Think of the children!

Today’s topic is actually one that I might recommend. It’s been done before, successfully, but it’s not at all easy to do. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of attention to detail, and I must stress that it should not be attempted by anyone but seasoned professionals. 

Why? Because I’ve seen it done by newbies and it invariably fails.

Child or Animal POV

Now, just as a sidebar, I don’t mean children’s lit. I mean adult fiction, written from the point of view of a child or an animal.

As I’m sure you can imagine, that’s more than a little difficult to do. Adults aren’t used to reading something in this sort of POV, and they’re more likely to be either annoyed or confused by it. We older people tend to want to read things about people or humanoids over the age of sixteen. Usually.

However, I’ll say that this is a POV that can be tackled in a novel, if it’s handled properly. I’ve seen it done where one of the main point of view characters is a child, and because only part of the story was in their point of view and those parts were handled properly, it read very well.

I don’t know that it could be done in a short story, at least for a young writer.

So I’d like you to take this one with a grain of salt. If you’re a seasoned professional, then yes please, try it. If you’re not, then I beg you to take your time before trying to delve into this. Children are not easy to write, especially if you’re an adult. It’s hard to remember what things were like when you were a kid, how you thought when you were a child, because all your thoughts of when you were that age have now been tainted by your adulthood. And it’s flat out impossible to imagine what an animal is thinking at any given time, because none of us have ever been an animal, nor can we read their minds.

I’ve never tried it. I’ll also mention that. But I also am not fond of having children in my stories, and honestly I don’t think I’ve ever had an animal in any of them. Maybe a stray dog here and there, but no primary animal characters. And those are all novels, not short stories. I don’t even know how I would hope to manage it in a short story—and after writing twelve novels, I like to think I’m relatively seasoned.

In short, it’s not a POV I’d try to tackle in a short story. Unless you’ve already mastered those POVs in other works, don’t even try it. Please.

[love]

{Rani D.}