: What is considered "childish" in fictional writing? There are some people who have read some of my book so far and they think it is childish and then some say it's somewhat morbid. What

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I +1 to several of the above, and it is good advice; and I admit I haven't taken the time to read your work so far.

I'd add this observation: Writing will appear childish when the main characters (both heroes and villains) are made overly simplistic, ignorant, naive, or incapable or very limited in their reasoning or strategic thought.

Beginning writers will often over-explain things in exposition (details of their world, their characters emotions or motivations) or have their characters over-explain these things in dialogue.

But readers don't like to be treated as if they are five years old.

Along the same lines, young writers are often uncomfortable writing about adult romance or sex. Which is fine, stories can be written without that, but the writer should not aim to avoid it by writing characters that are NOT five years old with a five year old's understanding of romance and sexual attraction and activity. In other words you don't have to make adult themes central to your plot or description, but you shouldn't pretend they don't exist, or that any of your characters older than 13 (or past puberty) do not have any inkling about it.

This again is not treating your readers like five year old's, they expect characters that are physically adult to have the knowledge, motivations, and feelings of adults. A young teen can fake that, but don't do the opposite and have your characters so naive they don't know anything at all (unless they are all prepubescent children). You can fake it several ways. By "polite indirection" (e.g. 'At fifteen she thought she was in love, and became pregnant.') or allusion ('She was cheating on her husband, with his business partner.' or 'She was having an affair.'), or you can get yourself some indirect experience: Read other authors and see how they describe adult romance and sexual situations.

I focus on the sexual aspects not to be a pervert, but because adult romance, love and sex are common major ingredients of plots. They are also especially an obsession for those in the age bracket of 15 to 24: Somewhere in there most begin their own sexual lives; and both before and after it think about it often! Without any reference to it at all, a story may appear to them either written by a child or intended for children.

Isaac Asimov avoided sex in his stories, but remember he also said (I paraphrase) 'It is difficult to imagine a man risking his life in battles against overwhelming forces to save a woman because she is such an interesting conversationalist.' In other words, the love interest was present all along, so was the sexual interest, but the latter was not detailed. That does not mean it was ignored; behaviors and decisions and emotions must still be consistent with it driving the characters.

That does not apply if your characters and POV is nearly all children, like the Harry Potter stories: At 11, sex and romance are pretty far from the minds of the heroes. Authors completely averse to sexuality can similarly write with children heroes and avoid the topic completely. (Even for teachers, parents and other adults in the story; caregivers may be circumspect in their behavior and language around children and a prepubescent child's POV doesn't need a sexual imagination or suspicions).

Naiveté extends to other areas, as well; some of which can be researched online, others you may need the indirect experience of reading. Examples are the law, running a small business, being a politician, being a doctor, being a star of some sort (singer, artist, sports, musician, actor, writer), being wealthy, being a killer, being a criminal, being a soldier or Kung Fu expert.

My own stories include killers, but I have nothing remotely close to direct experience. Mine is indirect, I went back to authors I thought wrote convincing killers and studied how they presented them. I suspect they did not have any direct experience either, but I figured if they convinced me as a reader, then by emulating them, I could convince readers too.

So I encourage you to apply that lesson to writing about anything else with which you feel you have insufficient experience.

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You are probably suffering from a case of Grimderp - when your dark parts go too dark and it stops being dark and becomes just silly. It is when a work of fiction goes so dark that it wrap around in the scale and becomes somewhat ridiculous for the reader.

Writing dark, emotionally deep stories is hard. It's extremely easy to get pumped up when adding details to a murder scene or a tragic moment, go over the top, and then lose the suspension of disbelief. My best example for this case is The Dark Tower, from Stephen King. While the world building of those books is extremely good, the overall story is painful to read if you aren't really, REALLY into King's work. The story of Roland and his quest for the Dark Tower is childish and morbid. But, why? What makes a work feel that way?

It mostly comes down to exaggerations. Suspension of disbelief gets more delicate the older you are - it's easier to break. Something that seems incredibly awesome for a fourteen year old may make my grandpa raise his eyebrows in confusion, wondering what the hell did I smoke and where he can get some for himself. Superpowers that destroy planets, demigods stuck inside orphans or super-perfect, hyper dark kids are the type of things that make very hard for a more serious reader to enjoy your work.

Think about Twilight. Those books are full of exaggerations, mostly around the protagonists. The things that happen, that unexplained "specialness" that a incredibly bland girl has, the one-dimensional aspect of the characters - it created a following, yes. But among what type people? How many of twilight readers didn't look back after a few years and thought "what was I thinking?" when looking back at the fan fiction they made for themselves?

The same goes for a few other works in other media. Naruto is a good example - while it may have been a blast to watch it with kid eyes, try watching it again a few years later. Then go to the mirror and try to explain to yourself why the hell you liked Sasuke back then.

Having a book rated "childish" or "too morbid" is probably a good signal that your tone is too over the top.

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One possibility not yet explored is subject matter and genre. Outside of the bubble, the majority of the public consider the fantasy to be 'childish'. LOTR and Harry Potter are essentially teen-fiction novels. DR WHO is a teen TV program.

I say 'the bubble' because on writer's sites the majority of members write fantasy. This bears no correlation to number of readers on the planet.

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I will go ahead and attempt to answer this anyways. Childish writing usually refers to the fact that the word choice and sentence structure is basic as if it were a child. In the link provided, they go over the various sentence structures as well as provide examples of differences.

As far as being too morbid... that's just a matter of opinion really as well as the target audience. This is why I asked you in the comment who the book was designed for. Now, I should also add that you want to have a variety of tones and moods to the story. If the whole story was written from the viewpoint of Eeyore, one may find the story morbid and depressing/boring to read. If the MC of your story is of morbid nature, that is great! Keep in mind though that you need to balance everything out. Most commonly, you find in stories/movies after a heavy scene something more lighter, usually a laugh line or 2. Keeping it heavy the whole time will eliminate many readers as it would be niche at best.

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It could be any number of things given that we've seen no excerpt (although sharing one may not be advisable, since advice specific to your case wouldn't help this thread's future users). I'll mention some possibilities; other answers will probably add some more. Some of my examples are things writers find more appropriate when writing for children; others are bad writing people may associate with stories aimed at children, if for these the publication standards are more lax.

The vocabulary may be basic.
The sentence structure may be repetitive or undemanding.
The punctuation may be unsubtle (I've seen stories in children's annuals where just about every sentence ends in an exclamation point, weakening them all).
The characterisation may be 1-dimensional, may be riddled with a straightforward allegory (viz. The Chronicles of Narnia), or may tell instead of showing.
The dialogue tags may also do this, through synonyms for "said" or modifications of it with adverbs.
The repetition in sentences or word choice may grate (see e.g. here).
The themes or treatment thereof may be all too innocent.

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