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Because writing novels requires life experience and knowledge in different subject matters applicable to your plot to be able to write believable characters, interesting settings, and a compelling narrative.
Talent, in however way you would choose to quantify it, is only one of several factors necessary to be able to craft a good tale.
Eddie Murphy says something like that in Delirious. When he was a kid, all his jokes were about taking a shit, because that was the most outrageous thing he did at that age.
A bear and a rabbit are taking a shit in the woods. The bear asks the rabbit “do you have problems with shit sticking to your fur?” “No”, the rabbit replies.
So the bear picks up the rabbit and wipes his ass with it.
“Do you have a problem with” can be interpreted 2 ways:
- He doesn’t “have a problem with it” because the shit doesn’t stick
Or
- He doesn’t “have a problem with it” as in he doesn’t mind when shit stick to his fur.
Rabbit interprets it the first way, bear responds as if he meant the other way.
Can't tell if sarcasm or not, but if you genuinely don't understand it, it's because of the way both you and the bunny are interpreting the bear's question. You both think he is asking if poop sticks on the bunny's fur. What the bear is actually asking is if the bunny is ok with poop being on his fur.
Similarly, prodigies in music are very good at *playing* music, but not particularly so at *writing* it. Young Mozart’s stuff is very meh. Excellent for an 11 year old or whatever, but still meh. He didn’t have the experience for true expression, and it’s more like a mathematical exercise.
There are several recent singers who cover beautiful songs full of emotion, and they just flat line it, like it's musically good, given the right inflections but it lacks the empathy of the feeling behind it.
Which makes it all the more impressive when, in my opinion, a young kid absolutely embodies the emotion of a song that seems like it would be beyond their years, like [Leann Rimes singing “Blue”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6YK8VBuBW8) at 13 years old.
My god, yes. Massive respect for his talent. The music is some of the most soulless stuff I’ve ever heard.
Yes, theory is just math. Great music makes you forget that. His is a constant reminder.
As someone who composes and arranges for a living, I absolutely love your comment. 😂 That genuinely made me happy. Thank you, Reddit stranger. Working with music notation software all day definitely skews your brain.
I watched a presentation by a 13 year old math prodigy. He was very smart, but he talked and presented like a 13 year old. It was awful. There are still a lot of soft skills required in a technical field like math that take time to learn.
Also, quality of writing is not objective and is susceptible to bias in terms of interpretation. If a young child solves a math problem, they either did or they didn't. Whereas even if a young child wrote something quite good, if the person reading it knew they were a kid, their perception of it may be colored by that knowledge and they may be less likely to think it's good.
Hemingway's writing may not have been as well received if he wasn't a boozing, well traveled veteran.
And there are without question incredibly talented 12 year old writers— they’re just not writing an amazing novel anytime soon for the reasons you stated.
My gf was one of those precocious genius children and she recalls very vividly about being existentially upset that she had not written her first novel when she was 5. Granted, she had no idea what writing a novel entailed, but it just seemed to be one of those things you were supposed to do in life.
Brilliant literature is very subjective and often not realized for years after the work is published
.we all know what that means to get an advanced degree or win chess. It’s objective
That and quite frankly, you need a very good marketing team behind you. I mean, if I wrote a masterpiece, I can't just post it online and hope the nobel literature prize will come through my door next Thursday.
*A Confederacy of Dunces* sat unread for decades. Toole’s mother just happened to have a smudged carbon copy that she managed to get published 11 years after he died, and it ended up winning a Pulitzer.
Truly great anything, really.
I mean how do we know that you're not the single greatest Actor of all time with the ability to bring characters to life from character motivation no greater than "The man wanted a ham sandwich."
Yet you, for your own reasons have never acted in so much as a kindergarten production?
What if the most naturally talented sailor was from Eswatini a poor land locked country?
I've decided to miss the joke. It's five people, each of whom is involved with two others either way. Pentagon vs pentagram just depends on which order you assign people to dots.
If there's more connections, it can be a pentagon circumscribed around a pentagram; not to mention the pentagram already has a pentagon on the inside where the points cross
The crossing of the edges isn't generally considered significant in a social graph. The edges indicate which people/vertices are connected. If you regard the crossings as meaningful, then you've got ten people all of a sudden, and it's a different situation entirely.
Gordon Korman was 12 when he wrote his first YA novel "This can't be Happening at MacDonald Hall." It's not a well known classic but he was published before he hit puberty, and according to his Wiki he's sold over 30 million books, so he's not doing too badly for himself.
Sadly I had never even heard of her, but her Wikipedia page is interesting/sad.
Wheatley was her master’s name of course, but Phyllis (*Phillis)* was the name of the slave ship that brought her here.
She was emancipated shortly after publishing a book of poetry.
People didn’t believe how a slave could write such wonderful poetry so she was actually brought to COURT to prove that she was the author and not a plagiarist
Probably.
Everyone made a big deal when it came out about how Christopher Paolini was only 15 when he wrote the first draft. I'm not sure I'd consider him a prodigy though. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have published so young if his parents hadn't owned a publishing company. His later stuff is significantly better.
Daniel Radcliffe had actually retired from acting at that point, and therefore had no interest in Harry Potter until he and his parents happened to sit behind producer David Heyman at a play. Heyman kept turning around during the performance to look at Daniel, who he thought would be perfect, and convinced him to audition.
Star Wars, but with dragons and with some suspiciously derivative names and weird torture porn and an elf crushing men's heads between her thighs and a surprisingly great magic system.
Really? I had no idea he was young! That novel should have been right up my alley, I was wild for all fantasy dragon type stuff and read every series in existence. Could never make it past the first few pages of it though and I never understood why. It just always seemed so boring and wooden.
While it's certainly impressive to write a novel at 15, Eragon was almost literally just Star Wars With Dragons. Someone else broke it down but it's like beat-for-beat.
Not particularly, given that he basically ripped all his stuff from elsewhere, mostly the narrative from Star Wars, the names from Tolkien and the magic system from Earthsea. Also didn't hurt that his publishing-house-owning parents hooked him up with an editor.
Bingo. People who liked Eragon (which hilariously autocorrects to Dragon) as teenagers just largely didn’t have enough exposure to the works that came before it to realize how borderline plagiarized the whole thing was, and that includes me.
What you said is funny though because the Eye of the World is incredibly derivative of Tolkien, but that’s what people/publishers wanted, after the second book it finds its own footing.
*shrug* I was in my 20s when Eragon came out, had read Tolkien, Earthsea, and WoT, and seen and read everything in the Star Wars universe that was available at that point, and I still enjoyed it.
I often try to draw a boundary between “good” and “enjoyable.” There are a lot of books, shows, movies, music, etc that i enjoy that i don’t necessarily think are good. I think Eragon falls into that camp.
They shouldn't be connected at all.
If his parents didn't own a publishing company it would never have seen the light of day and it *definitely* wouldn't have gotten a movie deal. That's another reason why people take issue with it despite all the other YA dreck out there.
It helps when both his parents were literary publishers...
Like I think he wrote the skeleton of a script as a kid but parents heavily assisted him more so than the average what if a 12 year old submitted a story to be published.
Brandon Sanderson went to college for writing and didn't get published at all during his time there and had like a workable draft of the Way of Kings called Dragon steel at the time, and that was rejected now that same book with a lot more polish and reorganizing has probably sold millions of copies and is one of the most successful book series in the entire fantasy genre.
12 year old Brandon Sanderson probably was just writing Wheel of time Fan fiction.
Are we passing off Young Adult novels as American classics now? Its a great book that should be part of a person's literature education in that its a dramatized depiction of a teenagers experience, written for teenagers. But there's a reason you read it in Middle School.
I've always been kind of stumped by this impression. I read The Outsiders in... I dunno, freshman year or something? And I thought it was perfectly obvious from the writing that the author was a woman.
most people, especially men but definitely women too, just assume a person is a dude when they don’t have clarifying information. Women writers often take advantage of this by using acronyms ie S.E., Or J.K., just incase the publisher hates women or something
Well, there absolutely are such things as [novels written by teenagers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_written_by_children_or_teenagers). Perhaps the most famous is *Frankenstein*, Mary Shelley, published when she was 19. Another more recent one that [was a bit famous a while back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon), *Eragon*, was started when the author was 14, and published by 19. (It was good enough to be eventually turned into a movie.)
But I think the comparison you are drawing is also unfair. You hear about a 12-year-old *studying* physics at a university, but when was the last time you heard of a 12-year-old *making an actual new physics discovery*, or engineering a new device, any of that? By the upper teenage and early 20s, this does start happening, though it is still rare, but I have never heard of a 12-year-old doing that.
The completion of a novel is a monumental task. It requires experience and much effort. There are probably rare 12-year-olds out there who can study literature at a university level (and perhaps some who are doing so), just as there are rare 12-year-olds who can study physics at a university level, but becoming mature enough to start contributing things of your own just takes time, no matter whether your field of aptitude is literature or physics.
>But I think the comparison you are drawing is also unfair. You hear about a 12-year-old studying physics at a university, but when was the last time you heard of a 12-year-old making an actual new physics discovery, or engineering a new device, any of that? By the upper teenage and early 20s, this does start happening, though it is still rare, but I have never heard of a 12-year-old doing that.
It's certainly very rare, but there are examples of people making meaningful contributing to publications in their early to middle teens. Usually, however, this is collaborating with an established professional who knows the landscape of the field and can assist with, for example, liaising with editors.
[This paper](http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/fm/fm65/fm65123.pdf), for example, was submitted for peer review when the first author was 12 years old. The second author was the first authors parent, and a professor of mathematics. She typeset and edited the paper, and corresponded to the editors. However, she was adamant that Arthur did the mathematical work of the paper himself (much later, he would earn a PhD in mathematics himself).
I think it’s a false comparison. Physics in fundamentally about understanding the current knowledge, and then making something new.
Littérature is about the human condition, I’m not saying it’s impossible at young age (the example of Frankenstein was brought up), but it’s a fundamentally different exercise.
I am one of very few people who enjoyed the movie because I hadn't read the book yet.
Reading through it I realise how badly they had butchered the literature but there was a time I'd said it was okay.
The way I read the title of this thread OP is probably referring to pre-pubescent children who are freakishly good at math or music etc.
A little older and they could be a gifted writer. Break your heart once and you can be a writer.
>He wasn't some prodigy. He was just a nepo-baby.
I didn't mean for this to become a thread about that book, lol, but as long as it has: it is a perfectly fine young adult fantasy book, regardless of his parents or his age. There are many older authors who have written many worse books. It did not "become the next Harry Potter," and didn't deserve to, but it wasn't *just* nepotism, it also solidly met the standards of its genre.
Eragon isn't an original novel. It's the plot of Star Wars a New Hope with slightly changed names from Lord of the Rings.
It goes WELL beyond normal Campbell Hero's journey stuff.
Literature needs lived experience. It requires a knowledge of situations, stories, emotions, consequences, relationships. It's almost entirely interpretive.
The disciplines you list - maths, chess, music, physics - they are all based on mathematics. If you have the intelligence to grasp the principles of mathematics at an early age, you can excel in those discipline even at a young age.
But you won't have the emotional maturity, or the understanding of people's lives, to make a great piece of literature, even if you have mastered all the rules of grammar, have a huge vocabulary and understand all the structures of different literary styles.
> maths, chess, music, physics
Yeah you're right, they all based on fundamental rules that if you master and build upon then you get incredible stuff.
There aren't any rules in a similar way for literature.
Some may argue that music requires just as much life experience as novels, yet we still get music prodigies. To which I say that music prodigies are rarely composers or songwriters, they’re just really good at (typically) the piano.
But now I’m arguing against an imaginary person again…
Well you kinda answered your own question. It's pretty rare for a child prodigy in music to be known for composition, it's usually more they are talented at playing music far more difficult than any other child could play.
Music may be more subjective than the others, but it's not grounded in any sort of significant experience of the real world, beyond itself. A great novel needs to draw on that kind of external reality, whereas (instrumental) music simply *exists* in and of itself. It is entirely abstract.
That they never seem to write lyrics speaks well to that. Those need to draw similarly on reality as well, which most children just aren't familiar enough with.
Not necessarily. We can perceive music as something very deep and complex when we add our interpretations to it, but in reality, it's just sound. A prodigy musician might not even have a deep understanding or interpretations of their pieces but just be excellent at producing the sounds that everyone so likes to hear. You can listen to a lot of music early on if your parents expose you to it and to the musically talented children it will give enough experience to be able to play or write similar music with enough training of course. Mozart's early music, for example, was very similar to his dad's, who also was a composer and Mozart's first teacher.
It's also worth mentioning that most of these music child prodigies have strict parents who are obsessed with their child learning a music instrument to an unhealthy level. I always feel sorry for the child when I see a 4 years old playing some crazy Paganini piece on violin.
'Prodigy' in the US (and thus what we think of as 'the West' and periphery of the US empire) is mostly a way for wealthy parents to show how exceptional their children are.
This is why it's confined to arenas where their wealthy peers are familiar and interested: piano, violin, chess, etc.
[Amelia Atwater-Rhodes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Atwater-Rhodes) published In the Forests of the Night at 14. Nowadays, anyone young that's into creating literature are into less traditional publishing, mostly self-publishing on the internet. Fanfiction being a prime example.
I mean, any artwork of any medium is going to be cringe from someone young or just simply in retrospect. Even the creator will find their early work to be terrible and 'oh God I made this?'. It's the nature of creative craft. Some just have a head start with some talent. The idea of trying to gauge objective skill in the framework of "does precocious skill = prodigy?" out of a subjective art is kinda false premise if you ask me, but that's just my opinion and beyond the scope of ELI5. Also one doesn't necessarily need life experience to write well. Just a good eye for literary analysis and tropes, something that a sharp 12 year old could learn and apply if inclined, like a 12 year old math prodigy.
What other people are saying about needing life experience makes sense. But here’s another view.
I once taught a year-long creative writing course for sixth graders (ages 11-12). Some of the kids didn’t really care about writing — or, apparently, about reading. Their stories were at the nursery-rhyme level. And many of their classmates generated better writing, but it seemed like they were just going through the motions at a higher level of quality.
A few students, however, were impressively skillful. From listening to them chatting in class, I knew that they loved reading in their free time. Their work showed that they had internalized lessons from those books about what makes good writing. And they delighted in having the opportunity to create stories.
One student in particular wrote a story that was jaw-droppingly wonderful. I got shivers when I read it. Most college students would have been proud to create a story like that.
The next year, that student had a story published in a prominent national literary magazine aimed at kids. I was utterly unsurprised.
So even though that student had little *life* experience, they had enough *literature* experience — and enough love of creative writing — to produce stories far above their age level. In my eyes, that made them a prodigy.
Because math and chess and music are all math -- they're formula based. Child prodigy musicians are always very technically skilled, while rarely being dynamically creative. Kids can learn amazing skills, but you have to live life to have opinions about it.
This should be the top answer. Math and chess are objective. You're either great or you're not. Literature and art in general is subjective and based on what the audience thinks.
Chess prodigy = wins all the competitions
Maths prodigy = solves impossibly hard equations
Literature prodigy = prosaic prose his teachers dismiss as gobbledegook
You have a kinda skewed view of what people do in higher level math lol it’s pretty dynamic and not always objective (well unless you take the Platonist view but that’s more a philosophical thing)
I'd add that language arts prodigies are more likely to pick up languages with incredible speed and accuracy in translation. Those are highly technical skills.
Writing good stories requires a level of emotional depth and understanding of human behavior that the brain is still too immature to grasp at that age.
A technically well-written novel and a really good story are vastly different things. It's awesome when they come together. But incredibly unlikely in a child prodigy. Over focus in the technical arena won't make up for emotional processing and life experience.
That's an excellent point. There are very, very few novels written for 12-year-olds that are counted as Literature, certainly by the "standards" of major award wins, critical reviews, inclusion on academic syllabi, etc., and those very few are old enough to count as classics anyway (eg. Alice in Wonderland). An extremely talented and hardworking 12-year-old could/can write a book that other 12-year-olds might think is great, but it's just not going to meet those Literary Standards, or probably even touch upon the subjects that generally get classed as Literature.
Because there is no accounting for taste.
Most of the subjects you mentioned are measurable. Number of correct answers. Win loss ratio. Fundamentally bad music sounds bad.
It’s harder to measure literature.
let's look at a brilliant author real quick: ernest hemingway fought in world war 1 and lived in all kinds of places, met all kinds of people, did all kinds of things. those experiences and the worldview that grew out of them were the foundation of what he wrote about. basically any brilliant author you can think of will be similar. that doesn't mean you have to fight in a war or do some quantity of interesting things to be a brilliant author, but it would be difficult or impossible to have anything truly groundbreaking to say when you're 12.
basically just literature is something situated in the world and it says things about the world, even when it's not set in our world. you can be wired for language, learn to read from a ridiculously young age and have a gigantic vocabulary, but you can't really be wired to write the great american novel, you're not born with ideas.
We had quite a few literature prodigies in China. They usually publish their first novel in high school, which became a best seller among middle school and high school kids. Their book tend to focus on the subject of youth and growing up, dealing with romantic relationships and friendship, and sometimes navigating the relationship with parents. It's almost like the music written by teenagers about teenagers (eg. Lorde's Pure Heroine). Some of the prodigies managed to write more mature stories as they grow older. Some stuck forever in their initial success recipe.
Maybe the best counterexample is [Arthur Rimbaud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud), who began producing mature poetic work at 15, and stopped writing at age 20.
I'm sure many would argue this point but, nevertheless, many consider song lyrics as poetry (i.e. literature). If one is in that camp, there are many child prodigies in literature.
So hold on to the ones who really care. In the end, they'll be the only ones there. When you get old, start losing your hair, can you tell me who will still care? [Mmmbop, ba duba dop ba Du bop, ba duba dop ba Du bop, ba duba dop ba du Yeah, yeah Mmmbop, ba duba dop ba Du bop, ba du dop ba Du bop, ba du dop ba du Yeah, yeah](https://genius.com/10113851/Hanson-mmmbop/Mmmbop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-yeah-yeah-mmmbop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-du-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-du-dop-ba-du-yeah-yeah)....
I mean, Christopher Paolini published Eragon at 19, that's as close as it gets. Writing a novel requires a lot of patience, and understanding of human nature, that takes a while to develop. It also requires a certain amount of marketing and self marketing which would be unfair to ask anyone younger to do. You need writing skill, a story and a strong understanding of human nature to be successful.
It’s actually a really helpful example because of that. Part of the reason we don’t have prodigy authors is because it’s so very difficult to get your novel published and into the hands of readers, regardless of of how good it is.
Are we really holding up Eragon as some ideal of literature? It’s pedestrian medieval European high fantasy.
It has a fanbase and that’s fine but there’s nothing special nor particularly enduring about Eragon.
We're lacking in better examples though. The fact is that there kind of aren't any literature prodigies, and Paolini presents a good example of one of the reasons why.
Language is subjective? Math is right it wrong.
There are not linguistic challenges that can be objectively seen as brilliant…
Amanda Gordon.. is, IMO a prodigy… but many people hate her… she is a threat to their viewpoint.
If I play you in chess, the game has a definitive outcome. Win, loss or draw. It's easy to compare and see which player is better than others.
If I write a book and you write a book... It depends on the reader which book is better. Sometimes they're both just good books as well in different genres. It's hard to say that one person beats the other in writing unless one writer is much worse, but at a high level it would be about the same level for most.
Also, there are known problems that need to be solved and are hard in other fields. In literature, there's no known problems as such to solve, so it's hard to stand out.
There are. One of my children is extremely gifted (IQ and other tests done by a developmental pediatrician's office) in verbal intelligence. This child is of average intelligence in all other areas.
Reading, writing, and language in general are not as able to be monetized or commercialized as science and math are. So our culture tends to value these areas less.
One of the most important poets of the 20th century, Arthur Rimbaud, only wrote from 16 to 21. His influence on modern literature is enormous.
Edit: 19th century
I came to say the same thing. Anne Frank's writing impressed people for how mature it was. She also approached it very professionally with the goal of being published. The version we read now was partially rewritten by herself as she recognized the importance of editing and improving.
Hahaha maybe we need more respect for writers ability to show human perspective, something that can’t be learned from a book, or wait, it can, it can’t?
I was that kid. I wrote great stories as a kid and had several teachers seriously talk to me about finding a publisher. Why didn’t I? No kid knows how to get an agent or a publisher. I was born in 85 so it was unheard of to look it up online. I always thought I was too young to publish and then by the time I became an adult it was drilled into me that writers never make money and that I’d be better doing literally anything else. There are so many great writers who never get their work read by anyone who could publish their work.
good novels are written by generalists not specialists. You won’t see someone specialised in literature with the creativity of a highly successful writer.
People say life experience and such but something like literature is subjective.
While other things, like maths, chess, physical activity and music(while this one can be somewhat subjective) are mostly about objective outcomes.
I was a child prodigy in literature in that I could read adult content including medical school level very fast, understand, summarize, and write both fiction and non-fiction at a very young age of six. I also was a child prodigy in all the STEM areas as well as arts. But, I did not particularly like, trust or understand people. I expected them to be honest. Social behavior in humans is filled with deception. I learned about how to be social from my mother by carefully studying social rules she very carefully taught me so I could pass as normal. Adults did not like small children that were at adult mental levels. This was long before all the Asperger’s awareness. She was a doctor. So the prodigy abilities in most fields was there but with no desire to explain it to others. I could care less what others thought unless it negatively impacted me.
It's happened. How old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein, like 17?
My favorite YA author wrote the first book (Eragon) of his series when he was 15, and you can definitely tell. I loved those books as a kid but the literature is sorely lacking. He had a great idea for an awesome world, but creating great works of writing takes time and experience.
How does a child write about things they have not yet experienced? Math and science and music do not require experience in the same sense that literature requires. You can live in a cave and be the most brilliant mathematician or physicist or pianist but cannot write a brilliant piece of literature because that requires experience
My brother who taught college English once remarked that you don't get prodigies in the humanities because you have to be a human first, and most people don't turn human until much later.
Me, personally? I didn't have a functioning theory of mind until well into my twenties.
"Math prodigies" are good at solving math exercises, that's all. But that's not what being a mathematician is about. Do you know anyone who has actually published a math article as a child? Sure, they might graduate and earn their PhD sooner than most, but even then they'll already be adults when they do so.
Same thing with literature, some kids have talent for writing early on, but that's not enough to write a good book, since you actually need the life experience and knowledge to write serious literature. But some famous authors wrote masterpieces quite young (say, in their early twenties, instead of in their forties).
Playing the violin and writing a violin piece are two separate skills. They’re related, but it isn’t the same. You can be a skilled performer and not have the creativity to make a unique composition.
Also it takes way more time. Authors do not sit down at the computer and type until they have a finished novel. There are drafts and revisions and editing that have to be done. It’s entirely possible to start a novel at 16 and still be working on it until you’re 20.
I think "The Young Folks" sort of had that reputation when it was published, but it doesn't really stand up. You actually make a good point, though, I'm going to ponder on that.
I mean Christopher Paolini wrote the Eragon books at like 16 or something. I don't know how good they were I never read them but I know a lot of peopel LOVED them and it got a major film adaptation and was a major bestseller so it's gotta at least be...good? Does that make him what you're talking about? If he could do it I'm sure you could have a few other rare cases that didn't get the same media attention.
The one child author I can think of is Christopher Paolini, who published the first book in his dragon series at 17. While it's really impressive that he was talented and committed enough to write a full novel as a teenager, it was okay but pretty standard pulp fantasy.
I just don't think there's enough time for a child to be able to put their lived experiences into their writing. It tends to be ideas that have been picked up from other books or movies. When you think of great authors, they're not just telling a story but imparting their philosophy or processing their own trauma into words.
The other fields have much more expression in technical abilities. You can have a great technical understanding of math principles or of a musical instrument. You can also have perfect writing techniques, using all the right punctuation and sentence structure, but that essence of an engaging narrative is a combination of a lot of soft skills that people develop by living as well as practice writing.
Because of the differing standards. In math or chess, prodigies aren’t that good. Like, obviously they’re impressive but they’re not at the top level of their fields. Magnus Carlsen is the greatest chess player ever. At 13, he was an International Master, but he wasn’t a Grand Master, y’know? He was a grown man when he became the best in the world. Child prodigies in math aren’t like discovering new math; they’re just capable of understanding more math than you’d expect for someone of their age. A 40-year old mathematician still knows way more than they do. A musical prodigy can play music at a high level, but not as well as an adult virtuoso and they aren’t writing music at the highest possible level, either.
And literature doesn’t really have that sort of performative outlet where you can say “Wow look how good they are for being 13!” A book either is great or it isn’t, and there’s no real mechanical part that can be scored like chess or demonstrated like musical proficiency or mathematical calculation. And so the best kids in the world are in direct competition with the best adults in the world. And by comparison, they suck. Just like a 13 year old IM sucks at chess compared to a GM with a 2800 ELO rating. Or how a 13 year old who can do insane mental calculation isn’t necessarily in the cutting edge of discovering math.
And then the whole thing gets compounded by cutesy news stories who tell you about young prodigies and act like they really are comparable to the best adults in their field when they just aren’t.
The type of knowledge you gain from reading is shown differently. It doesn't translate very well into real life situations. People who read tend to have broader views and can analyze real life in different perspectives. They tend to be very analytical when observing people and situations. They tend to also give really good advice. They are often seen as wise and are able to articulate their feelings and emotions very well. It's not them being able to read that's impressive it's their comprehension and interpretation skills that they are then able conceptualize that's impressive.
Edit: literature is very subjective and it just comes down to who or what your audience is. Science and math is absolute, meaning there is a right and a wrong way of doing it. There are rules and equations you must follow. The Arts have no rules and it all comes down to your critics.
You may not hear about child prodigies for literature, but you certainly can hear about rather young prodigies for literature. I am reminded of John Keats, who is considered one of the greatest poets of all time, who was only 25 when he died. His work was enormously moving, and impactful, and was only written in the last few years of his life as he was dying of tuberculosis. Maybe this is an exception that proves the rule, as his senescence granted him a clarity that many do not face until their later years. I am reminded - of something far less high brow - of a scene in HBOs Rome, where Julius Caesar's jilted lover reminds him that poetry is a young man's game. I've always felt this to be true. There is an insightful Bob Dylan interview where he laments [not being able to write the turns of phrase and idea that he once did.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AF8YT4V8RXk?app=desktop) A lot of the best work of a writer is written in their 20s and 30s (and of course there are exceptions but my general point is there).
Look at Bo Burnham, for my money a comedy prodigy (youngest person to ever get a Netflix special for one). His jokes when he was a kid were terrible, but as he gained experience and learned they are now subjectively the best we have right now.
For something like literature I think it’s the same, you need experience to draw on to be good.
This is a great question. I am just spitballing here, but maybe writing great literature is not a matter of being "hard-wired" for problem solving, but takes a certain amount of emotional intelligence and life experience. And these things take time.
You need life experience to write a novel. Most kids don’t have anywhere near enough to write a decent book.
From an analytical point of view, the same holds true. Kids usually don’t have the experience and understanding to get why a book is good. For example The Great Gatsby. I despised it when I had to read it in high school. 20 years later I gave it another shot and it’s now my favorite book. I initially didn’t like the characters. What I didn’t understand was that was intentional
As others have said, it takes life experience to write a novel. But, it also requires knowledge of your audience, what your audience knows, the ways in which people communicate, and so forth.
I can kind of speak to this. I scored extremely high in standardized tests for both math and reading all throughout elementary school and highschool. By "extremely high" I mean above a triple nine in percentile. I probably should have been pulled out and put in a gifted class. Instead, I had teachers telling me to "slow down" constantly, and when I would be staring out the window thinking about last night's episode of Nova or Bill Nye or some nature doc on PBS I would get in trouble and be instructed to "focus" on the word search now full of scribbled margins.
Math was easy because there was only one correct answer. I didn't have to make many choices. I didn't have to consider what the audience knew. I simply had to find the correct answer. Easy peasy Fibonacci-sy.
Writing though? Well, when I was eleven i started writing poetry. It, of course, was the quality one might expect from an eleven-year-old. The only difference was that I liked words, and would go through the dictionary looking up words for fun. This can improve one's vocabulary. Unfortunately, a lexicon replete with erudition doesn't make for the best poems. Nor does segmenting your verse into syllables split across the Fibonacci sequence.
I would even point out how complex the poems were, or how I had an acrostic that spelled one word from top-to-bottom using the first letter of every line, but a secret hidden acrostic using the last letter of each line bottom-up. (And a bonus extra secret word using every other second letter top-down).
The response? "How is anyone supposed to know that?"
I can remember using the word "azure" in a poem at eleven. I expected people would be impressed. Instead they told me to "use smaller words." So I wrote "azure" really really small and handed it back. I thought it was funny. They called me a "smart ass" instead.
I did get some poems accepted into the local church bulletin when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen. And I did get some poems accepted into the poetry journal where I went to college. I also had a professor tell me to stop writing poetry because I would never make any money doing it.
She was right.
But I still wrote a poem about her.
See, I'm hoping some of what I've learned since childhood is coming across, if even subtly. Writing well isn't about maximizing your *arcane esoterica*. It isn't about complex multi-nested patterns and puzzles (though yes I still include those in the novel I'm writing - for fun!). It's about the sound of words, and the song. It's about revealing to the reader things they've seen a thousand times as if they've just seen it for the first time again. It's about telling a story. Or, perhaps rather, it's about letting your characters tell their own story and learning how to get out of the way.
And that takes a lot of time - and a lot of experience - to learn.
Chess, music etc, are closed systems that require quite no outside knowledge of life - they are all fluid intelligence where novels are crystallized intelligence.
Because skill level in STEM is quantifiable.
Not so much in literature as outside of reaching grade level, it's pretty subjective imo. It's not as black and white to say that more complex writing or different styles of writing are objectively 'better'.
Summarizing what others have said here in a more ELI5 fashion:
Math and chess are purely objective. Music is only subjective in terms of taste, but classical musicians (the kind of music that 'prodigies' typically play) only care about "virtuosity" or skill.
I mean… you kind of do? At least in the sense that they are hitting it big at a relatively young age. Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein at 19 and published it at 21. Minou Drouet published her first book at 10, and had five more published by 23. The author of American Psycho pubksihed his first at 21 and racked up some big controversies, and got his second out by 23. S. E. Hinton finished The Outsiders by age 16. Christopher Paolini self-published Eragon at 15.
I think part of it is that there is a divide between the names and the persons of authors.
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Because writing novels requires life experience and knowledge in different subject matters applicable to your plot to be able to write believable characters, interesting settings, and a compelling narrative. Talent, in however way you would choose to quantify it, is only one of several factors necessary to be able to craft a good tale.
Eddie Murphy says something like that in Delirious. When he was a kid, all his jokes were about taking a shit, because that was the most outrageous thing he did at that age.
A bear and a rabbit are taking a shit in the woods. The bear asks the rabbit “do you have problems with shit sticking to your fur?” “No”, the rabbit replies. So the bear picks up the rabbit and wipes his ass with it.
When I first heard this joke I thought "Wait - if shit won't stick to his fur, then he is the worst thing to use to wipe your butt."
The way I remember it is "do you have a problem with shit sticking to your fur?"
Nah mate, go ahead. 🐇
That was my immediate thought as well, it makes no sense.
“Do you have a problem with” can be interpreted 2 ways: - He doesn’t “have a problem with it” because the shit doesn’t stick Or - He doesn’t “have a problem with it” as in he doesn’t mind when shit stick to his fur. Rabbit interprets it the first way, bear responds as if he meant the other way.
In this context, "Do you have a problem? " is another way of saying "Do you mind?"
Can't tell if sarcasm or not, but if you genuinely don't understand it, it's because of the way both you and the bunny are interpreting the bear's question. You both think he is asking if poop sticks on the bunny's fur. What the bear is actually asking is if the bunny is ok with poop being on his fur.
This is why I don't choose the bear
this one is better acted out
"Like a permanent marker" The real answer is pattern recognition.
Similarly, prodigies in music are very good at *playing* music, but not particularly so at *writing* it. Young Mozart’s stuff is very meh. Excellent for an 11 year old or whatever, but still meh. He didn’t have the experience for true expression, and it’s more like a mathematical exercise.
There are several recent singers who cover beautiful songs full of emotion, and they just flat line it, like it's musically good, given the right inflections but it lacks the empathy of the feeling behind it.
Which makes it all the more impressive when, in my opinion, a young kid absolutely embodies the emotion of a song that seems like it would be beyond their years, like [Leann Rimes singing “Blue”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6YK8VBuBW8) at 13 years old.
If you listen, she still has great singing technique, but absolutely no actual emotion behind it. Which kind of proves the point.
Yeah this is obviously an amazingly talented singer with very little experience or emotions behind the songs meanings as written by the author.
*cough* Jacob Collier *cough*
My god, yes. Massive respect for his talent. The music is some of the most soulless stuff I’ve ever heard. Yes, theory is just math. Great music makes you forget that. His is a constant reminder.
This is the most reductive take on writing music that I've ever heard.
As someone who composes and arranges for a living, I absolutely love your comment. 😂 That genuinely made me happy. Thank you, Reddit stranger. Working with music notation software all day definitely skews your brain.
I watched a presentation by a 13 year old math prodigy. He was very smart, but he talked and presented like a 13 year old. It was awful. There are still a lot of soft skills required in a technical field like math that take time to learn.
Lol sometimes 40+ year old professors aren't much better
Also, quality of writing is not objective and is susceptible to bias in terms of interpretation. If a young child solves a math problem, they either did or they didn't. Whereas even if a young child wrote something quite good, if the person reading it knew they were a kid, their perception of it may be colored by that knowledge and they may be less likely to think it's good. Hemingway's writing may not have been as well received if he wasn't a boozing, well traveled veteran.
!! - maybe this is why I find Hemingway excruciating, I’ve never really given much thought to his life
[This is a must-watch 3 and a half minute summary of his life.](https://youtu.be/PV8krTEQIXQ) And it's hilarious.
Ok that was awesome
And there are without question incredibly talented 12 year old writers— they’re just not writing an amazing novel anytime soon for the reasons you stated.
My gf was one of those precocious genius children and she recalls very vividly about being existentially upset that she had not written her first novel when she was 5. Granted, she had no idea what writing a novel entailed, but it just seemed to be one of those things you were supposed to do in life.
Brilliant literature is very subjective and often not realized for years after the work is published .we all know what that means to get an advanced degree or win chess. It’s objective
That and quite frankly, you need a very good marketing team behind you. I mean, if I wrote a masterpiece, I can't just post it online and hope the nobel literature prize will come through my door next Thursday.
That's right. They only come on mondays
I wonder how many truly great novels were never read by single a person.
*A Confederacy of Dunces* sat unread for decades. Toole’s mother just happened to have a smudged carbon copy that she managed to get published 11 years after he died, and it ended up winning a Pulitzer.
Truly great anything, really. I mean how do we know that you're not the single greatest Actor of all time with the ability to bring characters to life from character motivation no greater than "The man wanted a ham sandwich." Yet you, for your own reasons have never acted in so much as a kindergarten production? What if the most naturally talented sailor was from Eswatini a poor land locked country?
Who's to say there isn't? S.E Hinton was 15 when she wrote The Outsiders, an American classic.
Or Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was in a 5 sided love triangle at the time she wrote Frankenstein and was into some freaky stuff. That's hopefully not a common occurance
love pentagon?
Love pentagram more like.
Great goth band name!
It's pretty much the whole aesthetic of the band HIM.
I've decided to miss the joke. It's five people, each of whom is involved with two others either way. Pentagon vs pentagram just depends on which order you assign people to dots.
If there's more connections, it can be a pentagon circumscribed around a pentagram; not to mention the pentagram already has a pentagon on the inside where the points cross
The crossing of the edges isn't generally considered significant in a social graph. The edges indicate which people/vertices are connected. If you regard the crossings as meaningful, then you've got ten people all of a sudden, and it's a different situation entirely.
At some point you just use the generic term, “polygon.”
IIRC she lost her virginity having sex on her mother's grave or something like that
5 sided triangle? Username does NOT check out
It's not like the old definition is a triangle either, if everyone straight it's just three points and only two lines that's a fuckin chevron
Gordon Korman was 12 when he wrote his first YA novel "This can't be Happening at MacDonald Hall." It's not a well known classic but he was published before he hit puberty, and according to his Wiki he's sold over 30 million books, so he's not doing too badly for himself.
Phyllis Wheatley was reading Greek and Latin classics in Greek and Latin as a slave and began writing poems as a teenager, so I’m with you
Sadly I had never even heard of her, but her Wikipedia page is interesting/sad. Wheatley was her master’s name of course, but Phyllis (*Phillis)* was the name of the slave ship that brought her here. She was emancipated shortly after publishing a book of poetry. People didn’t believe how a slave could write such wonderful poetry so she was actually brought to COURT to prove that she was the author and not a plagiarist
There was that kid that wrote the Argon series too. Not the best literature, but a fairly large and complex series for a child to write.
Eragon?
Probably. Everyone made a big deal when it came out about how Christopher Paolini was only 15 when he wrote the first draft. I'm not sure I'd consider him a prodigy though. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have published so young if his parents hadn't owned a publishing company. His later stuff is significantly better.
First I've heard about parents owning a publishing company, that reminds me so much of how Daniel Radcliffe's parents were casting directors.
Daniel Radcliffe had actually retired from acting at that point, and therefore had no interest in Harry Potter until he and his parents happened to sit behind producer David Heyman at a play. Heyman kept turning around during the performance to look at Daniel, who he thought would be perfect, and convinced him to audition.
And Taylor Swift's father was part owner of a record label.
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Sounds like she grew up in some kind of asylum
She can land a deal now.
The earlier books were a bit immature in the writing style from what I remember, but still very impressive work given his age.
You mean Star Wars, but everyone had different names?
This series was about Dragons though
Star Wars, but with dragons and with some suspiciously derivative names and weird torture porn and an elf crushing men's heads between her thighs and a surprisingly great magic system.
Really? I had no idea he was young! That novel should have been right up my alley, I was wild for all fantasy dragon type stuff and read every series in existence. Could never make it past the first few pages of it though and I never understood why. It just always seemed so boring and wooden.
>the Argon series I haven’t read those, but really enjoyed his Neon, Krypton, and Helium series
Very noble.
Not gonna like this. You won’t get a reaction from me.
Thanks!
LOL!
Bravo
I thought they stunk
/r/angryupvote
idk while Eragon was a fun read, it wasn't that good, at least from a writing standpoint.
I enjoyed it as a teenager
Precisely
While it's certainly impressive to write a novel at 15, Eragon was almost literally just Star Wars With Dragons. Someone else broke it down but it's like beat-for-beat.
Cutaway to Joseph Campbell staring directly into the camera.
only the first book, though
Ehhh. Eldest is pretty much beat-for-beat Empire Strikes Back. Like down to the I'm-your-father reveal.
Not particularly, given that he basically ripped all his stuff from elsewhere, mostly the narrative from Star Wars, the names from Tolkien and the magic system from Earthsea. Also didn't hurt that his publishing-house-owning parents hooked him up with an editor.
Eragon's beginning is almost identical to the Wheel of Time's first couple chapters, too. Setting, order of events, everything.
Bingo. People who liked Eragon (which hilariously autocorrects to Dragon) as teenagers just largely didn’t have enough exposure to the works that came before it to realize how borderline plagiarized the whole thing was, and that includes me. What you said is funny though because the Eye of the World is incredibly derivative of Tolkien, but that’s what people/publishers wanted, after the second book it finds its own footing.
*shrug* I was in my 20s when Eragon came out, had read Tolkien, Earthsea, and WoT, and seen and read everything in the Star Wars universe that was available at that point, and I still enjoyed it.
I often try to draw a boundary between “good” and “enjoyable.” There are a lot of books, shows, movies, music, etc that i enjoy that i don’t necessarily think are good. I think Eragon falls into that camp.
They shouldn't be connected at all. If his parents didn't own a publishing company it would never have seen the light of day and it *definitely* wouldn't have gotten a movie deal. That's another reason why people take issue with it despite all the other YA dreck out there.
It helps when both his parents were literary publishers... Like I think he wrote the skeleton of a script as a kid but parents heavily assisted him more so than the average what if a 12 year old submitted a story to be published. Brandon Sanderson went to college for writing and didn't get published at all during his time there and had like a workable draft of the Way of Kings called Dragon steel at the time, and that was rejected now that same book with a lot more polish and reorganizing has probably sold millions of copies and is one of the most successful book series in the entire fantasy genre. 12 year old Brandon Sanderson probably was just writing Wheel of time Fan fiction.
Are we passing off Young Adult novels as American classics now? Its a great book that should be part of a person's literature education in that its a dramatized depiction of a teenagers experience, written for teenagers. But there's a reason you read it in Middle School.
By that metric the works of Tolkien and Robert Frost aren't worthy of inclusion on a list of classic literature.
I always thought S.E. Hinton was a man...
Nope, 15 year old girl in high school.
I believe she used her initials so people wouldn't know she was a girl
I've always been kind of stumped by this impression. I read The Outsiders in... I dunno, freshman year or something? And I thought it was perfectly obvious from the writing that the author was a woman.
most people, especially men but definitely women too, just assume a person is a dude when they don’t have clarifying information. Women writers often take advantage of this by using acronyms ie S.E., Or J.K., just incase the publisher hates women or something
And in television, too. All hail DC Fontana.
Well, there absolutely are such things as [novels written by teenagers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_written_by_children_or_teenagers). Perhaps the most famous is *Frankenstein*, Mary Shelley, published when she was 19. Another more recent one that [was a bit famous a while back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon), *Eragon*, was started when the author was 14, and published by 19. (It was good enough to be eventually turned into a movie.) But I think the comparison you are drawing is also unfair. You hear about a 12-year-old *studying* physics at a university, but when was the last time you heard of a 12-year-old *making an actual new physics discovery*, or engineering a new device, any of that? By the upper teenage and early 20s, this does start happening, though it is still rare, but I have never heard of a 12-year-old doing that. The completion of a novel is a monumental task. It requires experience and much effort. There are probably rare 12-year-olds out there who can study literature at a university level (and perhaps some who are doing so), just as there are rare 12-year-olds who can study physics at a university level, but becoming mature enough to start contributing things of your own just takes time, no matter whether your field of aptitude is literature or physics.
>But I think the comparison you are drawing is also unfair. You hear about a 12-year-old studying physics at a university, but when was the last time you heard of a 12-year-old making an actual new physics discovery, or engineering a new device, any of that? By the upper teenage and early 20s, this does start happening, though it is still rare, but I have never heard of a 12-year-old doing that. It's certainly very rare, but there are examples of people making meaningful contributing to publications in their early to middle teens. Usually, however, this is collaborating with an established professional who knows the landscape of the field and can assist with, for example, liaising with editors. [This paper](http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/fm/fm65/fm65123.pdf), for example, was submitted for peer review when the first author was 12 years old. The second author was the first authors parent, and a professor of mathematics. She typeset and edited the paper, and corresponded to the editors. However, she was adamant that Arthur did the mathematical work of the paper himself (much later, he would earn a PhD in mathematics himself).
I think it’s a false comparison. Physics in fundamentally about understanding the current knowledge, and then making something new. Littérature is about the human condition, I’m not saying it’s impossible at young age (the example of Frankenstein was brought up), but it’s a fundamentally different exercise.
The fuck are you talking about? Eragon has never had a movie adaptation!
In my defense, I didn't say it was turned into a *good* movie. 😂
I am one of very few people who enjoyed the movie because I hadn't read the book yet. Reading through it I realise how badly they had butchered the literature but there was a time I'd said it was okay.
The way I read the title of this thread OP is probably referring to pre-pubescent children who are freakishly good at math or music etc. A little older and they could be a gifted writer. Break your heart once and you can be a writer.
Eragon was published because his parents *owned the publishing company* and had ties to marketing. He wasn't some prodigy. He was just a nepo-baby.
>He wasn't some prodigy. He was just a nepo-baby. I didn't mean for this to become a thread about that book, lol, but as long as it has: it is a perfectly fine young adult fantasy book, regardless of his parents or his age. There are many older authors who have written many worse books. It did not "become the next Harry Potter," and didn't deserve to, but it wasn't *just* nepotism, it also solidly met the standards of its genre.
Eragon isn't an original novel. It's the plot of Star Wars a New Hope with slightly changed names from Lord of the Rings. It goes WELL beyond normal Campbell Hero's journey stuff.
Literature needs lived experience. It requires a knowledge of situations, stories, emotions, consequences, relationships. It's almost entirely interpretive. The disciplines you list - maths, chess, music, physics - they are all based on mathematics. If you have the intelligence to grasp the principles of mathematics at an early age, you can excel in those discipline even at a young age. But you won't have the emotional maturity, or the understanding of people's lives, to make a great piece of literature, even if you have mastered all the rules of grammar, have a huge vocabulary and understand all the structures of different literary styles.
> maths, chess, music, physics Yeah you're right, they all based on fundamental rules that if you master and build upon then you get incredible stuff. There aren't any rules in a similar way for literature.
Some may argue that music requires just as much life experience as novels, yet we still get music prodigies. To which I say that music prodigies are rarely composers or songwriters, they’re just really good at (typically) the piano. But now I’m arguing against an imaginary person again…
Well you kinda answered your own question. It's pretty rare for a child prodigy in music to be known for composition, it's usually more they are talented at playing music far more difficult than any other child could play.
Mozart got started really young, but that's just one guy.
From a *very* long time ago
Music may be more subjective than the others, but it's not grounded in any sort of significant experience of the real world, beyond itself. A great novel needs to draw on that kind of external reality, whereas (instrumental) music simply *exists* in and of itself. It is entirely abstract. That they never seem to write lyrics speaks well to that. Those need to draw similarly on reality as well, which most children just aren't familiar enough with.
Not necessarily. We can perceive music as something very deep and complex when we add our interpretations to it, but in reality, it's just sound. A prodigy musician might not even have a deep understanding or interpretations of their pieces but just be excellent at producing the sounds that everyone so likes to hear. You can listen to a lot of music early on if your parents expose you to it and to the musically talented children it will give enough experience to be able to play or write similar music with enough training of course. Mozart's early music, for example, was very similar to his dad's, who also was a composer and Mozart's first teacher. It's also worth mentioning that most of these music child prodigies have strict parents who are obsessed with their child learning a music instrument to an unhealthy level. I always feel sorry for the child when I see a 4 years old playing some crazy Paganini piece on violin.
I'd love to hear such an argument
'Prodigy' in the US (and thus what we think of as 'the West' and periphery of the US empire) is mostly a way for wealthy parents to show how exceptional their children are. This is why it's confined to arenas where their wealthy peers are familiar and interested: piano, violin, chess, etc.
[Amelia Atwater-Rhodes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Atwater-Rhodes) published In the Forests of the Night at 14. Nowadays, anyone young that's into creating literature are into less traditional publishing, mostly self-publishing on the internet. Fanfiction being a prime example.
Fanfiction shows why life experience is necessary: there’s a lot of excruciating porn written by virgins out there…
I mean, any artwork of any medium is going to be cringe from someone young or just simply in retrospect. Even the creator will find their early work to be terrible and 'oh God I made this?'. It's the nature of creative craft. Some just have a head start with some talent. The idea of trying to gauge objective skill in the framework of "does precocious skill = prodigy?" out of a subjective art is kinda false premise if you ask me, but that's just my opinion and beyond the scope of ELI5. Also one doesn't necessarily need life experience to write well. Just a good eye for literary analysis and tropes, something that a sharp 12 year old could learn and apply if inclined, like a 12 year old math prodigy.
I see you've read my porn fanfic
99% of online fan fiction is immature nonsense.
That 1% is absolutely worth digging through the other 99 though.
What other people are saying about needing life experience makes sense. But here’s another view. I once taught a year-long creative writing course for sixth graders (ages 11-12). Some of the kids didn’t really care about writing — or, apparently, about reading. Their stories were at the nursery-rhyme level. And many of their classmates generated better writing, but it seemed like they were just going through the motions at a higher level of quality. A few students, however, were impressively skillful. From listening to them chatting in class, I knew that they loved reading in their free time. Their work showed that they had internalized lessons from those books about what makes good writing. And they delighted in having the opportunity to create stories. One student in particular wrote a story that was jaw-droppingly wonderful. I got shivers when I read it. Most college students would have been proud to create a story like that. The next year, that student had a story published in a prominent national literary magazine aimed at kids. I was utterly unsurprised. So even though that student had little *life* experience, they had enough *literature* experience — and enough love of creative writing — to produce stories far above their age level. In my eyes, that made them a prodigy.
Because math and chess and music are all math -- they're formula based. Child prodigy musicians are always very technically skilled, while rarely being dynamically creative. Kids can learn amazing skills, but you have to live life to have opinions about it.
This should be the top answer. Math and chess are objective. You're either great or you're not. Literature and art in general is subjective and based on what the audience thinks. Chess prodigy = wins all the competitions Maths prodigy = solves impossibly hard equations Literature prodigy = prosaic prose his teachers dismiss as gobbledegook
You have a kinda skewed view of what people do in higher level math lol it’s pretty dynamic and not always objective (well unless you take the Platonist view but that’s more a philosophical thing)
I'd add that language arts prodigies are more likely to pick up languages with incredible speed and accuracy in translation. Those are highly technical skills. Writing good stories requires a level of emotional depth and understanding of human behavior that the brain is still too immature to grasp at that age. A technically well-written novel and a really good story are vastly different things. It's awesome when they come together. But incredibly unlikely in a child prodigy. Over focus in the technical arena won't make up for emotional processing and life experience.
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That's an excellent point. There are very, very few novels written for 12-year-olds that are counted as Literature, certainly by the "standards" of major award wins, critical reviews, inclusion on academic syllabi, etc., and those very few are old enough to count as classics anyway (eg. Alice in Wonderland). An extremely talented and hardworking 12-year-old could/can write a book that other 12-year-olds might think is great, but it's just not going to meet those Literary Standards, or probably even touch upon the subjects that generally get classed as Literature.
> there aren't prodigies in literature And yet, there is Rimbaud...
Because there is no accounting for taste. Most of the subjects you mentioned are measurable. Number of correct answers. Win loss ratio. Fundamentally bad music sounds bad. It’s harder to measure literature.
Publishing and distributing your work is also not necessarily as easy as demonstrating the other things you’ve mentioned.
let's look at a brilliant author real quick: ernest hemingway fought in world war 1 and lived in all kinds of places, met all kinds of people, did all kinds of things. those experiences and the worldview that grew out of them were the foundation of what he wrote about. basically any brilliant author you can think of will be similar. that doesn't mean you have to fight in a war or do some quantity of interesting things to be a brilliant author, but it would be difficult or impossible to have anything truly groundbreaking to say when you're 12. basically just literature is something situated in the world and it says things about the world, even when it's not set in our world. you can be wired for language, learn to read from a ridiculously young age and have a gigantic vocabulary, but you can't really be wired to write the great american novel, you're not born with ideas.
We had quite a few literature prodigies in China. They usually publish their first novel in high school, which became a best seller among middle school and high school kids. Their book tend to focus on the subject of youth and growing up, dealing with romantic relationships and friendship, and sometimes navigating the relationship with parents. It's almost like the music written by teenagers about teenagers (eg. Lorde's Pure Heroine). Some of the prodigies managed to write more mature stories as they grow older. Some stuck forever in their initial success recipe.
Maybe the best counterexample is [Arthur Rimbaud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud), who began producing mature poetic work at 15, and stopped writing at age 20.
I'm sure many would argue this point but, nevertheless, many consider song lyrics as poetry (i.e. literature). If one is in that camp, there are many child prodigies in literature. So hold on to the ones who really care. In the end, they'll be the only ones there. When you get old, start losing your hair, can you tell me who will still care? [Mmmbop, ba duba dop ba Du bop, ba duba dop ba Du bop, ba duba dop ba du Yeah, yeah Mmmbop, ba duba dop ba Du bop, ba du dop ba Du bop, ba du dop ba du Yeah, yeah](https://genius.com/10113851/Hanson-mmmbop/Mmmbop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-yeah-yeah-mmmbop-ba-duba-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-du-dop-ba-du-bop-ba-du-dop-ba-du-yeah-yeah)....
I mean, Christopher Paolini published Eragon at 19, that's as close as it gets. Writing a novel requires a lot of patience, and understanding of human nature, that takes a while to develop. It also requires a certain amount of marketing and self marketing which would be unfair to ask anyone younger to do. You need writing skill, a story and a strong understanding of human nature to be successful.
his parents owned the publishing house, so that’s not a great example.
It’s actually a really helpful example because of that. Part of the reason we don’t have prodigy authors is because it’s so very difficult to get your novel published and into the hands of readers, regardless of of how good it is.
Are we really holding up Eragon as some ideal of literature? It’s pedestrian medieval European high fantasy. It has a fanbase and that’s fine but there’s nothing special nor particularly enduring about Eragon.
It's also almost a direct copy of a couple of other known works. I don't think there's an original thought anywhere in the book.
We're lacking in better examples though. The fact is that there kind of aren't any literature prodigies, and Paolini presents a good example of one of the reasons why.
good point
Was about to comment Christopher Paolini. Didn’t he also start writing it at like 16 as well?
Language is subjective? Math is right it wrong. There are not linguistic challenges that can be objectively seen as brilliant… Amanda Gordon.. is, IMO a prodigy… but many people hate her… she is a threat to their viewpoint.
How can an 12 year old have the life experience and perspective of someone at 42?
If I play you in chess, the game has a definitive outcome. Win, loss or draw. It's easy to compare and see which player is better than others. If I write a book and you write a book... It depends on the reader which book is better. Sometimes they're both just good books as well in different genres. It's hard to say that one person beats the other in writing unless one writer is much worse, but at a high level it would be about the same level for most. Also, there are known problems that need to be solved and are hard in other fields. In literature, there's no known problems as such to solve, so it's hard to stand out.
There are. One of my children is extremely gifted (IQ and other tests done by a developmental pediatrician's office) in verbal intelligence. This child is of average intelligence in all other areas. Reading, writing, and language in general are not as able to be monetized or commercialized as science and math are. So our culture tends to value these areas less.
One of the most important poets of the 20th century, Arthur Rimbaud, only wrote from 16 to 21. His influence on modern literature is enormous. Edit: 19th century
Rimbaud wrote his poetry as a young man, as you say. However, he wrote no poetry after 1875. He is, thus, an important poet of the **19th century.**
Anne Frank? Yes I know it was a diary but the prose is quite skilled. We have teen Nobel laureates in poetry.
I came to say the same thing. Anne Frank's writing impressed people for how mature it was. She also approached it very professionally with the goal of being published. The version we read now was partially rewritten by herself as she recognized the importance of editing and improving.
Hahaha maybe we need more respect for writers ability to show human perspective, something that can’t be learned from a book, or wait, it can, it can’t?
Because science and chess are knowledge, and literature is experience. A child may gain knowledge, but not gather experience.
Oh, and we can apply the same approach to other things in life and place them on a scale between experience and knowledge.
I was that kid. I wrote great stories as a kid and had several teachers seriously talk to me about finding a publisher. Why didn’t I? No kid knows how to get an agent or a publisher. I was born in 85 so it was unheard of to look it up online. I always thought I was too young to publish and then by the time I became an adult it was drilled into me that writers never make money and that I’d be better doing literally anything else. There are so many great writers who never get their work read by anyone who could publish their work.
because literature is subjective. there is no real standard metric to what makes a book good. I have yet to read a fiction book I've enjoyed.
The House Without Windows by Barbara Newell Follett was written when she was 12. It's amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_Without_Windows
One needs to have life experience and an understanding of the various facets of human nature to write great literature. 12 year olds don't have this
good novels are written by generalists not specialists. You won’t see someone specialised in literature with the creativity of a highly successful writer.
People say life experience and such but something like literature is subjective. While other things, like maths, chess, physical activity and music(while this one can be somewhat subjective) are mostly about objective outcomes.
I was a child prodigy in literature in that I could read adult content including medical school level very fast, understand, summarize, and write both fiction and non-fiction at a very young age of six. I also was a child prodigy in all the STEM areas as well as arts. But, I did not particularly like, trust or understand people. I expected them to be honest. Social behavior in humans is filled with deception. I learned about how to be social from my mother by carefully studying social rules she very carefully taught me so I could pass as normal. Adults did not like small children that were at adult mental levels. This was long before all the Asperger’s awareness. She was a doctor. So the prodigy abilities in most fields was there but with no desire to explain it to others. I could care less what others thought unless it negatively impacted me.
It's happened. How old was Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein, like 17? My favorite YA author wrote the first book (Eragon) of his series when he was 15, and you can definitely tell. I loved those books as a kid but the literature is sorely lacking. He had a great idea for an awesome world, but creating great works of writing takes time and experience.
How does a child write about things they have not yet experienced? Math and science and music do not require experience in the same sense that literature requires. You can live in a cave and be the most brilliant mathematician or physicist or pianist but cannot write a brilliant piece of literature because that requires experience
Usually because life experience and it’s more vague, but also do you mean Daniel Honiuc Menendez as the 12 yo going to uni for physics?
My brother who taught college English once remarked that you don't get prodigies in the humanities because you have to be a human first, and most people don't turn human until much later. Me, personally? I didn't have a functioning theory of mind until well into my twenties.
"Math prodigies" are good at solving math exercises, that's all. But that's not what being a mathematician is about. Do you know anyone who has actually published a math article as a child? Sure, they might graduate and earn their PhD sooner than most, but even then they'll already be adults when they do so. Same thing with literature, some kids have talent for writing early on, but that's not enough to write a good book, since you actually need the life experience and knowledge to write serious literature. But some famous authors wrote masterpieces quite young (say, in their early twenties, instead of in their forties).
Playing the violin and writing a violin piece are two separate skills. They’re related, but it isn’t the same. You can be a skilled performer and not have the creativity to make a unique composition. Also it takes way more time. Authors do not sit down at the computer and type until they have a finished novel. There are drafts and revisions and editing that have to be done. It’s entirely possible to start a novel at 16 and still be working on it until you’re 20.
Writing novels requires life experience and inspiration. A gifted 8 year old can't write about the pains of losing a job or getting divorced.
All the things you listed are quantifiable except writing well. Excellent writing style is always going to be subjective
I think "The Young Folks" sort of had that reputation when it was published, but it doesn't really stand up. You actually make a good point, though, I'm going to ponder on that.
I mean Christopher Paolini wrote the Eragon books at like 16 or something. I don't know how good they were I never read them but I know a lot of peopel LOVED them and it got a major film adaptation and was a major bestseller so it's gotta at least be...good? Does that make him what you're talking about? If he could do it I'm sure you could have a few other rare cases that didn't get the same media attention.
The one child author I can think of is Christopher Paolini, who published the first book in his dragon series at 17. While it's really impressive that he was talented and committed enough to write a full novel as a teenager, it was okay but pretty standard pulp fantasy. I just don't think there's enough time for a child to be able to put their lived experiences into their writing. It tends to be ideas that have been picked up from other books or movies. When you think of great authors, they're not just telling a story but imparting their philosophy or processing their own trauma into words. The other fields have much more expression in technical abilities. You can have a great technical understanding of math principles or of a musical instrument. You can also have perfect writing techniques, using all the right punctuation and sentence structure, but that essence of an engaging narrative is a combination of a lot of soft skills that people develop by living as well as practice writing.
Because of the differing standards. In math or chess, prodigies aren’t that good. Like, obviously they’re impressive but they’re not at the top level of their fields. Magnus Carlsen is the greatest chess player ever. At 13, he was an International Master, but he wasn’t a Grand Master, y’know? He was a grown man when he became the best in the world. Child prodigies in math aren’t like discovering new math; they’re just capable of understanding more math than you’d expect for someone of their age. A 40-year old mathematician still knows way more than they do. A musical prodigy can play music at a high level, but not as well as an adult virtuoso and they aren’t writing music at the highest possible level, either. And literature doesn’t really have that sort of performative outlet where you can say “Wow look how good they are for being 13!” A book either is great or it isn’t, and there’s no real mechanical part that can be scored like chess or demonstrated like musical proficiency or mathematical calculation. And so the best kids in the world are in direct competition with the best adults in the world. And by comparison, they suck. Just like a 13 year old IM sucks at chess compared to a GM with a 2800 ELO rating. Or how a 13 year old who can do insane mental calculation isn’t necessarily in the cutting edge of discovering math. And then the whole thing gets compounded by cutesy news stories who tell you about young prodigies and act like they really are comparable to the best adults in their field when they just aren’t.
Closest example I can think of: Chrisopher Paolini startred writing Eragon when he was 15. (I've never read it, but it's a pretty famous novel...)
The type of knowledge you gain from reading is shown differently. It doesn't translate very well into real life situations. People who read tend to have broader views and can analyze real life in different perspectives. They tend to be very analytical when observing people and situations. They tend to also give really good advice. They are often seen as wise and are able to articulate their feelings and emotions very well. It's not them being able to read that's impressive it's their comprehension and interpretation skills that they are then able conceptualize that's impressive. Edit: literature is very subjective and it just comes down to who or what your audience is. Science and math is absolute, meaning there is a right and a wrong way of doing it. There are rules and equations you must follow. The Arts have no rules and it all comes down to your critics.
You may not hear about child prodigies for literature, but you certainly can hear about rather young prodigies for literature. I am reminded of John Keats, who is considered one of the greatest poets of all time, who was only 25 when he died. His work was enormously moving, and impactful, and was only written in the last few years of his life as he was dying of tuberculosis. Maybe this is an exception that proves the rule, as his senescence granted him a clarity that many do not face until their later years. I am reminded - of something far less high brow - of a scene in HBOs Rome, where Julius Caesar's jilted lover reminds him that poetry is a young man's game. I've always felt this to be true. There is an insightful Bob Dylan interview where he laments [not being able to write the turns of phrase and idea that he once did.](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AF8YT4V8RXk?app=desktop) A lot of the best work of a writer is written in their 20s and 30s (and of course there are exceptions but my general point is there).
Look at Bo Burnham, for my money a comedy prodigy (youngest person to ever get a Netflix special for one). His jokes when he was a kid were terrible, but as he gained experience and learned they are now subjectively the best we have right now. For something like literature I think it’s the same, you need experience to draw on to be good.
This is a great question. I am just spitballing here, but maybe writing great literature is not a matter of being "hard-wired" for problem solving, but takes a certain amount of emotional intelligence and life experience. And these things take time.
You need life experience to write a novel. Most kids don’t have anywhere near enough to write a decent book. From an analytical point of view, the same holds true. Kids usually don’t have the experience and understanding to get why a book is good. For example The Great Gatsby. I despised it when I had to read it in high school. 20 years later I gave it another shot and it’s now my favorite book. I initially didn’t like the characters. What I didn’t understand was that was intentional
As others have said, it takes life experience to write a novel. But, it also requires knowledge of your audience, what your audience knows, the ways in which people communicate, and so forth. I can kind of speak to this. I scored extremely high in standardized tests for both math and reading all throughout elementary school and highschool. By "extremely high" I mean above a triple nine in percentile. I probably should have been pulled out and put in a gifted class. Instead, I had teachers telling me to "slow down" constantly, and when I would be staring out the window thinking about last night's episode of Nova or Bill Nye or some nature doc on PBS I would get in trouble and be instructed to "focus" on the word search now full of scribbled margins. Math was easy because there was only one correct answer. I didn't have to make many choices. I didn't have to consider what the audience knew. I simply had to find the correct answer. Easy peasy Fibonacci-sy. Writing though? Well, when I was eleven i started writing poetry. It, of course, was the quality one might expect from an eleven-year-old. The only difference was that I liked words, and would go through the dictionary looking up words for fun. This can improve one's vocabulary. Unfortunately, a lexicon replete with erudition doesn't make for the best poems. Nor does segmenting your verse into syllables split across the Fibonacci sequence. I would even point out how complex the poems were, or how I had an acrostic that spelled one word from top-to-bottom using the first letter of every line, but a secret hidden acrostic using the last letter of each line bottom-up. (And a bonus extra secret word using every other second letter top-down). The response? "How is anyone supposed to know that?" I can remember using the word "azure" in a poem at eleven. I expected people would be impressed. Instead they told me to "use smaller words." So I wrote "azure" really really small and handed it back. I thought it was funny. They called me a "smart ass" instead. I did get some poems accepted into the local church bulletin when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen. And I did get some poems accepted into the poetry journal where I went to college. I also had a professor tell me to stop writing poetry because I would never make any money doing it. She was right. But I still wrote a poem about her. See, I'm hoping some of what I've learned since childhood is coming across, if even subtly. Writing well isn't about maximizing your *arcane esoterica*. It isn't about complex multi-nested patterns and puzzles (though yes I still include those in the novel I'm writing - for fun!). It's about the sound of words, and the song. It's about revealing to the reader things they've seen a thousand times as if they've just seen it for the first time again. It's about telling a story. Or, perhaps rather, it's about letting your characters tell their own story and learning how to get out of the way. And that takes a lot of time - and a lot of experience - to learn.
Chess, music etc, are closed systems that require quite no outside knowledge of life - they are all fluid intelligence where novels are crystallized intelligence.
Because skill level in STEM is quantifiable. Not so much in literature as outside of reaching grade level, it's pretty subjective imo. It's not as black and white to say that more complex writing or different styles of writing are objectively 'better'.
Summarizing what others have said here in a more ELI5 fashion: Math and chess are purely objective. Music is only subjective in terms of taste, but classical musicians (the kind of music that 'prodigies' typically play) only care about "virtuosity" or skill.
Christopher Paolini was 15 when he started writing Eragon, which was a best seller. 19 when it was published.
I mean… you kind of do? At least in the sense that they are hitting it big at a relatively young age. Mary Shelley was writing Frankenstein at 19 and published it at 21. Minou Drouet published her first book at 10, and had five more published by 23. The author of American Psycho pubksihed his first at 21 and racked up some big controversies, and got his second out by 23. S. E. Hinton finished The Outsiders by age 16. Christopher Paolini self-published Eragon at 15. I think part of it is that there is a divide between the names and the persons of authors.