Researching sensitive subjects
How do you research subjects for a novel that might be sensitive? Both cultural and jurisdictional.
Example: I usually try to "research" the setting and characters for my texts from real life. When I wrote a story about a priest I visited a lot of old churches and graveyards just to get a "feeling" for the place.
Now I'm planning to write a story where the main character is a 12-13 year old girl. Since it's a long time that I was in that age myself I wanted to get a feeling for what you look like at that age, some vocabulary and so on. Therefore I sat down with my friend Google and typed in a search string looking for girls around 12 years.
Just before hitting the enter button I was struck by what I was doing. Oh-no this looked so wrong in so many ways even though my intentions where honorable.
So how do you do it?
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1 answer
If you want to write from a child's perspective, I suggest spending time with actual children.
If you don't have any or aren't related to any, then you'll have to find some. You might try volunteering at (in the U.S.) a YMCA, or getting a job as a camp counselor. Just remember that if you're getting involved in other people's lives, take the relationships seriously. You can be a peripheral actor in the lives of adults without too much trauma, but don't ever treat kids like research.
Barring that, well, try and find your old diaries, read as many books with 12-year-old protagonists as you can, and find a good editor. JK Rowling didn't have a 10-year-old when she wrote the first Harry Potter, but her characters sounded age-appropriate to me.
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