Understanding the young reader

In this month’s blog I am focusing on writing for children as I progress with my own Writing for Children Course Assignment 1. For Task 3, I have chosen to write the beginnings of a novel (1500 words) and so far have written about 1,000+ in the format of two chapters. The working title is called Lily’s Journey and includes social issues/themes of a twelve year old living in a single-parent family due to Lily’s father leaving when she was nine years old. Other themes include moving home, friendship, fashion, school, becoming a teenager, etc.

Writing the first draft of two chapters has been a real eye-opener for me as I realise that I love this kind of writing. However, I am struggling a bit with the third chapter. So I plan to edit the two chapters first and hopefully that process will inform the third chapter. I realise this is just the beginning as I am only on my first assignment, but I already feel pleasantly surprised that I am enjoying the writing process so much. The real challenge is to keep my virtual reader in mind when I edit (see previous posting) who struggles with her reading.

To help with the process, I have been reading children’s books; currently I am two-thirds the way through Scarlett by Cathy Cassidy, which is excellent writing and is about a young angry girl whose life is just one long run of trouble and she gets packed off to Ireland to live with her dad. I will write a review sometime soon. Next up for research/reading is Candyfloss by Jacqueline Wilson and Tell Me No Lies by Malorie Blackman.

I also read an article Writing for Children – Understanding the young reader and it was particularly helpful as it enhanced/confirmed how important the whole approach and writing process needs to be.

Here is a summary:

Understanding the young reader

Writing effectively for children means not only writing about what a child is doing and thinking, but also seeing the world through the child’s eyes. There is an important difference here. In the first case, you are writing about the child’s world through the adult eyes. This sometimes works but often it is too sentimental and appears unrealistic to the child reader. In the second case you are actually sharing the child’s world view and allowing the reader to share it too.

In order to write effectively for children you need a good awareness of the way children think and speak, and the way they live today. If you have regular contact with children – perhaps as a parent, grandparent, teacher or carer – this will be relatively easy. Otherwise, you will need to find some other way of learning about today’s children.

by Liz Johnson, Writing for Children Tutor – Learning Curve Home Study
http://www.learning-curve.org/
© Diana Kimpton

For the full article visit:

www.wordpool.co.uk/wfc/art/readers.htm