Jul 05 2008
Manuscript Killers: Kids
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In fiction, children are almost as one-dimensional as puppies: cute but useless.
Picture taken courtesy of David at Umoja.
Much like a puppy picture in the middle of a writing article, children characters add little except for intolerable cuteness and are rarely, if ever, worth the time it takes to introduce them. Why bother introducing an 100% cliche character? Unfortunately, the vast majority of children characters are props that fall into two categories: the adorable angel and/or the spunky brat. Either way, the kid usually serves two purposes.
- To inject nauseating cuteness into the story.
- To develop the main characters (the parents), usually by getting kidnapped by Bad Guys.
Picture seen here.
Like puppies, children are interesting only when they have a bit of killer instinct or at least some ambition other than being as cute as possible. Perhaps the kid wants to make his difficult parents proud, or has some crazy-eyed dream like becoming Santa Claus, or whatever. Maybe he wants to be taken seriously by someone older. Alternatively, if you’d like to use the child as a minor antagonist, you could use him as a bully like Harry Potter’s Dudley.
If you’d like to use a child character, here are some questions to help you develop him.
- What does this child character contribute to the story? Did you put him in because you think his parents “need” a child or because the story “needs” more cuteness?
- If you’re using the child mainly to develop his parents, in which ways does he do so?
- What sort of character traits drive the child’s personality or mindset? If you used “cute,” “spunky” or “sassy,” please redesign the character and answer again. Is the child curious, adventurous, independent, perceptive, etc? Is it possible for him to contribute to a scene when his parents aren’t around?
- What is the child’s relationship with his parents and other older characters like? Please give yourself something more interesting to work with than “his family is totally loving and nurturing.” Unless you’re writing a book about parenting, readers probably don’t care much about your vision of the utopian family. There are definitely stresses involved with being a parent and some parents, although definitely not all, have lousy or even adversarial relations with their children. What are the stresses in the family? If there’s a dispute in the house, what’s the point of contention? Etc.
- Is your child character extraordinarily gifted? If so, please do not make him extraordinarily savvy with mechanics or electronics. Techno-kids like Micah from Heroes are usually insufferable in a way that generically gifted kids (like Ender Wiggins or Encyclopedia Brown) are not. A generically smart child can demonstrate his intelligence in a way that the audience can appreciate. For example, when Encyclopedia Brown solves the case, readers can see that he’s pretty smart. In contrast, when a techno-kid performs an impressive technological feat, that isn’t self-evidently impressive.
Do you think children characters are as problematic as I have suggested? How would you suggest improving them?
What’s the difference between “child” and “teenager” to you? Also, suppose I use a small girl who is “cute” (but not insufferable) but also has other characteristics such as being optimistic, able to see commonsense things that others miss, and able to learn very quickly? Also suppose I foil her with an older cousin that is intelligent, slightly sarcastic, and is sometimes preoccupied with “problems”, though not approaching true pessimism?
Typically, teens are better characterized than children. Children are usually just props that add cuteness and something for the adult characters to fight for (generally after a kidnapping). Additionally, teens and adults tend to have more of an independent impact on the plot than kids.
It’s hard to tell whether a character “works” from a paragraph, but if I had to guess one way or the other, I’d say the small girl is probably a bit too cute. Her commonsensical wisdom might interact with her youngness/cuteness in an annoying way. (I think your audience will be particularly sensitive to that if they are males and/or younger than 25). Is it really important that she’s a kid instead of somewhere between 14-18? I think you could shift the age without editing the other characteristics.
I have a child character who’s ten, and is the foster sister of the superhero. I don’t think she fits into the “cute”, “sassy” or “spunky” category, she’s described in-story as “…silent, damaged and violent”. Her biological parents were pretty rough towards her, so she was taken away by child services and adopted into Isaac’s family. Since then, she refuses to speak, because of all the emotional trauma. She gets into fights at school, and there’s one classmate who she likes to sit on until Isaac comes to get her and take her home. She does a few things that could be described as cute, like poking Isaac if she wants attention, but these are few and far between. Over time she will get her courage up and slowly begin to speak, and her violence will lessen. I’m planning on her becoming a confidant of her brother. However, once she starts talking and starts to hurt her classmates less, how can I stop her from becoming intolerably cute? Thanks!
By virtue of being both abused and mostly quiet, I think that your kid will probably not annoy any readers with overly cute kiddie lines. That said, the parental abuse angle is a bit heavy.
Over the past generation, the superhero genre has gradually expanded to encompass once-taboo subjects like child abuse, so I’m fairly confident you could get a publisher to go for it (assuming your manuscipt was otherwise attractive). But I think it would really force you to be on your A-game when it comes to marketing and selling this book. I think that readers still generally think of superhero stories as light-hearted and optimistic stories with heavy doses of escapism and flamboyant flair (like Soon I Will Be Invincible and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay).
Your pitch to readers will need to clearly differentiate your work from standard superhero fare as well as place it within the same vein. You would want to appeal to not just readers that want serious drama but the readers that want serious drama within a superhero story.
The most comparable novel that comes to mind is Hero, by Perry Moore. That book was able to fuse deeper, more serious fare with the superhero genre by making it a coming-of-age story about a gay hero. The character and his sexuality were centrally important to the story, of course. In contrast, the life-story of your protagonist’s adopted sister isn’t so central that it could serve to unify the mood and genre in the same way. The worst-case scenario is that the sister’s troubled history seems like a distraction from the rest of the story.
Another serious superhero story that you might consider looking into is The Superhero’s Closet. However, I should add that I found its prose horribly stilted and difficult to read. But in terms of marketing and branding, I think it tried to strike a few of the same chords. Good luck!
Thanks!
For the most part, it was more neglect and criminal negligence that got her taken away, and they didn’t really physically hurt her. It was more verbal, so there’s nothing to really disturb readers, because it’s implied rather than described.
Her past isn’t a major theme in the book I’m writing, but in the next one she’s going to have a larger role in that her biological parents serve their prison sentence and come after her. Seeing as Isaac doesn’t kill people, and these two are freaking her out, he has to find a way to keep them away from her without revealing his identity, killing them, or getting himself arrested. The police aren’t able to do anything because they haven’t made threats and have never come close enough to hurt her. So Isaac wants them gone, but doesn’t know how to stop them. They’re legally untouchable, and any other action would endanger him and his family physically and legally.
In the first book, there isn’t really a supervillain, but the girl he rescues gets his diary and could possibly wreck everything. In the second one, the Yinyusi come into it more while Isaac’s sorting out his sister’s bio parents, so he has to juggle everything and decide what his main priority is; a threat from his own species against him, or his sister’s recovery from the neglect.
Hmm. It may be worth working a supervillain into the story, or at least an overarching antagonist like Lex Luthor or Kingpin. A strong villain will make it harder for the hero to protect his secret identity. For example, in the first Spiderman movie, Norman Osborne’s suspicions were aroused by the strange wounds that Peter had on his arm (that Norman’s blades had inflicted the night before). Most importantly, a strong villain will raise the costs of failing to protect his identity. Families get kidnapped, girlfriends get killed, etc.
I had the idea for an extra bunch of stuff on top of the diary-gets-stolen, sister-is-violent and learning-how-to-be-a-superhero story. But I’d require a whole new website to explain all the details. I don’t even know if I’ll fit it all in. Basically, a formula is made from a vial of blood stolen from Isaac, and two people drink it: a thief-for-hire who was sent to steal it for a rich family, and a teenage girl who went home to die. Her father paid millions for the formula. The hired thief goes psycho with his new found powers and attacks everyone in the manor, and only the girl escapes. She later becomes a valuable help to Isaac, and they work together to bring the guy down.
What do you think? Would it make the book too cluttered?
Thanks!
I now have a better summary for the plot above. I’ve changed a few things.
Isaac is injured and a masked man makes off with a syringe of his blood. He takes it to some scientists who make six vials of a formula from it, which would give powers like Isaac’s to anyone who ingested it. They get eight countries into a bidding war for them, as they could duplicate the formula and use it to soup up their soldiers, thus becoming undefeatable. The rest of the United Nations strongly opposes this, wanting the formula destroyed and the notes burned. They threaten war unless those eight countries back down and stop bidding. Of course, the idea of so much power is too great, and they don’t. But then one of the six vials of formula goes missing.
A fifteen year old girl has been battling a terminal brain tumour for two years, and is living out her few final months at home. However, her father owns a multi-million dollar entertainment empire, and is able to bribe one of the scientists into bringing them the formula, hoping that it may save her life. A human test subject is sent after them, who had been injected with it. He kills everyone in the manor, except the girl, who is able to escape after drinking the vial. She makes her way to Isaac’s city, where she hopes to speak to him about it and possibly join forces to bring down her family’s murderer, destroy the formula and prevent the Third World War.
What do you think? I also have a couple of questions. What types of scientists would make formulas like this one? I think a biologist would be needed, but what other sub-groups? I was thinking Sentinel for the girl’s superhero name, are there any other superheroes out there called that? Thanks!
I am quite fond of the quest you’ve outlined: avoiding World War III and the proliferation of superpowers. However. It sort of suddenly takes Isaac from a sort of friendly-neighborhood-superhero to a guy that is saving the world and is neck-deep in international intrigue.
It may help to keep the character’s level of epicness fairly constant. In this case, that would probably mean that he either starts out with a global milieu or, maybe more manageably, that his quest is pretty much all centered in his home city from start to finish. For example, one way you might be able to slightly tweak the vial-of-blood story so that it’s a bit closer to his home is by making the villain a criminal group or gang that has stumbled onto enough blood to make one super-soldier. Its scientist says that he could learn how to synthesize the blood if he had more to work with– now the gang is willing to pay anything to learn who the hero is and take him dead or alive. (They only need his blood, right?)
One aspect I like about this is that it will intertwine nicely with the work you’ve already put into his secret identity and the girl and his diary. (I hope I’m remembering your story right). It will also keep the action closer to home and, of course, gives you an easy origin for the one supervillain that the gang is able to create with the original sample of blood. What do you think?
I want his first couple of adventures to be global, but I can’t think of any ways to make them that way. I have mentioned in a couple of the chapters how his government is interested in who he is, but will not cross any boundaries as long as he stays out of government issues. For example, they would prefer he stay out of it if the Prime Minister’s son were kidnapped, as his presence may introduce more dangers.
I decided to move the plot to the second book, to fit with his sister’s bio parents and maybe move the Yinyusi threat back to the first book. I was thinking maybe that along with the risk of his girlfriend blowing his cover, another guy might pop up and start terrorizing the city, giving him an arch-enemy to deal with. I thought that his new “buddy” could take the fight over to the other side of the country, so Isaac would have to chase him down while entering government airspace and making them get a little more fierce towards him for breaking the law to uphold it. Plus his absence at school and home would be hard to explain, creating new challenges. So if the plot weren’t global, it would at least be national, then slowly progress to international over the course of the next book.
What do you think?
Hmm. A national plot would probably be sufficient here. In the context of a superhero story, a national plot is a lot more epic than the typical city-wide fare. From there, I think readers could handle a leap to international intrigue pretty easily.
I don’t know very much about storytelling, but from a purely business perspective, moving from a city-wide plot to a nation-spanning plot might be challenging. If your plot happens in a city, readers pretty much anywhere can imagine that the city is very close to them. Houstonians will hopefully think that the story is pretty much happening in Houston, like Torontans will think it’s happening in Toronto, etc. However, at a national level, it’s harder to disguise that the story isn’t happening where your audience lives. In fact, for US/Canadian/Australian readers, it’s not even in their country.
That may be true, Paingod, but I doubt it’s a large problem. Most comic-book readers don’t seem to mind that most comic books are set in New York City, for example. I also doubt that being associated with a particular country is damaging. For example, Superhero Nation is explicitly American, but roughly 30% of our readership is non-US. That suggests that non-US readers are not scared away by American characters.
Conversely, it may be true that Americans are uniquely scared away by non-US characters… but I don’t think that’s right, either. For instance, I’ve never heard anyone in the US say anything like “Harry Potter would be great, if only Harry were American!” If anything, I think Americans would enjoy an authentically British superhero story because it will feel newer. The British heroes I can think of are Captain Britain and (sort of) Psylocke.
Oh, did I forget to say what country it’s set in? Oops! Here’s a hint: we have kangaroos and koalas, and are stereotypically described as loving our barbecues. We’re just west of New Zealand.
Ack! Well, what I said about British heroes would probably apply to Australians. The main difference would be that Australia has a smaller domestic market than the UK, so the foreign market might be more important for your economic success.
Do you think that a story where the superheroes are kids would be effective?
That’s a good question. The story I’m planning has a 14 year old girl who’ll be a superhero eventually, I’m thinking … when she’s 14.
I’m almost wondering if she should be younger, though, just because of how I described her personality.
It would definitely be different, usually superheroes are at least 18 years or older.
I’m guessing it depends on how well you can write about kids.
“Do you think that a story where the superheroes are kids would be effective?” I think it depends on how old the kids and your target audience are. Superhero stories with really young protagonists (10 or under) are rare. When a superhero story has really young characters, they tend to be side-characters (like The Incredibles, for example).
The only really young standalone superhero I can think of is Captain Underpants, and he’s aimed exclusively at a particularly young audience. If you’re writing a book for children, I think it could work.
If you’re writing a book for young adults or a comic book, I’d recommend going with a slightly older protagonist (middle school or above). For example, Kim Possible and Jake Long are two superhero-like cartoon characters that perform very well among 8-13 year-olds. I think they’re both around 13. Harry Potter and Eragon both had notable success among young adults, and Harry started out at
~1311 and Eragon started out at ~15. Etc.Wasn’t Harry 11 when he first got the letter from Hogwarts?
Good call, Holliequ! According to The Source of All Knowledge, HP was definitely 11.
Maybe Harry Potter was a weird example to begin with. It had an unusually broad audience appeal. Normally, a novel’s hero is a few years older than the target audience… old enough to be cool and relevant, but not so old as to be unrelatable. Harry Potter had a historically unprecedented audience appeal (across age, gender, nationality, everything). I don’t think that feat will be duplicated in my lifetime. However, you’re more than welcome to try! I would be damn impressed if you could do it.
If we’re going to be even more technical, he was 10. He only turned 11 a few days after the first letter.
But that’s just me showing how much I liked this series (except book 5, bleh).
I think the Artemis Fowl books have had a similar sort of appeal, too, though not quite as broad as HP. My Mum and Stepdad really enjoyed the books, anyway.
So are child characters generally a no-no? Even as the main character?
As a rule of thumb, unless you’re writing a children’s book for kids younger than 13, I’d say that the main character should be older than 13. Young heroes that appeal to older readers are very rare, so using a child hero will probably reduce the potential audience. The average high school student doesn’t want to read about a tween’s problems any more than a tween wants to read about a five-year-old. There are exceptions but, again, they are very rare. (Ender’s Game, Harry Potter, etc). I notice that both of these characters become standard teens shortly through the series.
I think it’s less of a problem to use kids as side-characters because they’re on camera less often. I have a few issues with kid characters (listed in the article above), but just keep the kid from getting cutesy and it’ll probably work out fine.
I don’t think so, although it depends largely on the audience. In any case, there are a few novels written specifically for adults which feature a child as the main character (Abarat, by someone I forget. And I think Stephen King has done it before, but don’t quote me on that).
Even books with children as the main characters can cross over to older readers (see Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, and (in my family’s opinion) Cornelia Funke’s books). I wouldn’t count on this, though.
Okay, thanks I’ll keep that in mind.
well one side chrater i have is Kimberly Ds littel sister “athough not by blood just a bond betwen em” now she is cute but she has a lot of cat tendanseys she gos on all fours alot of the time sh lands on her feet she even cleans her self like a cat shes also fast and lands on her feet great nightvision now as i said shes cutesy and childlike but when she gets angry she turns feriel her eyes turn in to cat slits nails exstend same as teeth thats basicly her think she would be a gd side chrater?
I’d make her less cutesy and childlike and give her more style. For example, the fact that she’s ‘cute’ and ‘catlike’ are all we know about her now. I’d suggest giving her more of a personality and making her less childlike. I suspect your audience might just find her annoying.
Also, don’t you have quite a few characters already?
She cleans herself like a cat? I think that comic book publishers might have issues with underage ladies licking themselves, particularly in a comic for the Teen Titan crowd.
I agree with Hol that her lack of style might be a problem. Is she going to add much besides cuteness? Also, I’m not sure how well cuteness plays to your audience…
And what B. Mac said. Believe me when I say cat-cleaning don’t work for anyone BUT cats.
I think there’s a lot of personality overlap between Silence and Kimberly. Silence is fairly child-like, and sometimes I feel like she acts cute in a kiddy kind of way.
Just brainstorming out loud here… I’ve got some personality combinations that might help her stick out more. Feel free to mix and match if you see any you like.
–ambitious and serious
–critical and helpful
–attentive and logical
–unfriendly and generous
–temperamental and talented (prima donna!)
–rebellious and hard-working
–oversensitive and comically vindictive
–utilitarian and rebellious
–vindictive and curious
–headstrong and hasty
–well-meaning and doltish
–brave and incompetent
–ambitious and forgetful
–lazy and imaginative
–well-read and combative
–picky and tactful/diplomatic
–blunt and careless
–Marine
–egotistical
…etc.
well i got this brave, sensative, short attenction span, playfull, protetive, and hunter
I like tempermental and talented.
@RB: I like that combination too. I think it would work best for a side character (because likability matters much less for sides).
@David: Hunter sounds really good. I think that sensitive, protective, and maybe a short attention span are not very dramatic. Sensitive is kind of bland and everyone in a superhero story tends to be protective, so protective wouldn’t help this character stand out. Brave wouldn’t really stick out either, unless there was something else going on that made her bravery unusual. For example, someone that’s brave and incompetent might be a liability that the rest of the characters have to deal with. Someone that’s brave and calculating might have an interesting gambling motif going on, etc.
Playful is ok. Although Chain is already kind of playful/juvenile, I think that a playful hunter is an interesting character concept so the overlap shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Well, my only child character is Alyssa Reynolds aka Warp. and she’s basically a ruthless, psychotic, cold-blooded, hypnotized 7-year-old. Not exactly an “adorable angel” or a “spunky brat”, ay?
- Wings
That’s cool, Wings. I had a child character who’s a cool, calculating assassin. She’s 9. I did a story about her, but I don’t know where to go with it currently. So I’m leaving that story and probably won’t finish it.
But you said she’s hypnotized? So the whole ruthless, psychotic thing is just the hypnosis?
I think creepy kid characters work better than cute ones. Anyway. I’d recommend cutting down the number of her names from 3 (Alyssa Reynolds/Warp) to 2 (Alyssa/Warp). Alternately, you could consider making her just Alyssa. That doesn’t sound villainous at all, but I think that reflects that this character isn’t actually evil but just hypnotized.
Yay! Naru is spared from the useless kid thing. Even though she is definitely somewhat of a Mary Sue (though I did not mean to make her that way and she DOES get scarred and stuff it’s not like she evades the war/escapes unscathed/is all happy go lucky).
I only give the name Reynolds to highlight the fact that she’s Heather’s sister. And yes, she’s hypnotized, and it’s unsure what she is like in the real world. She’s only a minor character, with only one appearance.
- Wings
I think we should follow in the stead of Calvin and Hobbes. Sure, Calvin was a brat, but he was also imaginative, smart, snarky, philosophical, caring for animals sometimes, etc. He is the most rounded kid character in comics I have seen.