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Twilight floated a second fritter up to her mouth when she realized the first was gone. “What is in these things?” “Mostly love. Love ‘n about three sticks of butter.”

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Jun
3rd
2019

Looking for Input on a BronyCon Panel · 2:35am Jun 3rd, 2019

This year at BronyCon, BlazzingInferno, Epic Yarn, and I will be presenting a panel: “Chaos and Cuddles: Writing Children and Families.”

We’re all experienced writers as well as parents, so we thought this was something we could talk about from a different perspective from a lot of the BronyCon audience. There are several family units on the show, including some with young children, not to mention families invented for OCs or future fics. Kids are notoriously hard to write without becoming props or mini-adults, and it’s rare to see people writing from the perspective of parents without falling back on the same few tropes. So there’s a lot of interesting stuff to cover.

I’m pretty excited for this one, it’s something new and something I’m confident on, and I think it could be good. But it’s also something I’ve never seen done, or even talked about before.

So I wanted to toss it out there, what would you want to see covered on a panel like this? Anything you’re curious about? More about kids, or parents, or family interactions?

I’ll probably say a bit about families dealing with special needs kids (my daughter is non-verbal autistic), and maybe writing special needs children (though I speak only from observation there, and there may be people with first hand experience at being special needs children out there,) but is that something you’d like to hear about or should I make it a quick aside?

(If you’re sad you won’t be at BronyCon, I will do my best to make a blog post afterwards with a summary of what we talked about, and I believe panels are usually available on youtube after a while. So feel free to toss some stuff out there!)

Report bookplayer · 492 views · #BronyCon2019
Comments ( 9 )

How to write children’s dialogue

I think this could be a very interesting panel. One thing that might seem like a trope but is actually very true, is that kids do pick up what their parents are going through and what is going on in their house.They might not always react in an adult way or say adult things, though. Kids, especially young ones, have a language that seems to defy adult understanding. But a parent (in fact almost any parent) will realize almost right away what the child is getting at. They might use different words or phrases and that can make it difficult for a child to explain what they are thinking. Think of Pinkie Pie in the parasprite episode. She knew exactly what she was doing and talking about, her 'mature' friends didn't understand, being focused on other things.

Also Diamond Tira is a good example of parents not picking up on the cues from their child. Until she had enough and called her mother out on her behavior. Kids are smart. Just smart in different ways.

I'd be a lousy one to ask on this one because I prefer my child characters to be orphans, so I don't have to deal with parental interactions. I'm just afraid of creating Batman by accident one day.

Kids being faced with, reacting to, and dealing with adult issues.

How writing child viewpoint characters can colour a narrative (e.g., Bran's infamous tower scene in the beginning of A Game of Thrones the book).

Well, i will definitely attend it!

I'm not a parent, but having studied elementary education for four years in college (and spending quite a lot of time in the classroom), babysitting for six-plus years, and having written stories that include younger children, I think I can confidently suggest a few things.

— When it comes to relationships, if you have enough time, you could cover many (if not somehow all) of these dynamics:
— Two parents with one child
— Two parents with two (or more) children
— A single parent with one child
— A single parent with two (or more) children
— Relationships solely between the children
— Relationships solely between the parents
— If the family has a pet, that can also affect the dynamics (children fighting over it, parents must intervene; arguing over who has which responsibility for the pet, the like)
— Two parents and children are what Americans (maybe other countries as well, but I don't know) call a 'nuclear family': just the two parents and their children in a household (as opposed to also having either a grandparent(s) or aunt/uncle—and maybe also cousins—as well). I've commonly seen the 'ideal nuclear family' to be a household with two parents and two children (in a house with a front yard in the suburbs—that's how all the old commercials advertised them). Ignoring the potential factor of a pet, that family dynamic allows you to cover all those relationships mentioned above (except that the full dynamic always includes four family members as opposed to the potential for a parent to be single). That's a total of ten separate relationships. You can note the likely differences between each if the two children are very different from each other, and thus the parents would have different relationships with each one (either together or separately).
— It's also worth mentioning if a child has a relationship with someone outside their immediate family, like a grandparent, aunt/uncle, cousin, etc.
— Stepping away from the idea of family relationships, if you plan on talking about just the children, obviously you should talk about relationships between friends. Extending that thought, perhaps a friend and their family (When I was younger I had a friend who was like a second brother who had his own relationship with my parents). You could also talk about a child's relationship with another adult they trust, like a teacher.
— Stepping away from relationships altogether, like 5068645 suggested, it's definitely a good idea to mention a child's external dialogue. You'd generally want to write it phonetically, but try not to go into overkill. For example, you could write out a little tyke saying "Hewwo" as opposed to "Hello."
—Now, it's also wise to mention a child's internal dialogue—narration, or what an adult thinks they would be thinking. As an adult, you can really only guess what's going on in a child's head, though sometimes you can make a good guess based on how they react to certain things. You also don't want to just consider a child's thoughts if they live a 'normal,' day-to-day life (whatever 'normal' means). Like you said, talk about kids with special needs. Talk about kids that are going through medical issues, or some other kind of struggle that prevents them from having a 'normal' life (I fit both of those categories). If you narrate first-person from the child's POV, it also allows you to get away with murder in the narrative as well as the spoken dialogue (if a child would internally say 'gonna' as opposed to 'going to,' since it's first person, you can put it in the narrative and still consider it 'proper' narration because it's in character). But again, you don't want to overkill. A child's narrative can still say "Hello" ("I wanna say hello.").
5068646 also brings up great points. Consider how kids might react to adult situations that they may be put in directly at an early age (best example I can think of is for them to be diagnosed with a serious, possibly long-term illness). Also consider the child's reaction when there is a situation between just the parents (divorce is a perfect example because it also affects them directly). In situations like that, consider the differences between how an only child would react as opposed to if they have a sibling there to help them through it (in both directions).
—>>5068682's point of how the narrative may be changed if a story is being narrated in first-person by a child is also key. One situation could be perceived very differently between the two, especially if a parent knows that something positive in the long run may include going through something negative in the present. The child would likely not pick up on that, and only react to the here and now.

I feel like I just wrote a novel, so I'll stop there. Also keep in mind that these are suggestions based on my experiences; others may suggest otherwise.
I have every intention of attending the Con, though I might get hung up and need to cancel that plan (I should know within the month). But if my plan doesn't fall through, you can bet your butts I'll be at this panel.

I think a childhood trauma angle could make for some good conversation. Like I remember some years ago when 9/11 happened, seeing all the things on PBS like the Arthur episode dealing with it in a way that kids could process and understand made for a really interesting perspective on how writers for children went about answering the harder questions. But that's a topic so in-depth that it might not work for some time on a panel, I suppose.

Being neither a parent nor for that matter much of a grown-up, all I feel qualified to add is my recollection of an old MAD Magazine gag--

2.bp.blogspot.com/-4mg8I1KoCl4/Tv9jKEjggDI/AAAAAAAABKg/a4j8IW01Uss/s1600/SaltyPeanuts008.jpg

Hrm, a few ideas: does writing children change at all depending on whether your audience is children or adults?

A super common trope when the audience is kids is 'kids are smart, parents/adults are dumb.' Is this bad, or just harmless? Is there another route to take for authors writing for kids?

Another trope I notice often is "breaking down in front of your kids because they just won't listen makes them obedient and kind to you." For instance, this is how Pinkie's babysitting episode ends in season 2. I see this even when the audience is adults. Is this realistic? Does it even matter?

I suppose an underlying question here is: in order to successfully write to children, do you have to placate to children?

Anyhoo, that's all I had. ^.^

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