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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, I’ve concluded that the vast majority of children characters are glorified props that fall into two categories: the adorable angel and/or the spunky brat. Both of these serve two purposes: to inject nauseating cuteness into the story and to develop the main characters (the parents), usually by getting captured by Bad, Bad Men.

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, you can make a child character a bully like Dudley from Harry Potter, but he works better as a minor antagonist.

In light of this, I’ve created a set of questions to help you develop a child character if you plan to use one.

1. What does this child character contribute to the story? Is he put in merely because you think his parents “need” a child or because the story “needs” more cuteness?
2. If the child is primarily put in to develop his parents (like most child characters in adult fiction, I think), in which ways does he do so?
3. 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? What sort of things does he do for fun?
4. Describe the child’s relationship with his parents or other relevant older characters. (Please give yourself something more interesting to work with than “his parents are totally loving” or “nurturing”– unless you’re writing a book about parenting, readers probably don’t care much about your vision of the utopian family). I think that everyone who’s ever had kids would agree that there are stresses involved and some parents, although definitely not all, have lousy/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.
5. Is your child character extraordinarily gifted? If so, please do not make him extraordinarily savvy with mechanics or electronics. For reasons not clear to me, techno-kids are usually insufferably aggravating (like Micah from Heroes) in a way that generically gifted children (like Ender or Encyclopedia Brown) are not.  [Cadet Davis: I think it’s because a generically smart child has to demonstrate his intelligence through something the audience can appreciate, rather than the author just saying “oh, he put together something really impressive.  He’s a genius!”  A technologically gifted child really can’t show that he is intelligent, unlike (say) Encyclopedia Brown.

Do you think children characters are as problematic as I have suggested? How would you suggest improving them?

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