Greetings Everyone!
First of all, thank you for the wonderful and warm welcome back to Blogland. I am more inspired than ever to rise early and sit up well into the night writing and writing. I'm half way through a romantic short story, The Woodland Wedding; my current WIP set on a luxury yacht in the Med is beginning to flourish and....I believe (at last) that I am ready to grow my NaNoWriMo 2010 novel, The Case For Saucers, into the thumping romp it should be!
Apart from that, I have been pondering....
Why don't authors like parents?
Like many aspiring novelists, I read and read - a lot. What I've been noticing in so many stories, across several genres, is that the main character's parents have been killed off. Honestly, once I homed in on this phenomenon, I saw it everywhere. More often than not they've been killed off together, how convenient! But why? Is it to convey more of a sense of isolation for the protagonist? Or is it just easy to have Mum and Dad out of the way of the story so as not to interfere like they may do in 'real life'?
I love that in Talli Roland's, The Hating Game, there is the prejudiced voice of a mother colouring the FMC's thoughts and beliefs. She doesn't have any more presence in the book but it is very powerful.
Maybe it's because I really have lost both parents that I enjoy popping in the older generation. They don't have to take up much space if you don't want their characters to be integral to the plot. They don't have to be likeable but they are a useful and sometimes sly little view on the world. Alternatively, they could be glamorous silver foxes, sipping Martinis and cruising. They don't have to be dead, do they?
Til next time x
