Which do you think is more difficult?

[Timebender]

Writing a story for adults about a child, or a story for children about an adult?

 

[msstice]

I think writing from a child's point of view is more difficult and writers who have done this are few and well respected. It's too easy to come up with a caricature of a child's viewpoint, and we are quick to pass it, since we are no longer children.

I think there is a very fine thread in such a POV where you have to capture that things that are not serious for grown ups are serious for children and to the same extent (like a lost/damaged toy) and things are in general more wondrous.

How a child perceives the world depends strongly on the environment they are raised in and their age. This is hard to capture even if you have children of your own.

Writing about children sympathetically but accurately as adults is less difficult but still requires care.

 

[alexvss]

I have a different perspective, @msstice. Although I agree when you say that it's hard to create a good child character, I think that the second option given by Timebender is harder, simply because writing for children is harder. Also, it's a simple but effective technique to have a protagonist that matches the audience, like manga almost always does, but the protagonist would be an adult in our case, so it would be hard for the audience to care. That's another thing to consider. Timebender really gave us a paradox here.

All in all, the most difficult thing to do is to write an effective children's book with a child protagonist.

 

[Juliana]

I think that the second option given by Timebender is harder

Agreed. Unless there's a child protagonist in addition to the adult character, it would be very hard I think for young audiences to connect to the story.

The other way round is probably easier, if you consider how many fantasy/sci fi stories start out with young protagonists (who often age up during the story) but are aimed at adults.

 

[tinkerdan]

There might be some style difficulties; however I think the biggest problem in perception.
I think that writing about adults and appealing to children would be easier.
Writing about children immediately puts it into some reader's heads that this is a child's book. Somewhat similarly the same thing happens when writing about young adults. People want to put it with the teen and young adult fiction even if you are writing for older or a more broad audience.

 

[sknox]

Harder to write? That will depend on the writer. For me, *all* stories are hard to write!

Perhaps you mean which would sell better? Easier to read (that would depend on the reader as well as the writer)?

I can think of a couple of famous examples I would use as benchmarks. One is Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The other is More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Oh, and Jeffty is Five, by Harlan Ellison.

 

[HareBrain]

Unless there's a child protagonist in addition to the adult character, it would be very hard I think for young audiences to connect to the story.

Thinking back to some of the stories I enjoyed as a child, I'm not sure that's true. They were written for children, in that the adult characters didn't concern themselves with mortgages or other grown-up preoccupations, but children didn't feature at all in some of them. (These were often adventure stories.) I suppose Bilbo Baggins is an obvious SFF example. Tolkien makes him easy for children to relate to, but I don't think he makes him child-like.

A lot of the fiction I read back then was in comic-book form. As far as I recall, 2000AD didn't have a single child protagonist, but was consumed avidly by generations of kids. There were other comics that did try out teenage protagonists, and I remember finding those the weaker stories.

 

[Timebender]

Thinking back to some of the stories I enjoyed as a child, I'm not sure that's true. They were written for children, in that the adult characters didn't concern themselves with mortgages or other grown-up preoccupations, but children didn't feature at all in some of them. (These were often adventure stories.) I suppose Bilbo Baggins is an obvious SFF example. Tolkien makes him easy for children to relate to, but I don't think he makes him child-like.

A lot of the fiction I read back then was in comic-book form. As far as I recall, 2000AD didn't have a single child protagonist, but was consumed avidly by generations of kids. There were other comics that did try out teenage protagonists, and I remember finding those the weaker stories.

That's a good point. What are some things we think of as "children's" fiction? Fairy tales, superheroes, cartoons? Most fairy tale protagonists are adults, or nearly so, almost all superheroes are adults, and many cartoons, particularly ones like classic Looney Tunes or Mickey Mouse, present their funny animal characters as closer to adults.

(Not that these things are made exclusively for children, of course, but generally they are presented to children first and foremost.)

 

[Toby Frost]

Yes, I think the older action/explorer stories like Biggles and Dan Dare would fit this. The characters have to be adults to be allowed spaceships and guns, but the main difference was that they had no great interest in women (or anyone else!). They could also get away with violence that wouldn't have been permitted (or physically possible) for children, but were relatable by the standards of the day.

 

[Guanazee]

I'm a professional children's author. I think it's more difficult writing for children, in general. The younger age your target audience is the more difficult. I have spent hours with my agent fine tuning a mere 200 word book for toddlers. Around middle grade it starts to get easier in terms of how you build your characters and how they see the world around them, a bit more similar to how you write for adults.

Now, for me in particular, writing for children is easier simply because that's where I spend most of my writing time.