Four Things I Learned About Writing After a Week With a Four Year Old

I spent the last week on vacation in Tennessee visiting family. While fun, it was exhausting (and after having spent way too much time in airports, I am convinced that the airline we used--which shall remain anonymous--hates us). But I was able to learn something interesting from my four year old cousin. She is incredibly adorable and never runs out of energy. Or, at least, she doesn't let you know when she's running out of energy. When she starts to get tired, the stories that she tells get more and more elaborate and creative. Even when she is wide awake, she is constantly playing with toys and dolls, and she uses them to act out her stories. After a week of this, I was able to take away some interesting themes that can very easily be applied to fiction writing.

Here are four things I learned from a four year old.


#1: THE VILLAIN CAN CHANGE

While we were camping in the Smoky Mountains, we stopped by a place called Cades Cove, and they had a little visitor's center/gift shop. My cousin immediately saw a bunch of animal figurines, and by the time we left that shop she had three new animals to take home: an adult male elk, a baby female elk, and a baby bear. She insisted on calling the elk reindeer.

On the ride back to the campsite, she had me play with her. I was almost always the baby "reindeer" while she would play with the adult elk and the baby bear. Now, the character relationships often got a bit bizarre. For instance, the baby elk and the baby bear were sister and brother, and the adult elk switched between being either their father or their mother every five minutes. However, the adult elk would often be the villain of the stories as well. Or, one minute it would be the villain, and the next it would be rescuing the babies from the evil teddy bear. Like I said, bizarre.

My takeaway was this: in every character, there is the potential to be either a hero or a villain. It is possible to make the reader believe that a character is a good guy, then, in the blink of an eye, you can completely flip that belief on its head and reveal that the character is actually a villain. You can go the other way, too. Just as it is possible for a hero to become a villain, you can redeem a villainous character and have them act a hero.

You can take the phrase "the villain can change" a different way, as well. Maybe at first it appears that one character will be the villain, but it is actually revealed later on that they weren't at all; another character is. I saw this the first time my cousin took out those toys. The very first thing she did was have the baby bear come charging up to the baby elk, snarling, claws out, and I was convinced that she was going to kill off my character in the first ten seconds. Then she stopped, had the bear look up at my character, and say, "Hello! I'm your brother!" That caught me off guard for a second. But that's what you want to do for your readers. You want them to be constantly surprised by the things you write. If you don't surprise them and keep them on the edge of their seats, they won't keep reading. Don't be afraid to change things up.


#2: IT'S SOMETIMES GOOD TO "STEAL"

One of my cousin's obsessions is the Disney movie Zootopia. She loves it. Almost every story she tells has some reference to it at some point. Her favorite character is Mr. Manchas, the panther.

disney.wiki.com

I couldn't tell you why she likes this character so much, but she does.

Again while we were camping, we went to a place known as the Elkmont Ghost Town. Basically, it's a long road lined with abandoned houses that are falling down and a bit depressing, but also really cool looking. Now, as we walked over to the first one, my cousin's eyes got wide and she said in a stage whisper, "This is Mr. Manchas' house."

No one actually understood what she said at first. She had to repeat it about five times before I realized that she was making a Zootopia reference. Then she went over to one of the broken windows, stood on her tiptoes, looked inside, and called out, "Mr. Manchas? It's ok. We need to ask you about what happened to Mr. Horsie."

This became a common theme. Pretty much every house we passed had been "broken" by Mr. Manchas, and she was insistent that he was still there, and that he knew something about Mr. Horsie. Eventually it was starting to get dark and we decided to turn back, but my cousin kept staring down the road, and, absolutely convinced of this fact, said, "Mr. Manchas is right down there."

To be completely honest, she was starting to freak me out. Everything she said was said with such conviction that I could almost believe that there was some hidden entity watching us, waiting for us. (Side note, this gave me a great idea for a short story!)

So, my takeaway from this experience was that it is sometimes ok to "steal" or borrow elements from other stories, movies, or simply the world around you. Now, I would obviously not use the actual character of Mr. Manchas unless it was a fan fiction or something, but it could be incredibly interesting to write a story using something similar but unique. For example, the story I am considering writing involves a young girl spouting off things about a strange person the point-of-view character has never heard of, only to realize later on that the girl was somehow right. Borrow elements from around you, whether it be as I plan to or as my cousin did.

(Another side note: A second takeaway could be that you should always write with conviction. If you believe what you write, if it becomes real to you, then it will become real to your reader as well.)


#3: ALWAYS HAVE THAT UNEXPECTED TWIST

This sort of ties in with the idea of changing villains and keeping readers on their toes. If you can build up an expectation, then suddenly change things, the reader will stay invested. Plot twists can be the writer's best friend.

I don't really have a specific story for this one... Apologies.


#4: YOU'RE ONLY LIMITED BY YOUR IMAGINATION

This was evident in every single story my cousin told. She never ran out of ideas, and she could always come up with something new on the spot. For instance, as we were hiking, she told me the entire story of how a big toy horse had come alive, come into her room, taken her to it's home, then took her back to her room, where they were then attacked by wolves (or something to that effect). Everything worked out in the end, but her parents still didn't believe her when she said her horse could move and talk.

She didn't plan that story out. She didn't think through her plot line, or consider where the climax would be or how everything would be resolved. And yet, it had a clear beginning, middle, and end, and the story actually made sense to me.

Takeaway: If you can get in touch with your inner four year old and embrace the crazy things your imagination can come up with, you can create an amazing story. Or at the very least, an amazing story idea. After that, you can't lose that spark when you sit down at your computer and start to write. Keep your imagination alive with every word you put on paper, and something brilliant will undoubtedly come from it.


If you've learned something about writing from a younger family member or friend, let me know in the comments!