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Writing Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [child-characters]

This tag should be used for questions about young characters in your work and problems that may arise for you from choosing these characters. For questions about writing aimed at young readers, use [young-adult], [middle-grade], or [children] instead. For questions about authors who are children, use [young-author].

This tag should be used for questions about very young characters in your work and problems that may arise for you from choosing these characters. For example you may want to use this tag if you are not sure how to write from the of a child.

For readers under 8 use
For readers ages 8-12 use
For readers ages 12-18 use
For questions about children or teens who are writers, use

48 questions
22
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7 answers

Showing mass murder in a kid's book

Galastel did a spin off question based on one of mine. Mortal danger in mid-grade literature. And hers has spurred a new one for me. This is an issue I've been grappling with for a while and I still don't have a solution for it. I had thought to…
Cyn
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6 answers

How to Write Like a Little Kid

I'm writing a story with 3 POV's. One of which is a 6 year old girl. The problem is simply this: I'm neither a girl nor in first grade. In fact, I'm quite a bit older. The first problem I've more-or-less gotten, but it's the second one I'm having…
Murphy L.
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18
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6 answers

Making him into a bully (how to show mild violence)

Joe is the worst. Nobody likes him, not even the so-called friends he teams up with at school, filling other students with terror. He's sarcastic, nasty, and a bit of a racist, and especially anti-Semitic. Over-all jerk. When some of the other…
Cyn
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15
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6 answers

Is it bad if I sidetrack to a backstory that’s not really necessary but is interesting?

My story is about two children and one of them dies in the first chapter. I give a four page backstory of how his parents came to the town they are in now, it is unnecessary but very interesting. Should I just remove it? I mostly added it because…
Angel
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11
votes
5 answers

Character Arcs - What if the character doesn't overcome the big lie, flaws or wounds?

I've been reading a lot of books about plot and character arcs. Most structures—and I believe this is generally good and true—require that the character come back from their journeys changed, usually for the better, by overcoming the very things…
romebot
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11
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4 answers

Writing a character who is going through a civilizing process without overdoing it?

In my planned novel the main character is essentially from a less technologically advanced society and is learning about the "civilized world" beyond their village. He has above average intelligence, but everything is going to be 'new' to him. It is…
Seanchaí
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11
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2 answers

Colloquial speech in pre-modern setting

Following this question, I'm struggling with writing the speech of pre-modern (in my case - 5th century) noble-born children among themselves. Characters who are well-educated would not be making grammatical mistakes and would not be mispronouncing…
Galastel supports GoFundMonica
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10
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6 answers

Children's Dialogue

I'm having some trouble writing dialogue (and emotive responses) for children in the age bracket of roughly 10-13. They end up reading more like adults with limited vocabularies and simple grammar than like actual children. I'm also having trouble…
Watercleave
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9
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8 answers

How can I make dialog sound like that of a six year old?

I'm a contemporary romance author writing a romance Christmas book. The hero in my story has a six year old girl. There are lots of conversations with the six year old, but when I read my story back to me, she sounds like an adult. Can someone offer…
Constance Bretes
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7
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3 answers

How to get my characters' emotions out of the way so I can get on with the plot?

Setup: 18 kids (ages 2-14) from 1995 America time travel to Ancient Egypt just before the Exodus. The MC knew this would happen (or thought she knew) and told people, but no one believed her. Now they're stuck there. At this point they're…
Cyn
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7
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2 answers

How can I really drive home a character not being able to hold it together in the wake of repeated trauma?

A character in my story is supposed to be falling apart, for many reasons: He's 16 and is killing people, in a gladiatorial setting, of a similar age. He already died (possibly a few times), but he and everyone he fought come back to life through…
weenmachine
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7
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10 answers

Forming a strong relationship between 2 characters

How can one organically develop a strong relationship (father-son, to be precise) between 2 strangers over the course of a novel without making it seem contrived?
Deau X. Machinus
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6
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2 answers

My ex-husband's wife self-published a nonfiction book naming my kids in the story

My ex-husband's wife self-published a non fiction book and put my kids in the story as well. She did not change their names. Neither she nor my ex-husband told me about this or asked me (or the children) if this was ok. I had no idea until the…
Michele
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6
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3 answers

How do I make a possibly offensive stereotype less so?

One of my main characters' family is Asian (specifically Korean-American). The oldest sister, Chelsea, is a child prodigy. When her toxic and shitty parents found out, they exploited the hell out of it, bragging about her, making sure she got into…
throwaway account
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1 answer

Can an "adult" story have a child protagonist?

Is it ill-advised to have a child protagonist (either first or third POV) in a story that contain a fair share of violence and gore ? I'm worried readers of this kind of story may not relate with a young character, or find the whole thing…
Babika Babaka
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