: Re: What does "juvenile tone" mean? I often hear the word thrown around, but I don't have any idea of what it is, or how can it be avoided. So, what does "juvenile tone" mean and how can I

@Moriarity138

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"Juvenile tone" means writing like a kid --or, to be more precise --like a young teenager (usually). This is excusable in a young writer, but less so in a writer who should know better. There are writers who have perfected a juvenile tone in the service of a mature book (Catcher in the Rye, or, less seriously, Youth in Revolt) but it's a tricky feat to pull off.

The positive characteristics of juvenile writing are usually enthusiasm, authenticity, innocence and freshness. The negative characteristics of juvenile writing are usually melodrama, unoriginality, shallow characters, a lack of empathy, superficial irony, an unearned sense of superiority, an attempt to shock people just for the sake of being shocking, pretentiousness or precociousness, and a lack of craft, leading to bad or amateurish prose.

As you might have noticed, however, one could have either of those sets of characteristics at any age.

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