Requested by Anonymous
How do you come to know your characters? We’re all well aware that in order to develop well-rounded, convincing characters that make a story come alive and jump right off the page … well, we just have to know them. We have to know what makes them tick, what their goals are, what they love and what they hate.
To come to this, many writers use character sketches, or fill out brief questionnaires designed to help them dig into who their character is at the deepest level. It’s a useful - often vital - strategy.
Here’s a good question, though. Does that one slot asking “parents’ names” say much about the people who formed your character’s earliest nature?
Parental Influence
Each of us are who we are, in part, because of our parents. The relationship we have with our parents influences the people we become, and how we continue to live in our world.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I get frustrated with the whole “blame it on your parents” mentality. However, there is a truth to it that can’t be ignored. Unfortunately, most of the statistics gather information on the ways that parental influence can harm. Children of alcoholics, for example, are significantly more likely to initiate drinking during adolescence and to develop alcoholism themselves. On the flip side of that, though, children of parents who discipline and consistently set clear expectations drink less and have fewer alcohol-related problems.
There’s also a tie-in for younger siblings, but we’re going to stick with the issue at hand, here.
The point is a simple one, but deeply important: in order to be as real-to-life as we want our characters to be, they’ve had a past that was strongly influenced by their family ties.
Okay so here’s a warning - don’t think you’re going to slip away with the whole “Oh, their parents left them” idea. Even if your characters weren’t raised by their natural parents, they were raised by someone … or something. They might have been raised by a pack of wolves but whoever or whatever raised them left an imprint. A deep one.
Considering Characters’ Relationship to Parents
So … we’ve got the idea now. Characters can’t be real if they didn’t have some sort of background. And we’re talking about a background that goes deeper than when they met that guy last year who turned out to be a total sleeze and ruined them on the dating scene. What if it just so happens that the character’s father was also a total sleeze, married to several other women unbeknownst to the character’s mother? Aha! Depth.
