How can adults turn their life experiences into children’s stories? Start with the experience, but don’t simply retell the adult version of it. Find the part that a child can feel, understand, and make sense of in the child’s own world. Good children’s writing uses adult experience as raw material while giving children a story they can enter, explore, and enjoy.
An adult’s life is a rich source of children’s stories. We carry memories of ordinary and extraordinary days, neighborhood characters, relatives coming and going, small embarrassments, and big disappointments. But how do we translate these experiences into a child’s world? Easier said than done.
I remember not getting a job immediately after college. That experience could become a story about a girl who cannot afford the school bag she wants. Caring for my aging parent could become a story about a young boy looking after an elderly grandparent. Even a huge mistake I once made at work, which caused the company losses, could become a story about a child who breaks something important and has to decide whether to tell the truth.
My adult experience provides the seed. But once told, the child must be able to enter the story—to feel the problem, understand the worry, and imagine stepping into the character’s tiny shoes. The child must own the story. My emotional truth becomes the child’s world.
Don’t Put the Adult’s Lesson into the Child’s Mouth
But do I make the story explain what I’ve learned from the experience? Not necessarily. Children need something to see, feel, and figure out for themselves. A children’s story, however moral and well-intentioned, can become little more than a lesson when it is delivered like a sermon.
The writer may know exactly what the story is trying to say. But the story should leave enough room for the child to discover its meaning for themselves.
Understand the DepEd Curriculum When Writing Children’s Stories
A story can be beautifully written and still fall short if the writer doesn’t understand what children need to do with it. DepEd’s curriculum outlines specific competencies for working with literary texts. Depending on their age, children may identify characters, sequence events, recognize feelings and traits, and identify problems and solutions. They may also relate story events to their own experiences, distinguish reality from fantasy, or analyze elements such as conflict, characterization, and plot
The story, then, should instinctively lend itself to these learning directions. It should give the child something to discover, discuss, and connect with, not simply deliver a lesson.
We don’t shape a story simply to satisfy a checklist. But when we write for children, we should know what the story can offer both teacher and learner.
The curriculum can be a guide. It should not become the story.
Know the Difference Between a Children’s Story and a School Text
A children’s story can simply entertain, move, surprise, or delight a child. But when it is written for a particular purpose, it also has to fit the child who will read it, their age, reading ability, vocabulary, attention span, and capacity to understand what is implied rather than directly stated. We cannot assume that what works for one age will work for another.
Writing for children, then, begins with a simple question:
What age is this for?
And then there’s the choice of language, which is both a literary and a pedagogical issue. Some stories may eventually be translated or published bilingually, but translation or bilingual production is not always a requirement. The language has to work first for the child in front of us.
It should sound natural, be accessible without being flat, and leave room for the child to encounter something new. The language should serve the story, and the child who is reading it.
Ask What a Child Can Do with the Story
We expect children to get the book, open it, and read. The idea is that the story will be the magnet that pulls the child into the world we’ve created.
But we’re aware of the competition, digital tablets and even phones that children are allowed to view and hold. They can scroll and consume content immediately. So is it part of our task as writers to worry about how we can compete with this? Fortunately, no.
What we’re concerned with is the child who actually holds the book already. So our second question, after asking about the child’s age, is: How do I keep the child turning the pages?
That question brings us back to the heart of storytelling. The child needs a reason to wonder what happens next.
What Does a Writer for Children Need?
Your life is the raw material. The DepEd curriculum can be an optional map, especially when the story is intended for school use. But eventually, you are still telling a story. And the hardest part of all is this: How are you going to keep that child enthralled?
Your raw materials won’t change, but you must keep asking, What part of that experience would make sense in a child’s world? That means knowing your reader and the world in which your story will be used.
Writing for children is not simply about taking an adult experience and making the characters younger. It is about finding the emotional experience inside that memory and giving it to a child in a form the child can enter.
The best children’s stories tell of children living through experiences that an adult writer is finally old enough to tell.
And, ironically, adults often love these stories, too.
