So, you do scene shift? From war like twisted perception of Hale to Bren normal like life? Okay. Good luck. Just be careful. No one is ever going to know the context as well as you. It is like a jigsaw puzzle. You have all the pieces. A book only gets 80% of the pieces. You got to make sure you have the right ones there so they can still see the same picture.
I had an interesting childhood but my dream project sets up the premise of a brilliant child hood for the MC. Perhaps this reflects the adage I now prefer, which says, "You are never too old to have a brilliant childhood".
I would be wary of this because it's quite cliché to explain a damaged character by a bad childhood. Of course, in real life, many of our issues DO stem from childhood. But it can be very predictable in books.
Normal people are boring and it's interesting to throw traumatic pasts at characters and watch how they handle it. Because my characters are almost invariably young when I first create them, the easiest trauma to give them is a bad childhood. But what I need to remember to do is vary the reasons that their childhoods are bad. Interestingly in my current project the damaged character had a good childhood. He's damaged by war, not a poor childhood. The character whose childhood wasn't that great is surprisingly normal.
They sound like good, complicated characters then. Not just "I find it hard to have fulfilling relationships because my father was mean to me" which would be the cliché.
It's such a cop-out to make daddy issues the reason a character is afraid of a fulfilling relationship. There are SO MANY other options out there if that fear is necessary to the plot. Maybe the character has been cheated on, maybe they've been in an abusive relationship, maybe they have abandonment issues stemming from someone important to them leaving early in their life. One of my favourite fantasy trilogies has a protag who is whiny at times, and I get frustrated with him, but he's a child at the start of the story and I think we too easily forget he's still only very young by the end of the trilogy. I can't remember what prompted me to pick up the books in the first place but I have read and reread them and always enjoy them. Flawed characters are more fun. They make you feel. That's why I like breaking them because characters are like geodes. You don't know what's inside until you crack them open.
I can't take credit, it's a stolen (paraphrased) quote that's meant to be inspirational. "People are like geodes. You can't see the beauty inside until they break."
I would actually recommend trying to write something completely different than your past RL exp. Try writing a story where your MC's father is a positive driving/influence in the characters life. I suggest this for a couple of reasons. 1.) Dead, absent, or abusive parents are a bit of a troupe and crutch in writing/storytelling. Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Every Disney Character in the entire history of ever all come from some kind of broken of dysfunctional home. 2.) Some of the best advice i ever received was as follows. For every story you tell with an MC that is similar in background and lifestyle to your own, you should follow it up with a story where the MC's experience is worlds apart. This will help you to remove the overused aspects and comfort zones from your storytelling. It will help you to walk a mile in other peoples shoes and add a new element to your writing. Im not saying to cut out absent father figures or daddy issues completely from your writing. Im just saying that you may be surprised at the doors and creative options that having 1 positive father-child relationship in a story may have on your writing. anyway, just my thought
If you can point me to one person on this planet that is without a multitude of flaws and insecurities i will pay the entire cost of publishing your first book. Some hide their flaws well, but we all wear masks in the world to conceal the ugly secrets and anxieties of our minds. No person is without flaws, most carry deep scares, yet very few people come from childhoods with strained father/child relationships.
With the divorce rate in Aus at 40% I am going to suggest there are a lot more than "very few" with strained relationships between parent and child.
@Aaron DC - it is when compared to the variety of human issues, emotions, and idiosyncrasies that can be the driving force behind what has damaged a character. If the only thing that you can think of to explain why a character has emotional scars is "daddy issues", then you are not a particularly creative writer.
In the context of the post to which I am responding, this makes no sense. An argument of "there are a lot more than very few" is not refuted by "it is". I said nothing regarding emotional scarring source, and I'm fine with my creativity, thanks for asking.
You mean like one of the two POV characters in my WIP? Hale's father was a brilliant dad. I mean yes, he's dead by the start of the first book, but there's storyline reasons for that and for those to work Lord Hale Sr. needs to have been a good father. Note I say good - the "brilliant" part is Hale's contribution. His love, respect and admiration for his father are a big part of what shaped him through childhood and adolescence, especially in the first few years of the war. Good dad, good childhood/adolescence (until 16-17 when he was conscripted - for fighting purposes boys are considered men from 16), emotionally screwed up character. The other POV character explores the opposite side of that coin. Brennen had a pretty crappy childhood, his father punished him severely for every tiny transgression, and he was essentially forced onto the throne against his wishes, by the circumstances of his birth (elder of two sons) and his father's outright refusal to allow him to hand the throne to his brother. But he's relatively normal. I mean yes, he's understandably scarred, but he just deals with it and carries on with his life.
The point i was making is that daddy-issues and divorce are waaaay over represented in story telling and its becoming boring. 40% divorce rate. 30% of divorced couples have children. 50% of children who's parents get divorced are already over the age of 18 and considered an adult by the state. so in 100 married couples, 40 get divorced. Of those 40 divorced couples, 12 of them have children. Of those couples with Children, 6 have children under the age of 18. Of those couples with children under the age of 18, half will have the kids live in a two parent home with a biological parent and a step parent. So only 3 out of those 100 will be raised in a single parent home. (we stared with married couples) yet every single pixar and disney movie...heck almost every book or movie in the last couple of decades has a dead parent, divorced couple, or some major family trouble. Its out of control and it shows a complete inability to be creative and original. In reality, poverty is a much bigger driver, yet we write about rich kids that have their parents get divorced or who's dad doesn't pay enough attention to them (a group who statistically is going end up as very successful). No wonder people don't read anymore.
I like it, good depth in both. I like exploring both sides as well, lets you pull apart the layers of both characters.
40% divorce rate 50% of those have children ==> 20 lots of children average children per divorce is 2 (1.9) ==> 40 children Your argument that only 3 / 100 will be raised in a single parent home is not only mathematically questionable, but irrelevant to the discussion of why a character may be troubled. Being raised by a Step parent (ie full set of parents) is at least as likely to be traumatic as being raised by a single parent. I would suggest more so. The connection between being rich or poor and whether people read or not is suggested in your final paragraph, but not supported by what you have written. The reason Pixar and Disney portray parental connection or general family issues in middle class families is one of demographic targeting, not lack of imagination.
{deleted} Anyway, i have no desire to bicker about this, mostly because i have the feeling that we both inferred tone (that didn't exist) in the early comments and as a result took a more aggressive stance. My point was simply that parent issues are over represented in storytelling as a way to make an MC seem to have layers when they are actually very flat and boring.
The insinuation re my lack of creativity seemed obvious without the need to infer tone. I apologise if my response seemed aggressive - I simply brought some facts and maths to the discussion re: divorce rates, etc and movie studio reasoning for depicting family issues in their stories. Any source of character flaw, IMO, needs to be relatively innocuous so as to not take precedence in the reader's mind over the resulting flaw and the development of the character. Something that is readily identifiable with may be flat or boring but is also easily expressed without having to explain in great detail why it affects a character or how. I think it's ill-advised to dismiss familial sources of flaws. If it fits the story, use it. The younger the characters, the more likely the issues are going to be family related. I think for a first time author, writing from a place of "what you know" has the potential to be more readily believable than writing something purely fictitious. Not to say that's where your writing should remain, however. We are, after all, writing fiction.
Thank you I love exploring characters who are what they are despite their early life. One day I want to write a complete psychopath who had a relatively normal childhood with good, caring parents. Because these do exist!
