I’ll be honest, I never planned on writing for children.
My first full manuscript is a Black Mirror meets True Detective dystopian serial killer thriller. Not quite “good for children material.” My second one (that I’ve recently put on the shelf for a different “not good for children” novel), had the working title of “How the fuck are we still friends.” In general, I consider myself a writer for adults. Old adult fiction, if you will.
But I also love children’s books. I think some of the best writers we have are children’s lit writers. It takes a special brain to hit on the deeper realities of the world in a way that still connects with kids.
As a father of four, I read a lot of them and, though there are also a lot of really bad children’s books in the world, I’m amazed by authors like Julia Donaldson, Maurice Sendak, Mo Willems, and others. My current favorites are Ross Burach’s The Impatient Caterpillar and Deborah Marcero’s In a Jar. Just the best.
My entrance into writing for children was really born out of the combination of having four kids and the isolation of the pandemic.
I love to tell my kids bed time stories. It’s something my dad did for me growing up and it is so fun to help my kids process the world through imagination. When the pandemic started, I thought it could be fun to write some of these stories down and put them in podcast form. The idea was to open up the magic of “the bedtime story” to my friend’s and family’s kids, to help us all feel a little less alone and give other kids an outlet to travel the world and beyond without leaving their home.
That’s why I started the Lightcatchers Podcast. I wanted to share stories that shed a bit of light in the dark and encourage kids to see themselves as bigger than the small world they see.
I’m not going to lie, I love writing stories for kids. It’s some of the most rewarding writing I do.
But writing for kids and writing for adults is different for me, not just because of form and scope and things like that. If you’ve read any of my old adult fiction, you will probably pick up on a theme. THESE STORIES ARE SAD. Even if they are funny, they are sad and, honestly, rarely hopeful.
I actually have put a lot of thought into what goal I have in writing for kids versus writing for adults. On the one hand, I always try and live by the guiding principle of following the story and never sacrificing the integrity of a story for an ulterior cause or motivation.
But, I always hope storytelling means more than just the story. Here are my guiding principles for writing for children vs. writing for adults.
When writing for kids, the goal is hope.
In Mary Laura Philpott’s article “The Most Haunting Truth of Parenthood”, she writes, “What parents want most of all—to keep our children safe forever––is the one thing that’s absolutely impossible.”
In the midst of all the joy and chaos and funny quirkiness of raising my kids, I’m always painfully and steadily aware that the world around them is not a kind one. There are the distant threats of war and famine, the staggering realities of gunmen and viruses, and even just the everyday reality that kids can be mean, families are broken, and nature is unflinching in its cruelness.
Because of all of this, I try to make hope my goal in what I write for kids. I don’t mean false hope. I don’t think the moral of my kid’s stories should be “it all works out in the end” or “smile and have fun.”
Hope is the confidence that the God who made all of the world will make all things new. As Isaiah wrote:
On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.
This is what makes classics like The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and Lewis’ Space Trilogy so powerful and enduring. There is hope and it’s real.
To me, this is a particularly important goal, because the world is filled with monsters. Kids are not naive to the evil and brokenness that surrounds them. I think this is why the original versions of fairy tales were so terrifying. The purpose wasn’t to scare kids, but to recognize that kids are scared and acknowledge the evil in stories.
I want to give kids an honest hope in my writing. Although, for the most part I try to keep things light and funny, I also recognize the sadness and challenge of the world. In my story, Bear Feels Sad, I write about what it might feel like for a kid who struggles with depression. This is a personal one for me, because it’s basically an insight into my own childhood.
Kids need hope because it’s dangerous. And hope needs the danger because it keeps hope honest. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Out of the Silent Planet, “I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
I want kids to know that there is a real light that overcomes the darkness.
When writing for adults, the goal is warning
When I first read Orwell’s 1984, I was both shocked and amazed by the ending. Big Brother wins. There was no eventual triumph of freedom, no overturning of the powerful, there was no hope at all. The bad guy wins.
I’ve always been drawn to stories like this, whether in book or in film, because it strikes me as honest. As above mentioned, I believe in hope. But I also believe that hope is something accomplished through Jesus in a longer time table than we often like to believe.
The reality of the world is that bad people often win, good people lose, and, in the end, everyone dies. The stories that ignore this reality and insist on a perpetual “good triumph over evil” motif just don’t do it for me. I don’t write stories to make adults feel a false sense of “good” about their lives. I write to warn them.
In a general sense, I place most of my adult writing in the realm of satire. My goal for adult writing is to expose the problems hidden beneath our shiny, gilded surface.
This doesn’t mean I just want to bum people out. Writing to warn is really about writing to heal. If we can’t be honest about what’s wrong with us, with culture, with the way we see ourselves in the world, then how will we ever truly heal and move forward.
I think this is the sacred work of storytellers throughout history and the reason they usually get into trouble. The OT prophets, Jesus, the court jesters and novelists, poets and cartoonists, they all warned the world through story.
My story “The Pileup” is a warning that stuff may be the very thing keep us from happiness. My first manuscript is really a warning that modernity is ill equipped to truly process grief.
I warn adults because I desperately want adults to find healing and, yes, hope. In a sense, writing for adults, like writing for kids, is about light. It’s just light used differently.
For kids, I write light to expose the impending good and beauty God has for the world.
For adults, I write light to expose the rats hiding in the corner.