Families are often hard to deal with, even if you love them. This is true in real life, but it’s even more true in fiction, especially in science fiction and fantasy. A large part of the problem is that including the hero/heroine’s family in the story means that the number of characters instantly begins to proliferate: two parents, four grandparents, an unknown number of siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins (it really isn’t plausible for the main character, both parents, and all four grandparents to have been only children, especially in an agrarian, pre-industrial, or even just pre-birth-control society). When you already have a strange world to establish and a bunch of plot-related characters to work in, the thought of making up and dealing with all those additional people (most of whom aren’t really relevant to the story you had in mind) is daunting.
Then comes the question of what to do with all those people once you have them, and how to make them individual enough so that the reader doesn’t get overwhelmed or confused. And unless the story is about the family and its relationships (which most action-adventure stories, SF, and fantasies really aren’t), one has to do all of that while developing the major characters who are actually important to the plot.
A character’s family is usually really important to the backstory and characterization, and often to the emotional plot as well, but they often aren’t that important to the action plot. In a character-centered story, this isn’t so much of a problem, but in an action-centered one, it can cause serious difficulties with balance.
One way to solve this dilemma, obviously, is to get rid of the family. This is why so many main characters are orphans (the Evil Overlord burning down the hero’s village has become an opening cliché for a good many fantasies), or adults who are estranged from their families, or who are adventuring hundreds or thousands of miles away from whatever family members they have. This works fine for a standalone or a classic trilogy that ends with awards and weddings as the validation, but these days an awful lot of things that were supposed to be standalones or trilogies end up as a series, which means that even if the main character’s family-of-origin has been disposed of by the Evil Overlord, he/she often ends up with a spouse and children long before the series winds down.
Some writers solve the problem by killing off the spouse and kids after a book or two, but one can’t do that over and over without the reader starting to wonder whether the main character is actually getting anywhere in his/her efforts to Save The World. After all, if the hero’s parents were killed by bandits and his first wife murdered by an ambitious flunky and his three kids killed by the Evil Overlord and his next girlfriend accidentally dies in an assassination attempt…well, it certainly doesn’t seem like his efforts have made the world much safer, does it?
Then there are the writers who shuffle the spouse and kids off somewhere safely offstage, so the main character can keep having adventures. This works find for one or two stories, but as a premise for an ongoing series it tends to be unsatisfying, if not downright annoying. Even a trophy wife is supposed to have some kind of presence in her husband’s life, if only “being seen in public so everybody knows he has a trophy wife.”
The third common way of dealing with the main character’s developing family is to skip ahead fifteen or twenty years and start telling stories about the next generation. Unfortunately, this puts the author right back at the beginning – what to do about the main character’s parents? – with the added problem that readers who’ve been following the series already know this character’s parents, like them a lot, and want them to continue living happy and/or interesting lives, which means that killing off the second-generation’s parents is not going to play well with those readers.
The final way of dealing with the main character’s family is to get them involved in the action plot. This works really well when the story is character-centered from the get-go (even if it’s not specifically family-centered). It also works when there’s a good fit between the characters who make up the family and the types of characters who are needed to move the action-centered plot along, but how many families are neatly made up of a hero, a thief, a swordsman, a mage, and a healer? It doesn’t work nearly as well when there are no plot-related roles other than “victim” for members of the family to occupy (realistically, how many times can a family member be mugged, kidnapped, murdered, or framed without the whole clan starting to look seriously accident-prone?).
I think the problem comes from several directions. First, some writers have trouble accepting that if they’re writing an action-centered plot, the main character’s family are going to be minor characters, no matter how important they are to the backstory and personality development of the hero/heroine. Second, the writer knows how to handle and develop major characters, but hasn’t yet figured out how to handle minor-but-important ones satisfactorily – it’s all or nothing; either fully-developed on-stage important characters or nameless spear-carriers, with no middle ground. And third, many writers have trouble juggling a large cast of characters, and adding even two parents into the equation can end up being two more than they can handle. Rather than starting to drop balls, they sensibly choose to write the extras out of the story.
I would love, someday, to see a story where the hero sets off to save the world, only half his clan tags along (much to his disgust), and somewhere along the way, after his parents (or wife) have rescued HIM a few dozen times, and the younger siblings (or his own children) have discovered more about the Evil Plot through making nuisances of themselves and asking all kinds of questions than he has through cleverness, he realizes he’s not The Hero after all. Nothing I like better than watching family prick a person’s ego and give him a healthy dose of humility!
I like reading stories where the family plays a part – especially because it is becoming less common it seems. In my current writing project, my main character has a family that plays a role and is the catalyst for her journey, but after that, they kind of disappear until the end. I’m still scheming as to how I can get them more involved in the middle (they’re a quirky group, I kind of like them and want them involved).
This is why superheros can’t have girlfriends, unless she’s another superhero.
I love when a story goes into the hero’s family life, but I’ve never managed to juggle one myself (in a story, I mean). Family is definately filed under `working on it.’
In my current universe, both of the “first generation” characters are notably short on family — one because he didn’t have much to start with and most of them have been killed off, the other because she’s not on speaking terms with hers. And yet, family is an important theme and a lot of the action revolves around family concerns. If family-of-birth doesn’t fit in the story for whatever reason, there’s always family-of-choice as an option. Which may or may not be the same thing as “developing” family, i.e., offspring.
Oddly enough, Make Mine Mystery just had a post about isolating the protagonist being a necessary requirement for plot. And I found myself thinking that I don’t want to see the protagonist isolated; I find it much more engaging if she and her partner are fighting back-to-back. And granted I’m biased by my own writing, but my default definition of “partner” covers a lot more than just that battle.
I guess this is more of a question/comment. I am working on what is turning into a series that I did want to be a trilogy (not that it really matters, I suppose) but it is about family and is character driven, with some action (fantasy). As Tiana commented above, it is becoming less common. I self-published the first book after not being able to find an agent (it really is too long), but part of me wondered if it was because it wasn’t action-driven. I like the fact that it’s character driven. It would be nice to be published “officially” some day, but I’m not holding my breath. People have read it and have liked it, even people I don’t know, and those people have asked when the second one is going to be done (again, people I don’t know, who haven’t been threatened into asking the question). Even though I’m not particularly happy with the first one, and am re-editing it at the moment but wondering if that’s fair to the people who have already read it and liked it, I don’t want to change it from being family/character driven, because I like the interactions and the way relationships develop and change. Some of the parents are dead, though. That was too many people. Why is this becoming less popular in the fantasy genre? Are people finding it too boring? Do publishers specifically not like it? It’s sort of a mystery to me. I know there are exceptions, but in general, looking at the fantasy books around, most do seem action-driven.
@ Louise – I want that too!
I think this is where I end up rather muddled by my literary fiction training. For me, all stories are family stories, especially when they’re action stories. I’m finally writing a story where the main arc is about the MC getting to know herself rather than the MC and her/his family drama, and yet this is probably my biggest family, 2 parents, 2 siblings and at least one cousin who’s actually a character. Her ‘partner”s family also takes part, with a dad, an aunt and a cousin (plus a grandmotherly housekeeper for each of them).
When I was a kid I used to write stories about orphans, but they would always have a vast number of siblings, or I would wonder about the parents and tell stories about them (usually until I had succeeded in giving them each new love interests and essentially writing the children out of the equation.) Oddly enough, these days, I hate stories where the MC is an orphan/foundling. I think it’s hard to get to know them. You really don’t know anyone until you know their family and how they fit into it.
But of course, this is why I write vast and unweildy tales with a disgusting proliferation of characters.
But it’s also why my favorite scene in a romance is the meeting the parents scene. Romance is about community! Don’t tell me it’s not! If action stories had more meet the parents scenes, I’d like them better.
I think I’m with Wendy (although I haven’t — yet — gone the self-publishing route), in that my first proper novel ended up being very much about the main character and his brother rather than the end of the world he was preventing. That happens in the middle, but the climax is really with his brother. I still think this could be a very good story, but I don’t have the finesse to bring it off — people I’ve explained it to like it a great deal, people I haven’t find the shift from ‘action’ to ‘character’ too unusual to handle. (Plus, as I said, I think my craft is lacking.) But I still think it’s mostly because they can handle exterior problems (ie, end of the world) being solved after the character has Learned his Lesson, but not that the interior problems might happen because of something that was the fall-out from the exterior solution. Or something. I’m still working on what to do with that story, rewrite it or leave it in a drawer or keep submitting it or what.
@ Cara
I have action stories with “meet the parents” scenes. Or, at least, stories that have a lot of action and also have meeting the parents. I guess I never really thought about how rare that is.
My favorite is from a story I haven’t written yet. My protags meet, fall in love, and then she gets captured by his mother’s political enemies to be used as leverage against him. Just before she’s kidnapped, she reveals, at last, just who her family is, and why her brothers are all really scary tough guys that can tie the hero in knots without raising a sweat: her father is a notorious space pirate.
So it’s time to meet his future papa-in-law… “Uh, hello, er, Space Pirate Captain, Sir. I’m in love with your daughter, and I… uh… seem to have gotten her kidnapped.”
Then there was the one in the trilogy I just wrote, where after getting chased across a couple countries by assassins (knife-fight on a steam liner, shoot-out in the train station, etc.) my bi-racial cross-cultural couple protags (married at sea less than a week before) get split up just before reaching her home, and he continues there, while she is diverted elsewhere. When she makes it back to join him a few days later, things are a bit tense.
Her -“You’re being too polite, Chunru. You need to start treating my family less like strangers.” Him – “What do you mean?” “Tell [eldest brother] it’s not his cart to haul whether you’re injured or not. Tell [younger brother] he’s a grubby troll.” “You want me to insult your family?” “Yes! Well… maybe not my mother.”
She has six siblings. I didn’t know I was supposed to leave them out just because there’s a lot of action. Actually, her brothers are kind of into action. Her sisters less so — one’s into hats, and the other, airplanes.
Hmmm . . . guess I didn’t know about getting rid of the family either! My Troll-magic heroine has 8 siblings! Although, she does leave home and brings only one sister with her. So maybe I did “get rid of family,” since most of them rapidly leave the story “stage.”
@ Louise: I want to read that story too. It sounds good!
One series that includes the family quite well is Christopher Stasheff’s The Warlock of Gramarye. It’s a combination of science fiction and fantasy.
My favorite book is the Warlock is Missing. Mom and Dad have been teleported to an alternate dimension (The Warlock Wandering). This book covers what their four teleporting, telekinetic kids (with guardian Puck) do while they’re gone.
The series continues until all four kids are married.
(And I wish this had a preview option. 🙁 )
I’m so glad your blog is back! I’ve missed reading your words of wisdom this week.
Hooray! The blog is back!
I third the “hooray, you’re back”!
In an agrarian, pre-industrial, or even just pre-birth-control society, people had many children because many of them died. Queen Victoria succeeded to the throne because her father’s next oldest brother had a whole passel of kids, all of whom died.
So there’s always that option.
I’m so glad you’re back!
And both of these last posts have been HIGHLY relevant to problems I’ve been struggling with. Thank you, yet again.
To Mary: I recently skimmed a book called _Becoming Victoria_, whose main premise had to do with the fact that most of Victoria’s aunts and uncles had children– just none of them were legitimate. They had a really controlling father who had had a law passed through Parliament that none of them could get married without his permission, so they didn’t– they just had extramarital relationships. She (Victoria) had, if I recall correctly, twelve aunts and uncles and something like 57 (living) cousins, two or three of whom were legitimate. All this does not preclude her father’s older brother having suffered losses of children within a legitimate marriage, but it does put a slightly different slant on the situation.
They went on having the illegimite children until the Princess of Wales died in childbirth, whereupon there was a massive rush to the altar to ensure that the royal line would go on. Victoria herself was the fruit of this rush, and so were the dying children I mentioned.
I found it interesting in LOTR how the Shire pretty much ignored the War of the Ring. Frodo was not the hero there; it was the rest of the Travellers who got the local renown.
If you have ever checked out the genealogies of the various hobbit families, note that there were large families and bachelors. Both Frodo and Bilbo were bachelors. It keeps the family a bit distant.
The Vorkosigan books are a very good example of an extended series of adventure novels which keep the main character’s family -and all the characters- front and center. Instead of being unnecessary clutter they’re what make the stories worthwhile.
Another would be Little, Big, a family chronicle with the fey folk around the edges -although that falls into a different and much more work-intensive category.