Hey there, welcome back to the second part of our series on platonic relationships. This week, we’re going to talk about parents, because there are a lot of stereotypes parents follow in today’s storytelling.

OTHER PARTS OF THIS SERIES (IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM):

Platonic Relationships #1: Mentors

Platonic Relationships #3: Siblings

Platonic Relationships #4: Friends

Like many other character types, parents can be done well, or they can be written flat and unrealistic. In this post, we’re going to cover how to build a well-rounded parent character as well as discuss the parent’s possible role in fiction.

PARENTS AND CHILDREN

Parents are a little more complicated than mentors because there is a lot more we can do with them. You have the good parents (that we need more of in YA) and the bad parents – being available in different flavors like abusive, uncaring, or self-absorbed. Of course, parents are real characters, too, so you’ll want to flesh them out as much as possible.

Parents can be built through context.

This all depends on the parent and what they believe about the child, i.e. your main character as well as the context of the story. For example, the queen of a kingdom and a single mother struggling to make ends meet would treat their children differently. This is mainly due to their situation.

Context is crucial here – time period, place, and situation of the parent. All of this is likely to affect how they treat your main character, but it isn’t the only factor that makes up your parent/child relationship.

Parents are real people, too.

Remember, although parents are generally side characters, they are still real people in your world. This means they are going to have complex beliefs, flaws, quirks – things that make them unique. While the parent in your book may not have much page time, it’s still good to know these specific qualities because they will work their way into your writing.

SOME QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT:

• What does the parent think/believe about the main character? How does this affect their behavior towards the main character?
• What are the qualities that make the parent unique? How can you convey these traits in your story, if necessary?
• How does the parent mess up? How do their flaws affect the main character, if at all?

This is going to help with the overall depiction of your character – no more flat, one-sided person your readers will complain about!

Parents are important to the child.

In YA, the parents are often killed off or dismissed as terrible caregivers. Although this is realistic in some cases, it’s refreshing to see parents who actually love their kids and want the best for them. I’m not talking about parents who give their children everything they ask for – no. I mean well-rounded parents who try to raise their kids right.

But whether they’re caring or not, parents are going to be important to your main character. Think about it – how many times have you seen the “I’m going to find my mom/dad” plot? How many times does the villain keep the main character’s parents hostage in order to get them to bend to his will? How many times have you seen the main character wish their mother was someone different? The importance of the parent is especially seen in many contemporaries.

If you have a parent character in your story, they’re likely to play a fairly large role – at least in the character’s head. In Caraval by Stephanie Garber, Scarlett’s mind constantly goes back to the fear of her father – even though he doesn’t have much page time. However, you’re not limited to this. Plenty of other good books barely focus on the parent character, pushing them to one side after their scene is done.

The role of the parent

In the end, parents don’t really have a fixed role in storytelling. They’re not an archetype on the spectrum, which makes sense because there are so many kinds of parents – in real life and in storytelling.

Many contempories that focus on the main character’s relationship with his/her parent may have the parental figure go through a character arc. This is true for Hope’s mom in Call Me Hope by Gretchen Olsen, but not applicable to Kiko’s mother in Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman.

You can define the role of a parent character in-story, but that doesn’t mean you’ve defined the role of all parent characters in your story. Sometimes, the parent is the antagonist, and other times the parent is the friend, the mentor, the encourager.

And I think that’s pretty remarkable.

All right!

Truth be told, writing about parents is hard because they’re often looked over in storytelling. Tell me, what are some of your favorite parental figures in fiction – villainous or not? And if you have a parent character in your WiP, what is their role in the story?

All the best,