elibats

Hi all,

I'm trying to write this story using the language of a 9-year-old girl. I'm hoping to get advice on how to make it sound believably young, and also on whether or not it needs more background or description.

Thanks,
Elibats

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My parents think I’m sleeping but I’m awake, an hour past my bedtime, listening to the 11:00 news and waiting for the funny show that comes on after it. They keep the TV volume pretty high because Dad has a hearing problem. People on the news are arguing about presidential candidates and Mom is washing the dishes. I’m starting to think I might get sleepy soon when I hear Mom and Dad start arguing. No wait – there’s a third voice in there.

I can only hear mumbly smears of disagreement, so I sit up and squint. That doesn’t make the conversation any louder, even though Dad always squints when he’s trying to hear something. I move the covers carefully aside and tiptoe to the door. I feel for the knob, wishing I hadn’t told Mom last week that I was too old for my Rainbow Brite night light. Reaching for what I think is the doorknob, I miss and my hand punches the door. The muffled voices stop, and I hold my breath until they start again, quieter than before.

My hand follows the crack of light up the doorway and finally finds the doorknob, then turns it as quietly as possible. I pull the door open a crack and let my eyes adjust to the harsh light of the hallway.

“I’ve put a lot of thought into it, and I’ve decided Lucy would be better off with me.” That’s my cool Aunt Lindsay’s voice! What’s she doing here? And why would I be “better off” with her? What does “better off” mean, anyway?

“You can’t just wake up one day and decide you’re an adult,” Mom is saying to Aunt Lindsay.

“Yeah Mom, that’s really helpful.” Mom? Why was my aunt calling her older sister “Mom”? I decide it’s probably a joke. An example of “sarcasm,” one of my vocabulary words from last week. “You can’t hold things against me that I did when I was just a kid.”

“Let me remind you, Lindsay, that that wasn’t so long ago.”

I hear Dad clear his throat. “Let’s try to be a little more rational…”

“Rational!” Aunt Lindsay says, using sarcasm again. “There’s an idea, Dad. Okay, here’s something rational: I am twenty-seven years old and I am taking my daughter home with me.”

“Your daughter?” says Mom. Yeah, I think. Your daughter? Am I hearing this conversation right? I scratch my leg and squint again.

“Ellen, please,” says Dad. But Mom keeps going, making less and less sense, or more and more, depending on what’s going on, which I don’t know.

“Who changed her diapers? Who woke up when she cried and rocked her back to sleep? Who dressed her for her first day of school? Who takes her to the doctor?”


“I can do all those things,” said Aunt Lindsay.

“Well you’re a little late on the diaper part.”

“Lindsay,” says Dad, using the same voice he uses when I’m asking for a raise in my allowance, “you have to admit, this is a little sudden. Surely we can work out some kind of compromise.”

“I’ve compromised for too long,” Aunt Lindsay says.

“You can say that again,” says Mom, turning up the TV, probably so I won’t hear, but wouldn’t that just wake me up? I try not to listen to that funny Jay guy.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ladies! Remember that there is a sleeping nine-year-old in the house.”

“Suppose we did let you take her,” Mom says, not lowering her voice in response to what Dad just said.

“Let me take her?” Let her take me where?

“How can we be sure that you’re clean?” I try to picture my Aunt Lindsay. I last saw her at Christmas. She didn’t look particularly dirty to me. She always smells like the perfume samples in Mom’s magazines.

“I’ve been clean for five years, Mom. What do you want me to do, take a piss test?” I stifle a giggle. Aunt Lindsay just said “piss test.” Maybe that was like telling Mom to “piss off”?

“It might come down to that,” Dad says.

“Fine. I just hope we don’t have to get the police involved. She’s my daughter and I decide where she lives.”

“Please, Lindsay. You see her once, maybe twice a year? Who’s to say she’d even want to go with you?”

I don’t want to listen to this anymore. It’s not making sense. Maybe it’s a dream. I close the door and pinch myself. I’m not sure if feeling the pinch means you’re not dreaming or what. But I feel it.

I hide my head under the covers, but they keep arguing for a long time. Why did Aunt Lindsay say I was her daughter? Was that more sarcasm? She isn’t even old enough to be my mother, I don’t think. She’d have to have been like eighteen when she had me. That’s too young to have a baby, isn’t it?

Xtlk 1

I'll come back and look over what you've written tommorrow. But as for advice on how to write like a 9 year old:

Out of what I read in the first and second paragraph you're not doing too bad. Just don't forget that kids don't tend to talk in long complicated sentances. One example of how it would be changed is:

"My parents think I’m sleeping but I’m awake, an hour past my bedtime, listening to the 11:00 news and waiting for the funny show that comes on after it."

To

My parents think I'm sleeping but I'm awake. Its an hour past my bedtime and they're still listening to the 11 o'clock news, waiting for the funny show that comes on afterwards.

(I liked that part that I highlighted, seemed like something you would hear from a child.)

I orignally wrote "that funny show that comes on after it." But for some reason it didn't feel right. I think children tend to not be so dismissive. The world as they view it is still small and words like "the" come more often than "that".

You want your narration to be portrayed as that of a child, yet still proffesional because you are a writer.

Good luck.

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mandax

I liked this a lot. It kept my interest. You did a good job of throwing in little thoughts a nine year-old would think. The sarcasm aspect was well-done, too. I think it's fine the way it is (in regards to the background information). It's also pretty clear that it's a young girl, so I think you did a good job.

The Cloaked Stranger

See, I disagree. I find that your sentence structure and paragraphs and vocabulary are considerably advanced for a nine year old, but with cute sentences thrown in that they would actually think. "funny show" is accurate, but 11'oclock news and presidential candidates don't really mesh.

The narrative voice seems like more of a young adolescent, maybe even a 12 year old. I would suggest reading books in the age group you're trying to portray -- Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing being an excellent example. For one thing, you'll find vocabulary that your age group actually reads, and a sense of how they think. Otherwise you may have to adjust your narrator's age to something older.

JohnN

Yer, it doesnt sound like a 9 year old. I dont know many 9 year olds who use the words,

conversation, particularly, disagreement or even involved.

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Knightskye

That part was funny.

Hmm... This part seemed a little mature for a nine-year-old to say (or think, in this case).

You're doing a good job so far. Just don't use big words, or information the main character probably doesn't know or understand.

Mr Sci Fi

I wouldn't make such baseless judgements about nine year olds. Kids are natural imitators. A kid trying to sound articulate sounds like a real kid to me, and the fact that they mix adult words they hear, such as 11' o clock news and Presidential candidate, with words that are more common to them, such as "funny show," really graps what a kid is.

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mandax

Yeah, my sister is picking up on big words that I know I've said, and she's still young. Some kids really do pick up large vocabulary words early.

The Cloaked Stranger

Having vocabulary is one thing. Knowing how to use it and having well-developed grammar and sentence structure is another. I stand by what I said before -- reading books like tales of a fourth grade nothing, or Bridge to Terabithia, or others in the age range of a nine and ten year old, will be informative for style and vocabulary.

Mr Sci Fi

I remember an interesting anectdote told by Orson Scott Card.

A teacher had called into a radio station once and complained that her son recommended "Ender's Game" to her. Being a teacher of special education as well as gifted children, she was sure to enjoy the book. Unfortunately, she felt that the children in the book were unrealistic. She said, "Gifted children don't talk that way."

To which Card replied, "Maybe they talk that way when you're not around."

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The Cloaked Stranger

Your anecdote certainly applies to certain gifted children, particularly in the areas of linguistics and writing. However, the person who posted this asked for help making it sound like a nine year old. Not a gifted nine year old, not a special needs nine year old, a nine year old. If they had said gifted, we'd be reading this differently. And if the child was twelve, I'd be less inclined to disagree with the use of language.

These parts in particular are problematic for me, in that the child has too much insight into the intentions of the adults, and also way too much sense of cause and effect, which most children lack.

“Ellen, please,” says Dad. But Mom keeps going, making less and less sense, or more and more, depending on what’s going on, which I don’t know.

“Who changed her diapers? Who woke up when she cried and rocked her back to sleep? Who dressed her for her first day of school? Who takes her to the doctor?”

And then:

“You can say that again,” says Mom, turning up the TV, probably so I won’t hear, but wouldn’t that just wake me up?

The one that gets me is

"“I’ve put a lot of thought into it, and I’ve decided Lucy would be better off with me.” That’s my cool Aunt Lindsay’s voice! What’s she doing here? And why would I be “better off” with her? What does “better off” mean, anyway?

I would submit that a child who can't tell what "better off" means, wouldn't use words like candidate, disagreement, probably, conversation, particularly. Not with the grammar and eloquence of this narrator, anyway. But the narrative as narrative is well done, if the narrator is older.

elibats

Thanks for the help all.

It's true, there are definitely some words that most nine-year-olds wouldn't say. I should go through and put everything in simpler language. For example, instead of "arguing about presidential candidates" I could say "People on TV are talking about who should be the next president."

I don't really know why I wrote the part about the girl not knowing what "better off" means. I guess I meant it as more of a philosophical question, but it doesn't fit here.

I also want to note that I'm not writing this story for children. Just because the narrator is a child doesn't mean the reader has to be. I don't know if anyone here has read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, but that's an example of what I'm talking about. The book is narrated by a 10 year old boy but deals with complex themes and is geared toward adults.

Once again, thanks for the input.

Sincerely,
Elibats

The Cloaked Stranger

I just want to make myself clear, so that my meaning is not misconstrued. I think your writing was excellent -- details, conversation, narrative voice, all well done. But you specifically started with:

I'm trying to write this story using the language of a 9-year-old girl. I'm hoping to get advice on how to make it sound believably young, and also on whether or not it needs more background or description.

So I therefore geared my comments to the fact that this is not nine year old language. Your intended readers can be adults, but the language you asked for is not.In Foer's book, the narrator is a gifted child, and some people speculate that he is in the autistic spectrum. You didn't ask for the language of a special child, you asked for a nine year old.

His book reads like quick stream-of-consciousness at times, while so far yours reads like a mature writer's book. You can solve the problem of the narrative voice easily by making the narrator a few years older, or by having her reflect back on her nine year old self as an adult, without changing what you've written. But to sound like a nine year old requires changing the sentence structure and the vocabulary.

An excellent example of a child's language used to develop complex themes is Bridge to Terabithia. John Grisham does a decent job in A Painted House.

PixyLovesTheRain

This reminds me of one of my stories... I had to write like a 6-year-old, and think like one pretty much.
I found it helpful to talk to my younger sister. (who was six) I asked her how she thought, and actually had a few conversations with her. Afterwards, I pretty much created my character after her. So, what I would suggest is if you know a 9-year-old, then talk to them. Have a nice conversation. I assure you, it will help greatly!

Hope that helps a bit!

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