age for your characters is so important. Obviously fiction is more malleable than reality, but an author should not rely on the audience to fill in important blanks about their characters.
I think that's a good example of how one can put more effort into making children characters more realistic. Another thing to consider would be having the character in question encounter some situation where she in under emotional duress. Since younger children tend to have poor emotional control, it would be a good circumstance for her facade to crack and show that she is acting. Of course, it depends on their exact age and context, again, but it is good that you are putting more thought into the character
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Normally I try not to harp on people for typos, but considering the gross mental image that creates, I'll have to make an exception.
If you have any questions about writing young children, I'd be happy to help
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You're telling me you don't have a bunch of kindergartners carrying you around on a palanquin?
What's the point of a degree in child psychology, then?
Is this lack of authenticity actually important to an audience, though?
Just because something isn't true doesn't mean it is bad writing, and the CMC seem pretty popular on the whole. Do you think that they would actually be more popular if they were more "realistic" in their emotional maturity?
3405853 It is true that fiction need not mimic reality perfectly. It needs to abstract and adjust things in order to serve the narrative. For characters like the CMC or Spike, however, I think their inconsistent characterization does impede the stories they are involved in. Things like the CMC's constant Aesop Amnesia or Spike's wildly varying competence are extremely noticeable and infuriating, because all their subplots shove it in your face.
I do not think making characters consistent and believable would impede their popularity. We learned that with the main six. Verisimilitude can only make characters and stories better and more popular. Authors should not ask what the bare minimum is, they should strive for the best.
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When I was talking about "realistic" in terms of their emotional maturity, I meant their emotional maturity more closely matching their ages.
The CMC completely missing the point on "be patient" is a running gag, and is explicit - the characters don't want to be patient, and no matter how much folks tell them that it can't be forced, they're still insistent on trying out new things. And in all fairness, post Cutie Pox, Apple Bloom, at least, seems to take getting a cutie mark far more seriously - Ponyville Confidential has them putting in a lot of elbow grease, and Apple Bloom doesn't expect to get her cutie mark right off the bat there, and they haven't really had a "We're going to get our cutie marks in X!" plot since then - while it has been mentioned a few times, and they're still obviously engaging in crusader activity, the show hasn't focused on it as much, and the characters seem more grown up about it in Twilight Time in season 4.
But their repeated insistence is less Aesop Amnesia and more stubbornness and (at times) them comically missing the point. It also was a much bigger thing in season 1 than it has been subsequently.
Spike, on the other hand, wildly varies in characterization even between focus episodes - the worst offender was probably Spike At Your Service, which outright contradicted his characterization otherwise, but some of his other episodes have struggled with it as well. And I do think it hurts his episodes.
But I've never felt like the CMC were portrayed inconsistently - they feel like the same characters in all their episodes, and I can't really remember any moments where it stuck out as them being out of character. I'd actually say they've been more consistent in their characterization than Pinkie Pie has been.
3406050 But that's the problem; their emotional maturity may or may not match their actual ages, but we can't say because they don't have actual ages. I can only say that it doesn't match some of their other characteristics. Obviously I'm biased, but the show does have a fairly realistic tone during most episodes.
The running gag of them missing the point is obviously intentional, but it clashes with the more persistent, grounded characterization of the rest of the cast.
I think a bigger problem with the CMC might be the fact that their characterization varies between the CMC as a group and between the individuals. Obviously this reflects reality; peer pressure and differing social expectations mean people do act differently around their friends. The show does this to an excessive degree, though. The solo episodes focusing on a member of the CMC always feel more grounded and realistic than those where they star as a group. This may also (partially) explain why they are so much more incompetent than actual children on average.
Elementary School teacher here.
I've personally never felt that children are useless to writers. In fact, one of the reasons why Spike is my favorite character is because he's such a pugnacious little guy who acts so much closer to his age (whatever murky age that may be, as you point out—the staff should really find one and stick with it) than the main leads who bounce around from adult to giggly teens.
Children are interesting to me because they have fewer weapons in their emotional toolkits to use in dealing with problems they face. I encourage every writer to get down on their knees and look at their worlds from that perspective. As Edward Gorey pointed out, you are who you are by the time you are six years old. Forgetting these things leaves many writers at a loss—not only when writing children, but when writing the adults they inevitably become.
Well done with this blog.
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Just so I can sleep tonight, I'm going to assume that your spellchecker is over-aggressive and changed "writing" to "riding," and that is not actually a hobby of yours.
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3406997 I was using a speech to text program, and I thought the typo was funny enough to leave in. I only ride consenting adults.