From Issue 2:

How does writing for children differ from writing for adults? Guy Hallifax discusses the differences and similarities, reminding us that children can actually be more difficult to write for than grown-ups.

‘Oh, you write for children, do you? And when are you going to do some real writing? You know – for adults?’

‘My daughter has those children’s characters all over her duvet, her writing-case, even her fruit yoghurt. Is that what you do?’

‘My kiddies love the stories I tell them. I’m sure there’s a market for them somewhere.’

“When are you going to get a proper job?”

All right. That last one was from my Mum. The rest of the apocryphal quotes above are typical of the misconceptions that surround the world of writing for children’s television. The most annoying suggestion to professionals working in this niche area is that children’s writers are only doing it until they somehow graduate to writing for grown-ups, because children’s writing is easy, isn’t it?

Not so. Writing for children is a specialist job and I would argue that if anything, it’s harder than other writing. OK, so how do I justify that statement?

The first thing to ask when writing for children, whether it be live-action drama, animation, puppets or Jackanory stories, is who is your audience? Children are divided by commissioners and schedulers into age groups that represent average levels of intelligence, education and experience. Roughly these are 2-5, 6-8 and 9-11 years. (Above that is designated as family programming.) These age groups are of primary importance to the children’s writer.

Children learn about the world very quickly, but there is just so much to learn that even by the time they attain their majority, there is much they don’t know. I mean, most of us would not actually discuss current affairs or indeed anything beyond favourite flavours of ice cream with a 5-year-old. Or even perhaps a 10-year-old. No, you expect to give them information and explain things to them, certainly for as long as you have to bend down to match their eye-line. At least when talking to an adult for the first time, or when writing for adults, you have some expectation of common knowledge or experience.

That’s in general terms. Now let me be more specific. There are certain obvious things to which you pay more attention when writing for children within their age groups. Use of repetition is good for the very young, such as frequent use of character names. Then there are length of line, complexity of sentence construction and use of language, meaning choice of vocabulary and idiom. You keep these things simpler the younger your audience. Personally, I like to challenge them. There’s nothing wrong with using the right word provided that if it’s not one that my audience is likely to know, I make sure that it is understandable by its context. Or I might have another character ask what it means. However, I then have to find a way of doing that, probably subvert it within an action, so the pace doesn’t slow to a crawl and the children zap me.

CONT. in Issue 2.

© Guy Hallifax 2002