Tips: writing for children

Charlotte Ingham, producer/director at BBC Children's TV, gives us her tips for writing for younger audiences.

She illustrates her advice with clips from Newsround, Serious Ocean and Horrible Histories.

Charlotte tells us that contrary to the view that working on children's programmes is easy, it's absolutely not. The audience are demanding and will turn off programmes which don’t amuse them, or where the language and writing aren’t clear and understandable. Writing for children is highly specialised and requires a disciplined approach.

The first step is to understand about the age group that you're writing for. The vocabulary of a 10 year old is very different from a 6 year old’s and your writing needs to reflect this. Charlotte suggests that by reading a wide range of children’s books you can build up a sense of what language and vocab works for different age groups.

But you shouldn’t talk down to children or assume that you can’t use difficult words. Putting complex vocab or technical terms in context can help with comprehension. One of the main traps to avoid when writing for children is talking down to them or assuming that they won’t understand.

Your job as a writer is primarily to find a way to communicate information, and learning about the vocabulary and comprehension of your audience is crucial to doing this successfully.