Parents In YA?

I'm having troubles writing adult parental characters too, namely that they always turn out to possessing the same traits... but...

What does work for me is thinking of the parents as an extension of your teenage characters. After all, children are often what their parents teach them to be, so many of their core values and beliefs can be traced back to their parents.

And presuming both the parents are alive, practically anything the character does would incite some reaction from the parents. So thinking that way, for a major event in a major scene, brainstorm from your character's perspective.

For example, say Timmy is thinking of sneaking out of the house. He has to come up with a plan. How? Well, he knows his parents' habits, such as how his Dad gets up at two o'clock for a late night snack. So why does his Dad need a late night snack? From that point, you just start tracing things back.

[It's probably not a good example, but I hope it does illustrate my point]

The story I'm writing more or less requires that the major parental figures be absent, but I think that in itself is a pitfall. It's too tempting to move them from being absent to being nonexistant or having no discernable impact on the teenage main character's life or personality.

I like to filter the parents through the young main character's impressions of them, then start hinting that those impressions might not be entirely accurate. It builds up everybody involved, and makes the relationship more believable than one where everybody is completely right about everybody else's motivations.

As a flawed parent myself, I cringe everytime I see myself in my kids (*rushes off to buy another parenting book*). I cringe even more when I see my parents in me. Thankfully that's not too often. I made sure of that, even as a teen. That was like my ultimate goal in life

I can honestly say, mine were clueless. I snuck out the bathroom window too many times to count, came home stumbling drunk and had a conversation with my mom in the kitchen and she didn't figure it out, said I was sleeping at a friends house and she said the same and we just crashed wherever that night.

Parents can be clueless! LOL

(The parents in my stories really don't get fleshed out much, if they're there at all.)

My current WIP is the first one where parents are really prominent, and I decided to make my MC's parents happily married and well-involved in their kids' lives, because...it was a nice change. Neither parent is nearly so 3D as my MC, but I sort of dealt with them the way I would any other minor character. I gave them a few personality traits, and I thought about what sort of parents I wanted them to be, and when there are relevant scenes, I include them, and try to give them a little bit of life, just like I would anyone else.

If you're having trouble, and the parents in your story need to be fleshed out a lot, maybe doing some of those random 20 questions survey type things as though you were them would help. Or think things like, how old were they when they had your MC (and any other children), and how old are they now? What kind of relationship do (or did, if they're divorced) the parents have with each other? How did they get together? What are their careers, life goals, etc.

I have a natural advantage here in that the parents of YA characters would be around my age.

I kind of just write whatever comes to my head at the moment, and for some odd reason my character's parents turned out to be nothing like mine. My MC is closer to her dad, I'm closer to my mom. Her dad is a lawyer, mine quit school in the sixth grade. Her mom is elegant, artistic, and shuts her out. Mine is a homebody and tells me nearly everything. Hmm...now that I'm writing this, I'm beginning to wonder if I have issues that I'm subconsciously trying to work out. *goes away scratching my head*

For my newest YA, High School Heroes, I wrote the parents through the point of view of my MC. In other words, her parents are overbearing, annoying, excpecting too much of her and grossing her out. I don't think the parents are as important to flesh out in a YA unless they are really important to the plot.

I will say that I do a lot more with my YA's mother, because I show that she does have a strong relationship with her that does eventually get threatened. But for the most part, my MC's parents are kinda background.

Kids end up being a lot like at least one of their parents. Maybe that will help.

I consider parents to be just the same as any other character. They're only older and love their children in the story. The way they react to their child depends on the character themself. Are they overbearing and anxious? Are they neglectful?

Study your own parents and look at their traits, and what makes them people.

Parents can be tricky to write, because most times if they knew all the trouble the MC was getting into, they'd lock them in the house. ("No, you can't go fight the evil empire today! I don't care how much you want to!")

I think Sarah Dessen does a really good job of making her parents three-dimensional. You might check out a few of her novels.

My MC's parents are dead also, so she lives with her aunt, who was hardish to develop. The aunt's gone through multiple personalities, and I think I've finally found the right one for her. Hopefully

Make your parents. . .people. That simple.

I will second the person who noted Dessen.

In our WIP, my MC's parents are very important for the plot; they're pretty much the ones who start a lot of the MC's conflicts.

Their Role

The question becomes not how well fleshed out the characters needs to be but what their role is. I avoid parents having strong roles in my stories, well so far, not because they aren't important but because it is not part of the story.

In my Marks of Eilira series, Zack is rebel and doesn't listen to his mom. He loves her, but because how his life has been he holds her mistakes over her as reason why not to listen to her. So, when they are around each other it usually fighting. When the story picks up, it takes place where she can't be since it is in another world. Though she is a very minor character she is fully fleshed out. I gave her a history I know why she did some of the things she did.

If your characters parent(s) are going to have a major role in the story, think about them when they were growing up and some of the mistakes they had made. Which explains why they act they way they do now that they are parents. Also parents can be good conflict preventing your main character from doing what they need to do. In the case of Zack, when his mom tells him to do something he either doesn't listen to her or can reason his way around it to do what he wants. When he does that it causes more problems but because he doesn't listen the parent issue doesn't really affect me.

One of the things you need parents to portray is what kind of person they are. In Harry Potter the Dursleys are not nice people. So their actions should show that. If your parents are nice and loving show that, but if the parents don't care what their kids are doing, show that.

Tim

Parents/Adults in YA Novels

Some of the parents/adults in my novel are as interesting as the YA characters. The older cast have more page time than other adults, but their necessary involvement with the YA characters/plotline makes the story even more interesting.