Why I Write for 12-Year-Olds
I’m not writing YA nonfiction. I just don’t want to limit my audience by turning people off.
The average 20-year-old American supposedly knows about 42,000 English words, by one count. This is a hard thing to determine, so other estimates vary. This tally excludes proper nouns and “derived words” like "helplessly," from "help"), per a write-up in Science. It’s a spectrum, of course: 20-year-olds in the Top 5% know around 52,000 words, and those in the bottom 5% know about 27,000. By age 60, the overall average rises from 42,000 to 48,000.
I’m in my 60s. I don’t know if I achieved or exceeded 48,000 or not, but frankly that number seems inflated. There are a lot of words that I know are words, but I don’t really know what they mean, or I think I do until I look them up. Whatever, I’m confident I’ve topped out, since for every new word or term that goes in, another seems to vacate to make room.
Whatever the case, what’s important to know is that we don’t all know the same words.
I know a lot of words and terms related to health, science, running, the lumber industry, and the craft of writing. A lawyer friend of mine doesn’t know all the words I know, but he knows a bunch I don’t. Sports fans know a whole basket of weird words and descriptive terms that nobody else needs to know. Corporate executives have entire vocabularies nobody else wants to hear.
Now 12-year olds, they know most of the words that are needed to tell a story. And they don’t know a lot of the words that others learn as they get older—specialty vocabularies related to their interests and careers.
And that’s why I write for 12-year-olds.
When you use a word or term that a 12-year-old doesn’t know, odds are good you coulda found a better word or descriptive phrase that woulda done the job just fine.
Now I’m not suggesting you have to dumb things down. Sure, you will sometimes, maybe often, need to introduce words or terms that might be unfamiliar to a lot of 12-year-olds. No problem. Just define it! After all, 12-year-olds are learning new words all the time. By the time they’re age 20, they’ll know around 42,000 of them. But again, they won’t all know all the same words.
Meantime, you can help the kids, and the adults who are your actual target audience, expand their vocabularies by defining uncommon words and terms. What a great reader service.
I write mostly about complex health and science topics. I can’t avoid big and sometimes very obscure language now and then. But I can avoid complex phrasing. I can put my arm around the reader and show them what I’m saying. I can use examples. I can use my periods. Slow things down. Emphasize key bits. And I can define and explain uncommon words and terms when they come up, rather than making assumptions about “what everybody knows.”
Approaching writing this way helps me with flow, too. No 12-year-old wants to wade through page-long paragraphs or never-ending sentences that try to tell entire stories. Simpler writing means better flow and cadence, too, which as I’ve explained before, involves a natural mix of lively and active sentences and paragraphs of varying length.
And more periods than you’re probably used to.
Some case studies suggest writing for 12-year-olds works well. I’ve been leaning on it since the 1990s, when I launched my first science news publication on the World Wide Web. Back then the Information Superhighway was a friendlier place, and comments came via email. My favorite feedback was from parents who said things like, “Thank you! I learned so much. And now I’m sharing the site with my children.”
Today, when I write a science or health article, while my target audience is some subset of adults, I imagine a 12-year-old reading it, and I aim to not shoot over their heads.
Does this make my writing simplistic? I’ll let others make that call.
But I can tell you this: When I interview a scientist or other expert for a story—the very person who knows more words and terms about the given topic than anyone—I always send them a copy of the article when it’s published. They don’t always respond, but generally they do (you’d be surprised how pleased most experts are to be quoted, and to be shown the results). Sometimes I get a simple thank you. Often there’s a kudo—and I’ll admit, it’s exhilarating when an expert says my favorite four words: “I enjoyed reading this.” (I’m not perfect, of course. On occasion, I get frosty feedback because I don’t write the story the way the expert would have preferred. So be it. And rarely but sometimes, a source might politely note a fact error or a misconstrued passage, or something that’s unclear. I am most grateful for these inputs.)
One thing no scientist, professional or other topical expert has ever said to me: This story is too simple.
Cheers,
Rob
PS: To all you literary types and highbrow specialists: I’m well aware that not everyone is, like me, writing for the masses. If you write for a niche audience, or you pen for a high-minded publication, take my advice with a grain of salt and continue doing what works for you. My only advice for you: Just don’t complexify your writing for the sake of showing off your big vocabulary. Great writing depends on insightful ideation, solid research, framing and structure, total clarity, smooth flow, cleverness at times, and a whole bunch of other tactics. Not big words.
PPS: Maybe ideation is a bit much—brainstorming or idea generation would’ve worked just fine.