Interdisciplinary Arts 0252 - Intermediate Fiction Writing

This course explores why and how writers choose to tell stories through a child's eyes. If successful, their narratives inevitably evince more emotional appeal than if told through adult eyes. Yet the works - often about war, family break-up, mental or physical disability, murder, and abuse - are deadly serious. They are for adults. The child is often an innocent observer; the child is also the cunning survivor. In this space between guilelessness and guile lies his or her 'victory' for us, the grown-ups, as we find ourselves rooting for those who can be wronged but not outdone. If the pattern is predictable, it is also endlessly varied. Or is it? We will look at works from around the world and from different time periods that have used the child's voice with varying degrees of success.

Arts, Design, and Media