Children's Fiction

 

Ever wondered what it feels like to go back into your childhood and relive those innocent days when all you needed to think about was how to please mummy and how to get your work finished. Well writing children's fiction is a good way for you to get there. By definition, children's fiction is fiction that has especially been written for children aged between 0 and 11 years. It is divided into three main categories; Picture books for age 0 - 5, Early readers for 5 -7 and chapter books for ages 7 – 11.

The most important aspect of children’s literature is theme. The themes that a writer explores will have to be relevant and applicable to children of that age. Common themes include the importance of friendship, family, the consequences of prejudice (religious bigotry, racism, homophobia and classism), conquering known and unknown fears, honesty and deception and growing up.

The setting for children’s fiction is never as important as the theme. The story will often be set in a backdrop that is vague and general. For instance the writer will mention that ‘Once upon time in a great land near the sea, lived…’ Contemporary children’s literature may be set in small rural place, towns or a boarding school.

Writings in this genre focus on a single point of view, particularly that of the child hero. Any head hopping will only confuse the reader and so it must be limited, if at all it has to appear. Early readers are often done in third person limited to increase the reader’s participation and identification in the story. From age seven, third person omniscient can be used.

The plot in children’s fiction is simple, direct and fast paced. Though it may be a fantasy or contemporary story, it must be about childhood. Sub plots ignored or kept to the bare minimum. It follows a basic plot structure where the character is introduced, a conflict is provided then your main character is allowed to solve the conflict with little or no help from adults. Your main character must win and thus give the readers a happy ending. Magic is considered normal.

The characters in children’s fiction, like their readers, should be between 0-11 years old.  As these are young readers, characters need not be over-developed; readers are only interested in the basics i.e. physical traits, age, characters virtue and biggest fear. As such it is important to draw attention to the character trait that is your thematic focus and that your readers can identify with. In fact children’s literature is the one genre where stereo-typing is encouraged, the bad are bad and the good are good. The villain will be older, cunning or more powerful than your main character.

The language used in writing is simple. Sentences are short and vocabulary used should be familiar to the age group. When writing for early age groups like age 5, you will probably need a bit of rhyme and repetition to peak the senses of the reader. Since they probably can’t read yet, to keep their attention on the reader, they need interesting word play. 

Of course you may have the basics of children's literature but the best way to become better in this genre is to pick a few children's books and see exactly what we're talking about. As with all other fiction, this may or may not be the genre for you, but you'll never know unless you try...