Navigating Families in Fiction
By Kathleen McCleary | December 19, 2018 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Josh McGinn
On Thanksgiving Day, I was standing in my kitchen, chopping celery and contemplating the timing for dinner, when Joni Mitchell’s song “The River” came on and all of a sudden my eyes filled and I felt such a sense of loss I could hardly stand it. I missed my father, who LOVED the holidays and has been dead for seven years; I missed my mother, whose distinctive laugh has been the soundtrack to all my holidays but who is now too infirm to leave her home; I missed my daughter, who lives 3,000 miles away. Then our guests arrived and the house filled with food and talk and laughter and I felt elated.
If ever there were a best of times and worst of times, it would be now, that period from Thanksgiving through Hanukkah and Christmas, with all its expectations and disappointments and loves and heartaches and estrangements. It’s the time when all the things we value most and despise most about families come roaring to the forefront, demanding attention, and when all our own successes and losses seem to tumble from their neat little shelves in our lives and knock us on the head.
Families are at the heart of most fiction, be it Game of Thrones’s Starks, John Steinbeck’s Trasks and Hamiltons in East of Eden, or Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the ultimate father-son dyad. Every single fictional family is messy and imperfect, sometimes fierce in their love for each other, sometimes brutal to each other, always multi-layered and complex. So if the holidays evoke a similarly broad range of emotions in you, USE that. Use it to explore the complexity of family relationships in your fiction. If your main character is an orphan or a thief or a soldier, she still has a “family,” even if it’s the one she’s cobbled together out of vagrants or wizards and elves (depending on your genre). Consider:
Estrangement. Once, one of my family members stopped speaking to me for more than a year over something that seemed minor to me but was major to them. And of course it wasn’t just about the inciting incident; it was about our years of history together, the wounds inflicted without knowing how much they hurt, the misunderstandings, the failed communication. If one or more of your characters is estranged from someone important to them, make sure you understand the history behind that. You don’t have to put it all down on the page, but you need to understand the complexities there, so the estrangement makes sense to the reader even if the characters themselves lack the self-knowledge or self-awareness to get it.
Loss. I’ve written before about how loss drives fiction (https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/2016/06/15/forging-character/). And it’s true. There’s not a person alive who hasn’t experienced some kind of loss by the time they’re a teenager, whether it’s the loss of a first love, the death of a pet, a move, a loss of innocence, or the death of a grandparent. And as we get older the losses mount—marriages end, children grow up, we move away from beloved friends, parents die, our bodies change—it never ends. What losses has your character experienced? How do those losses affect how your character relates to his family, to who he is in his family? A patriarch dies and a son mourns at the same time he comes in to new power. A mother loses a child and the certainties that had shaped her life vanish in a second. Explore that.
Irritation. If you want to portray family relationships accurately, don’t ignore how annoying families can be. Your fictional family should sometimes snap at each for no reason, feel irrational rage that someone left their boxers shorts in the middle of the living room floor (again), and bicker over who’s better at reading maps and giving directions. These details provide the authenticity that makes your fictional family feel as real as the one in the next room.
Compassion. Yes, families can be endlessly difficult, but they can also be endlessly forgiving. The family member who didn’t speak to me for a year is also one of a handful of people in my life I can count on to always have my back, no matter what. For many, the harsh words, the betrayals, the disappointments, the failures often go hand in hand with the loving words, the forgiveness, the acceptance, the grace. A fictional family (and by family I mean both biological relatives and/or the people we choose who become our families, like Huck and Jim, or Sam and Frodo) needs to have the same bond so many families have in real life—a glowing, beating heart that binds them through the best and worst of everything.
Gratitude. And just as with real families, fictional families need to look up once in a while and remember that family is the fire that forges us all, in ways both painful and beautiful. And that’s something to be thankful for.
What is your fictional family like? What obstacles have you encountered in writing families in fiction?
[coffee]
Kathleen McCleary is the author of three novels—House and Home, A Simple Thing, and Leaving Haven—and has worked as a bookseller, bartender, and barista (all great jobs for gathering material for fiction). A Simple Thing (HarperCollins 2012) was nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. She was a journalist for many years before turning to fiction, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and USA Weekend, as well as HGTV.com, where she was a regular columnist. She taught writing as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and teaches creative writing to kids ages 8-18 as an instructor with Writopia Labs, a non-profit. She also offers college essay coaching (https://thenobleapp.com), because she believes that life is stressful enough and telling stories of any kind should be exciting and fun. When she’s not writing or coaching writing, she looks for any excuse to get out into the woods or mountains or onto a lake. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two daughters and Jinx the cat.
Hey Kathleen – Man, The River gets me every time. Especially that first time for the season.
My niece was just at our house with her daughter, and I was thinking about family dynamics right after she left, and I realized something. What prompted my realization? Rewatching Game of Thrones, of course. I think it was episode three of season one (Lord Snow). Jon wants to go to the wall, but what he really wants is his father’s approval. As they part, he feels he doesn’t get it. Instead, Ned lays a huge load of expectation on his shoulders as a farewell. (“Starks have manned the wall with honor for over a thousand years.” i.e. Don’t let me down, punk.) What Jon doesn’t realize is that Ned knows how much danger Jon could (and likely eventually would) be in, and that his father was trying to protect him. (Not to mention his being an emotionally repressed, passive aggressive hard-ass.)
So I wrote my niece. As she came of age, she’d been one of those loaded down with family expectation. She shrugged expectation off and had her daughter, now an adorable and clever four y.o. A single mom, she did such a brilliant job not only raising her daughter but putting herself through nursing school, working a full-time job throughout.
It’s funny, but shrugged expectations tend to lead to unspoken disapproval. And I know from experience, that one-two combo can really leave you punch-drunk and sore. I told her I know I’d been a part of that burden for her. I’d just had such high hopes for her. Well, for my imagined path for her, anyway. I told her that I thought she was doing brilliantly, and that none of the rest of it really mattered, that we love her for who she is. And I asked her to forgive her somewhat (not quite Ned Stark-level) emotionally repressed, passive aggressive, hard-ass uncle.
‘Tis the season to be dysfunctional, right? Thanks for reminding us of the writerly value to be found in it all. I certainly do toy with the expectations and disapproval of elders on the page… Wonder why. ;) Happiest of holidays to you.
Vaughan, you have blessed your niece. She will remember your message for the rest of her life, and it will come back to support her in tough times.
Glad to know I’m not alone in my reaction to “The River.” (And not two weeks after Thanksgiving, I ran across this article, that shows we’re REALLY not alone: https://medium.com/the-lily/river-the-thoroughly-depressing-joni-mitchell-song-that-somehow-became-a-christmas-classic-c804c51a77b6.) In any event, thanks for sharing your story about your niece. You really get at the heart of the way expectations, gender roles, self-sabotage, forgiveness, and a multitude of other factors come into play in families. I appreciate the thoughtful comment. Best wishes for a happy holiday!
Kathleen, there are remarkably subtle, moving and resonant passages about all the family complexities you describe in Marilynne Robinson’s novel “Home,” between sister, brother, father and close neighbor. I was stunned at her use of often simple language to convey emotional depths.
Happy Holidays!
Hi Tom, HOME has to be one of my favorite books of all time. I hope you have also read Robinson’s other work. She touches my soul. I remember listening to HOME in my car driving back from visiting my mother who had dementia and lived in a Senior facility. I had already read the novel, but wanted to cherish it again. A chapter near the end about Jack made it hard to drive as the tears flowed. Take care, Beth
Beth, I know the chapter you mean. Yes.
Kathleen, I have the notorious Christmas Cold so am late posting, but RIVER always gets to me. Losses become paramount at this time of year, but gathering those we can heals so much. Maybe even my cold. And speaking of families, I’m enjoying LEAVING HAVEN and have read your other two novels. Take care, Beth
Christmas is the time of big emotions and even bigger expectations – I guess that is one of the reasons so many family fights break out then. I will be spending Christmas with the in-laws this year, so my biggest hope is to stay clear of any friction.
As for my WIP: my main character lost his parents at an early age and was raised by his grandfather. His biggest goal in life is making his grandfather proud. He thinks he knows just the way to do it, getting it all wrong of course.