Children are the toughest dialogue critics alive. They may not tell you your kid character sounds fake. But, they may just quietly decide the book is “for babies” and never pick it up again.
I learned a lot about this writing a book narrated by a seven-year-old. Here is what actually makes a young character sound real on the page.
Kids don’t explain themselves
The fastest way to make a child sound like an adult in a costume is to have them neatly explain their feelings. Real kids don’t say “I felt left out when you didn’t pick me.” They say “Fine” and kick a rock. The emotion is there. It’s just sideways. Let the reader do the translating.
They have wildly specific priorities
A grown-up notices the broken window. A six-year-old notices that someone else got the bigger half of the cookie, and frankly the window can wait. Children’s logic is differently weighted than adult logic. If you get the logic weighting right, you never have to announce the age. The reader just knows.
Short sentences. Big opinions.
Young kids speak in short bursts and total certainty. Everything is the best, the worst, the most unfair thing that has ever happened to anyone in the history of the world. They state preferences as scientific fact. That confidence is funny and true, and it is worth far more than a paragraph telling us a character is “stubborn.”
They don’t stay on topic
Adults answer the question they were asked. Kids answer a more interesting question they thought of halfway through. Ask a child what happened at recess and you’ll hear about a bug, a betrayal, and a snack — in that order — with the actual event buried somewhere in the middle. Dialogue that wanders like this reads as real. Let your young character chase the shiny thing; the plot point you need can ride in on the back of something irrelevant. That’s how kids actually deliver news.
Read it out loud to the actual jury
The real test isn’t your ear. It’s theirs. Read a page to a kid the age of your character. They may or may not critique it, but you will feel the exact moment their attention slides off. And, many times, that moment is a line where you started writing like a grown-up. Mark it. Fix it. Trust them.
Write up to kids, never down to them. They notice everything. (That, as it happens, is why they make such good detectives. But that’s another post.)
