Orson Scott Card on Writing Child Characters

Here’s another one of my favorite paragraphs on writing. This is Orson Scott Card on writing child characters, from his introduction to Ender’s Game:

Never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along — the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing Ender’s Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives on these children from that perspective — the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as important as any adult’s.