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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8448
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8448
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You can only do this _if_ the entire section is narrated this way. If you are doing the entire chapter/scene/section etc. from the five-year-old's perspective, it will work. What you cannot do is have two paragraphs in this style and then, _without a scene break,_ switch back to a normal, adult narrative style.

**ETA clarification as requested:** When you have two (or more) people speaking, each person has his or her own _speech patterns._ People should _not_ all sound exactly the same when they speak. So if Saki is in her 20s and Rika is five, if they are talking, Rika should sound like a five-year-old (simple sentences, limited understanding of the world).

In regards to narration, there are different perspectives one can use. "Third-person omniscent" sees into everyone's thoughts, and is not from the perspective of one character, so it should be as straightforward and clear as possible.

"Third-person limited" can be limited in different ways. One of the ways it can be limited is to have third-person narration from the perspective of a single character (at a time). For example, the Harry Potter novels have third-person limited narration. The narration is in the third person, but always focuses on Harry (with the exception of two or three scenes). So we only see what Harry sees.

When you have third-person narration limited to the perspective of one character, and that character is five, you can write the narration to match the perspective of a five-year-old. So the _narration_, not just the speech, would have simple sentences and limited understanding.

> Rika woke up. The sun was shining in her windows. It made pretty yellow squares on her wallpaper. She loved that wallpaper. Her grandma had picked it out for her and her papa had pasted it all up. Rika could smell food cooking. She sniffed. Pancakes! Pancakes were yummy. She had to get downstairs before Saki ate up all her pancakes.

versus:

> Saki woke up and stretched luxuriously beneath the sheets. She loved waking up slowly on a summer morning, with birdsong filling the grass-scented air and a complete lack of urgency to be anywhere but her bed. The sun peeked through the holes in her curtains, dappling the wallpaper with golden stripes. The wallpaper pattern was outdated, but her grandmother had chosen it, so she loved it for the familiarity. Saki inhaled deeply, and smiled. Her mother was making pancakes, like she usually did on Saturdays.

Both of those beats are fine. What I'm saying is that if you do a scene like the first one, the _entire scene_ has to be written that way, from Rika's perspective. Same with Saki's. You can't jump from one perspective or narrative style to the other in the same scene.

Original score: 5