Writing For Children
One of the questions that a real-world friend asked me when I told him I’d recently self-published an ebook for children was “Did you have trouble with the language?”
I have a feeling he meant something different, since I’m far more polite online, but I took the question as a desire to know whether I’d struggled with writing for a young audience.
The answer is most definitely “Yes”.
The original story for My Name Is Pie came from an article called Memoirs Of A Rescue Cat, which is a true story (with some very minor changes) told from the point of view of the rescue cat. Consequently, the language was already a little simpler than it would be in an academic article, for example, but was still a long way from a child’s level.
Converting that text into a story for kids was much, much tougher than I had imagined: a subjunctive would slip through here, a complex sentence there and an overly long phrase somewhere else. I must have re-read the text at least twenty times. I’ve never had to consider the tone of a piece of work so carefully before.
The thing that worked for me, though, was taking some good advice – I read it aloud. Not only that, but I read it with my eyes closed so that I could imagine being next to a child’s bed and reading it to them – you know, in the style of Princess Bride. Only without the incredible screen presence of Peter Falk. And with a less-annoying kid.
Every time the imaginary child said “What does that mean?” or looked confused, I knew I had a problem that needed sorting out.
It worked for me then, and I’ve found that it works in most circumstances. Now, whenever I write something important, I re-read it while pretending to be a person in my target audience, as best I can. I try to imagine how they will react and take out the bits where they roll their eyes.
Do you have a way that you check the tone of your writing, or do you just check for accuracy and trust that the content will suffice to reach the audience?
Good post Spike. For me it’s the grammar what needs to be taken extra care of. I just came across the same topic during Probloggers “31 day” and as I am not a native English speaker really need to take care of it before posting on my blog. So far I have not worked out my “checking system”. What is yours? Do you ask someone to read your articles before posting them? Do you read them aloud for yourself? Any advice?
Fleish Kincaid is a handy little thing that you’ve got on MS Word. It’s basically a calculator that determines what reading level your writing has achieved. The basic rule of thumb is the following:
If you’re writing for common adults, aim for grade 8.
If you’re writing for an academic, aim as high as you can go.
For children, avoid compound complex sentences like the plague. If you’re aiming for educational material, then pick some words that you want them to learn (such as my recent story “The Three Space Brothers”), and make sure you repeat them throughout the story and that you consistently use them.
Szabi: For important posts or articles, I do tend to go through a whole sequence of things (have a look at the “How To Write Articles” PDF in the Free Stuff here). If it’s less important, I just re-read. One little tip is to walk away: I’ve found this makes a HUGE difference to the number of errors I catch. Walk away, do something else that stops you thinking about the writing, then come back later. Works for me, anyway!
Steven: I’d forgotten that little doodad inWord – thanks for that! Might’ve saved me a lot of hassle, though I never really trust built-in MS stuff (ever since the spelling and grammar checkers failed me dismally).
You have to treat MS’s spell-check like that of any proofreader: it’s not perfect. You have to be aware of its flaws. I’ve never been big on the grammar checker. I’m sure mistakes creep in from time-to-time, but I imagine you would have to work pretty hard to find one that’s not debatable. The place where MS fails the most is checking for wrong words. This is fine by me since I don’t make those mistakes. I do, however, make plenty of spelling mistakes. As I make them, though, I try to learn the correct spelling – but from time to time they still slip in. My current notes on Native Inuit Tales are a prime example of where the dictionary fails.
Thanks for the advices. Spike I will check out the PDF.
I love ms Fleish Kincaid – it picks up lots of errors and it is useful to get you to think about your audience. My husband works in the government, and he used to have lots of trouble with passive language – I told him direct was better, and he should avoid passive language, but it took Fleish Kincaid to convince him.
At least I could say ‘I told you so!’.