This topic is a request from Violet. Okay, she really just wanted me to write about animals, but I am tossing in small children because of the old stage adage “never put animals or small children on a stage.” Children and Animal stories aside, is it possible to put animals and small children onto the page of a novel and not have them seem useless or just keep getting in the way of the plot?
I am not going to give an adamant NO to the above question, but I don’t know that I’ve seen it done well that often. Animals certainly more than children; Jim Butcher tosses in animal characters to his books but they function as independent characters who feel capable of autonomy from the protagonists. We aren’t worried that no one is taking care of Wizard Dresden’s cat when he goes AWOL for half a book because the cat has had an off page life since book one.
On the flip side of this example is the cat character who is a little too much of an independent character; who seems to act with so much calculation that he feels unrealistic to his species and more of a convenient plot agent.
Animals seem to fit best in a story when they remain part of the setting rather than the one of the characters. The sled dogs as a mode of transportation, the horses that need to be trained by the sexy love interest, the man eating tiger lingering in the shadows. By not humanizing the animal, the author is released from the burden of giving the critter a character arc as well as getting the readers too invested in something not necessarily imperative to the plot.
One counter argument I would welcome is that having an animal in the story is a quick way to code a character for the readers. In western society, behavior toward animals is a major indicator of moral character. A gruff man who snarls at all his employees but leans over to scratch the head of a stray dog on the street has a heart of gold under all those big feelings. A kindly librarian who hands out full size snicker bars at halloween but who is hissed at by the library cat is absolutely a Nazi serial killer.
So animals in stories are a toss-up. Children however?
The problem with kids, or worse, teenagers on the page is that any narrative tension involving them as characters is going to ruin the escapism that is the fun of reading for so many of us with actual children in our lives. As my writing friend Jenny said to me recently “it doesn’t matter that it is beautifully written, it is still in a grocery store and I hate grocery shopping.”
Not that I hate children, but as a mom of seven/Girl Scout leader/4H leader/School District employee, do I want to crack open a book and read a relationship arc between a mom and her teen daughter? No.
Another issue with kids in a story is that someone has to be taking care of them. Even if you have a nanny (whom has to have some sort of character movement) to watch kiddo while protagonist parent is having their adventures, there is an added mental load to parenting/caregiving that both impacts how that caregiver functions and yet is incredibly boring.
Some authors get around the kid conundrum by writing “pop-in” kids. The cute neighbor, the niece that shows up for holidays, the best friend’s baby all can conveniently show up when some of that social coding is required, but don’t complicate the protagonist’s day to any serious degree.
If you as an author do go with the “pop-in” route, I only ask—for the sake of all parent readers out there—that they be developmentally consistent. I was recently reading (skimming) a book with a two year old girl who could read fluently, speak in full paragraphs, and make logical jumps that my precocious nine year old would struggle with. Every time this kid was on the page I was pulled out of the narrative. The wild part was that the kid could have fit well into the plot as a normal two year old.
There are books out there with well written, well plotted kids. The best kids are average, flawed people with outside conflict (grief, abandonment, zombies) and a solid relationship to the grown-up in their lives. The Last of Us is a great example of this; readers get sexy dad energy without the protagonist being blamed for all the trauma.
As of this moment in my Overthinking of this topic, I am coming down fairly hard on the no kids or pets side of the argument, but that might be because I just spent the afternoon trying to keep 400 kindergarteners out of a puddle the size of a semi-truck.
Writing Prompt: Take your favorite literary scene and interject a small child or exotic animal.
Mamasquatch the Writer 
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