It’s been awhile. Happy 4th of July and belated Happy Canada Day. In honor of a day off work, I thought I should blog. The up and downside to this blog is that it inspires me to work on my fiction–leaving me with less time to blog. Also with the drought, we’re battling ants like there’s no tomorrow. Up side? Haven’t cooked in days.
I have seen a lot of conversation about the high mortality rate for parents in YA material (and sometimes juvenile). Generally it’s considered a lazy way to get parents out of the picture so that the young protagonists can get away with doing whatever they want or need to do.
For me, it’s different. I find this is a common thread in my writing–for young characters as well as adult ones–and I finally had to ask myself why? Why are my characters so often crippled by the loss of a parent? It is never to have an easy way to get the protagonist on his own. There are other ways: divorce, runaways, abandonment, workaholics, alcoholics, jail, mental illness, or parents who are just plain unobservant. Each brings its own baggage, its own damage, its own pain.
But sometimes the missing parent isn’t just a plot device. Sometimes it’s a huge part of the story, a huge part of the character, and a huge part of the drama.
When I finally asked myself why my characters often have dead parents the answer was simple. When I was young and as I grew up, the loss of a parent was the worst thing I could imagine. I wouldn’t know who I was with out them. It was my greatest fear, and so it became my characters’ worlds because I like to watch them survive. I need to watch them survive.
Obviously as we get older, other fears creep in: loss of spouse, loss of children. The list goes on and on. But those are grownup losses and they are prominent in grownup fiction.
The loss of parents (and siblings) is a real and universal threat, not something to be thrown in lightly and forgotten about. For a young adult, it could be the most dramatic thing they have ever faced.
Is it a trend that you’ve noticed too? What are your thoughts?
Tagged: drama, loss, novel, parents, readers, writing, YA
It’s not something I really noticed until you pointed it out, actually… It’s kind of disturbing to think about a parental figure as conveniently dead rather than tragically. I like how you come from a slightly deeper place in your thinking, where your characters haven’t merely suffered the loss of a parent in the past as a plot device, but actually have had to overcome the experience to move forward. Or at least they’ve been visibly shaped by it. And it’s also a great way to connect yourself and your personal feelings to the story, as I always love seeing bits of the author in his/her work!
I don’t think I noticed it until a lot of agents started pointing it out. Maybe it’s even more prominent in the submissions that they see that we haven’t read. It is a huge thing though, but then, for YA family drama is a huge source of drama. Which makes total sense.