If you’ve taken any courses in writing for children, or read any good children’s books lately, you probably realize that, most often, a child should be the point-of-view character in any story for kids. Otherwise, what you are writing might be a story ABOUT children, but it probably isn’t a story FOR children. By that I mean, it probably isn’t a story children themselves would enjoy reading.
Quite often, beginning writers think they are telling a story from a child’s point of view when, in fact, they are looking back to what it was like when they themselves were children. What they are actually doing then is telling their story from an adult’s retrospective. This is NOT the same thing as telling the story from a child’s point of view.
To tell a story from a child’s point of view, BECOME that child right at the start of the story. Don’t begin your opening pargraph letting the reader know you are now an adult. That spoils everything for young readers.
Here’s a sample of an adult’s retrospective:
I was about 12 years old the summer my family decided to drive our old Chevy to the lake for a week of vacation, but I remember it like it was yesterday even though 40 years have passed since then. All 6 of us kids, and the family dog, Scooter, crowded into the back seat of the car. My mother passed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper since plastic wrap was around yet back then.
Notice how right away this lets young readers know that the point of view character is now an adult, even though he or she is trying to relate what it was like to be a kid many years ago. This ruins it for most kids reading the story and they will probably put down the story and read something else.
It doesn’t take much rewriting to become that child once again and tell the story from a child’s point of view. Like this:
One summer my family decided to drive our old Chevy to the lake for a week of vacation. All 6 of us kids, and the family dog, Scooter, crowded into the back seat of the car. My mother passed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. When she and my father unwrapped their sandwiches in the front seat, I could tell they weren’t peanut butter. They were bologna. That’s what adults ate for lunch, not PB&J. Well, I was 12 years old. To me, it was time I got to eat bologna sandwiches for lunch, too.
Do you see the difference in these two passages? Does the second one lead you to believe the point of view character is actually still a kid?
Now…write a story from a child’s point of view instead of from an adult’s retrospective.
Just BECOME a child again and write as if that child were showing and telling everything.
Try it!
adults retrospective point of viewadults retrospective point of view
As author of more than 35 books for children, adults, teachers and counselors, plus numerous magazine and web articles, Rita Milios has mastered the art of writing successful cover and query letters. She will offer suggestions, tips and step-by-step templates for crafting both query letters and cover letters.