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Topic : Of the 3 options given #1 provides the fewest barriers to readers. By having the main character from England you allow the reader to identify with this character. There is no cultural friction - selfpublishingguru.com

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Of the 3 options given #1 provides the fewest barriers to readers.

By having the main character from England you allow the reader to identify with this character. There is no cultural friction between the reader and the story. It is also the least interesting option with the greatest amount of competition.

Option 2 would require you to get your readers to identify with someone from a different culture, this is a challenge. But it does give you a USP. It adds a layer to the story, which will make the story less attractive to less engaged readers, but more interesting to others.

Option 3 would get annoying if most of the dialogue is in translated French. Even if you establish that "italics mean French" early on. You have the difficulty of rendering "broken French" into "broken English" at the start of the book, and the difficulty of having large chunks of italics towards the end. Large chunks of broken English are at best comical, and at worst unreadable.

I'll include 3 more options that occur to me

Option 4 (your original bilingual story) may be publishable by specialist publishers. The advantage is that there are not many others writing bilingual novels for children. In a saturated market, you may be better finding a niche than failing to be the next Riordan.

Option 5 (Switch the settings). Instead of an English boy in France, a French boy in England. The small amounts of French that he speaks can be rendered in italics, but as the story progresses he speaks exclusively in English.

Option 6 (Switch the language of narration) You could keep the story of an English boy, but make this an entirely French novel. The small amounts of English could be rendered in French in italics (or French readers might be more tolerant of small amounts of English dialogue). You would then, of course, publish in France.


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