Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Being true to deceased parents

I've been sitting on this blog post for a few months now, unsure how to best broach the subject. I read Phoebe North's "On Beginnings" blog (you can read it here) back in December, 2011 and since then the idea of dead parents in books has been floating around in my head. Specifically, handling your MC when his/her parents die.

My father died when I was 10. His death impacted my mom, my brother, and myself in ways we never could have imagined. But the reality of our new status quo, combined with the love, the fear, and the anguish over such a HUGE loss helped bring us back together again, though it took many years.

Losing one's parent can be devastating, especially for young children or teens. I've spent more time than I'd like to admit wondering two things:

  • Which would be easier? Losing my father when I was younger, and therefore had less memories to replay in my head, or losing him later, thus giving us more years to know each other?
  • Which is worse? Losing him quickly, like in an accident, or having some idea that the end will eventually come, such as with sickness?

Here's the truth: it doesn't matter because when you're done emotionally killing yourself over the issue, you're left with no resolution. None. Zero. No answer will ever be the right one and no answer will bring them back.

But that's my point. As someone who lost a parent, I asked myself those questions. I still do. I denied that he was even dead. I told myself for YEARS he was still alive, held against his will in a foreign country. It was easier to believe someone took him instead of accepting that mutated cells could flatten the mountain of a man who was my father. At 6 feet, 6 inches tall with salt and pepper hair, blue eyes, and a thick New York City accent with the moxie to match--my dad could be the most intimidating person one minute and have you laughing the next. There are so many things I wish people could know about him, but I'm trekking down this emotional road for a different purpose.

As a MG writer, I understand how much easier a story can be without parents around to "get in the way." Setting your character alone against the world is a tried and true method for most "coming of age" stories. I get it and I use this concept myself.

However, I recently read a story where the author killed the main character's entire family. Mom, dad, and sister, all gone. At this point, I stopped reading for a day because I needed to distance myself from the story. It felt like these deaths were used as a plot point to motivate the MC to make the next decision and weren't treated with the gravity the situation required. The author wrote in emotions every few pages, showing us the MC was still grappling with the loss, but it wasn't enough. Not for me.

If using the death of a parent in your story, take a deep breath and write true to the emotions. If you've never lost a parent, then cue up your Disney-happy-place-music, put yourself in that horrible mind set, and think about how you would feel. Write that. Or ask someone who has dealt with this. But writing that your main character buried their emotions to "deal with later" can feel false.

Instead, show us your characters acting out. Bring your readers along as your characters make deals with higher powers to reverse reality. Have us walk by their side as they make irrational decisions, push away those they love, and act out of character. Show us the tears, confusion, anger, heartbreaking sobs, denial, and most importantly, show us how your main character's life is irrevocably changed. It's okay, as the author, you can always bring your character back around, but it will make them more relatable to teens who might be facing that situation.

How about you? Do you feel one way or another about books that use a parent's death as a motivational tool?


18 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing such a personal experience. You make such good points too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. Like I said, I sat on the post for a while, unsure if I wanted to share all this.

      Delete
  2. For me, it depends on how they do it. Going from my own experience, I was 16 and well, incredibly difficult to deal with. I feel bad for my dad for all the crap I put him through. In fact, I'm still paying for the mistakes I made 10 years later.

    In the end, it doesn't matter how strong or smart or cautious you are, the death of a loved one will always turn you into an emotional train wreck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was a total pain in the ass to my mom, I won't lie. But in retrospect, I'll say she wasn't so easy to deal with either. The death of my dad combined with the death of her husband made for some intense emotions. I wonder if us children ever feel like we're ever done "paying for our mistakes"?

      Sorry for your loss. Sending a virtual hug.

      Delete
  3. Excellent post! I know we've talked about this before, how i get really frustrated when characters don't seem to feel enough of an emotional backlash at the death of someone. I mean, i understand if there's like life or death action going on, that's obviously going to be in the forefront of the character's mind, but once that's over, there had better be a return to grief

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly. Sometimes, the pressure and tension of the story come first, but the character should come back to deal with these emotions.

      Delete
  4. Sarah's right - in the movies, there isn't time and the action marches forward, but there is time in a book, and it should be used.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yup--PLENTY more time in books than in movies!

      Delete
  5. This is something I've struggled with in my WIP. The character lost her mother years ago, and her father dies in the first chapter. It's a plot point and necessary to the story (and not just in order to have the parents out of the way), but it's not the story. So how to balance a realistic portrayal of grief with getting on with the actual story?

    The problem with writing these things if you've never experienced them yourself is that it's impossible to know how you'd react. It's the same thing with being raped, or being mugged, or other terrible events. We *think* we know how we'd react, but we don't know.

    My grandfather died two weeks ago. I've been a little shocked at how *not* sad I've been about it. The reason being, I think, that he developed alzheimers years ago and the man I knew as my grandfather was already lost. Also, he was 90, and he'd gotten to the point where he couldn't dress or feed himself anymore. It wasn't a great quality of life; death seemed like a release. I haven't shed a single tear. (My sister, meanwhile, was a wreck.) I feel bad about that, like it's expected of me to cry and it makes me a bad person not to have, especially since I cried a lot over my grandmother's death. But such is the complexity of human emotions, I guess.

    Which raises another point: how one person deals with grief isn't how the next person will, and what one person thinks is appropriate for the character the next will think inappropriate. If you make the character a sobbing mess, there will be readers who'll be thinking, "Oh, get over it already" after a dozen pages. If you make the character very stoic, there will be readers who'll be thinking she's a cold b-tch for not caring enough.

    I think we, as the writer, need to really understand the *character* and how *they* would handle these tough situations, and be true to that. Draw on on our experience of similar emotions, but write what the character feels, not what we expect the character to feel.

    Sorry for the length of that. I hadn't meant to ramble quite so long. :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, I totally agree that people handle grief differently. However, I am going to side with Tricia, in that the death of a loved one is going to affect you, no matter who you are. And multiple deaths at once is just going to increase that grief tenfold.

      there are some people who hide their grief (I am one of those people. I will not cry in public. I'll go into the bathroom and hide). However, holding in your grief can bring about a whole other set of problems, kind of akin to holding in your anger. If you suppress it for long enough, sooner or later it's going to come back, and come back worse if you had just let it out in the first place. It can also lead to making terrible decisions.

      Which brings me to say that I think you handled the loss well. From the way interpreted it (in retrospect. Sometimes it takes me a while to absorb what I read, since I read so fast and so much :)) was that your MC tried to hide her grief, but in the end it kind of boiled over, and her grief gave her the courage to protect those she cared about because she could not bear to lose anyone else. I could be wrong though ;)

      Delete
    2. Seabrooke--thank you so much for sharing this comment. First, I'm sorry to hear about your grandfather. Second, I am very glad you pointed out something I overlooked in my post. Not everyone grieves the same. There is NO right answer. There is no standardized grieving process that all teens and characters should follow.

      However, if the author writes a MC who is close to his/her family, then that closeness needs to be felt and remembered, even in death. I just don't want to see the deceased forgotten about.

      Cookie--Like you, I try like hell to not cry in public. :) YES to the bad decision making. I'm always impressed when I come across some cool, calm, and collected MC who lost a family member and rolls along mentioning the sadness and grief, but not FEELING it.

      Delete
    3. Thanks, Cookie - I'm glad you thought it seemed relatively realistic. :) It was a hard thing for me to write, because I've never lost anyone I was super close to. I sort of let the MC take the lead with that stuff, rather than try to force her into my perception of how someone should deal with grief. She turned out to be one of those people who works through their grief mostly internally, and can put on a brave outward face and continue to function well. I've had a couple of readers tell me she doesn't seem upset enough, but then other readers think she comes across just fine.

      And definitely, TL - the emotional reaction to serious events (death being perhaps the most common, in stories) needs to be adequately dealt with otherwise it rings false, and the character seems shallow. I've read a couple of stories in the last year or so where I really didn't think the character spent adequate time dealing with the emotional fallout of some event.

      Delete
  6. This is an important post, and I'm glad you disclosed your own experience as a way of illustrating the gravity of such an event in a person's life. Too often I've seen death, divorce, and other traumatic episodes treated lightly in novels. Yes, these can be major plot points, but they don't ring true if the author allows the character to skim over the emotional devastation that would naturally ensue.

    Callie

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Callie. I think the converse of this would be MCs who had a tumultuous relationship with a parent. If that parent passed away in the story, then I could understand the MC experiencing less grief, but still--I imagine they'd go through a LARGE variety of other emotions. The death can be a plot point, but the *truth* of the subsequent emotions is what the readers will feel.

      Hmmm.. that was a super random tangent. I hope it made sense.

      Delete
  7. What a powerful post -- thank you so much for sharing your own experiences. I've never written a character who loses a parent... my characters are all in their twenties or thirties, so are removed from the nest. But you've given me something to think about if I ever do decide to write about that situation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Talli. It was a difficult post for a variety of reasons. Personally, I've found it easier to go the route of boarding school or orphaned child to provide my MC the "freedom" they need, but it admittedly misses an emotional punch.

      Delete
  8. This is a situation used a lot in fiction and like others have said, you can approach it a hundred different ways. As long as it rings true to the character, I don't think you can go wrong.

    My parents are still alive but I've known people who have lost their parents as children or as adults and that grief is displayed in so many different ways. It's really as unique as the individuals experiencing it.

    My main characters definitely deal with dysfunction and loss, including that of parents who are physically present but emotionally distanced, which is another sort of loss.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm glad you shared this post, it's very important.

    I have an MG character who has never KNOWN her parents, which how I tried to get around the issue of not having the experience of not having lost a parent, myself. I didn't think I could write it true, though it's also neat to hear you say it's still possible to write about loss when you haven't experienced it yourself: but you need to do put some real time and thought and emotion into it.

    ReplyDelete

I love getting comments. They're as much fun as getting real snail mail. So please, chime in and tell me what you think!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...