Parents of Protags

Are you telling the story from the POV of the kid? If so, you should consider that most kids (well, mine at least as teenagers) were almost completely oblivious to their parent's lives and didn't have a clue as to how upsetting some of their actions were to the adults who love them. So if it is from the kid's POV, I'd stick to relating only the actions of the parents that directly impact the protagonist. YAs are in their own little world, and a lot of the time parents are marginal to it.

My story didn't involve the parents so I left them way in the background.

heh, maybe this is why so many YAs revolve around protags who are either orphans or at boarding school (or both).

My rec would be to go ahead and write the parents' reactions into the story, but then come back and cut most of it back out. That way, even if it's not directly in the story, it will color your characterization. But that's just me.

nice topic budYYY!

I think that in YA, particularly the more fantasy oriented works, the parents are either dead or absent so that the protagonists can work through their own problems and make their own decisions. In those stores grounded in reality, sometimes the parents are the problem.
Dale Peck had a new twist to the convention in his YA book Drift House: the kids were sent from Manhattan to stay w/ and uncle in Canada because of 9/11.

C.bronco said:

Dale Peck had a new twist to the convention in his YA book Drift House: the kids were sent from Manhattan to stay w/ and uncle in Canada because of 9/11.

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hm, kind of like what Lewis did with The Chronicles of Narnia-- the kids are staying with the professor because of England's kinder transport out of London. That's certainly a way to handle it. There are a lot of other ways to use that concept, too:

Natural Disaster: the kids have been sent away while the folks rebuild the house/find a new one (New Orleans, anyone?).
Gang violence: "In west Philidelphia, born and raised, on the playground where I spent most of my days..."
Disease (probably better in historical settings): Sending the child into the country to get them away from an epidemic.
Witness Protection: The parents are key witnesses in a very highly-charged case. They've sent the kids away to live with relatives for the duration, and plan to join them when it ends.

None of those resolve the issue that there's going to be some kind of guardian figure in the character's life, though. One of the biggest weaknesses I see in a lot of YA these days is that authors are so busy adhering to the 'parents may not resolve the problem' convention that they forget that the parents wouldn't ever allow their children into the dangerous situations they're getting themselves into. We as authors need to come up with a compelling reason that the parents wouldn't know or wouldn't involve themselves. Leaving them as bumbling/clueless background characters really detracts from realism, and I also feel like it prevents readers from identifying with the MCs. Their parents, after all, aren't dumb enough to let an eleven year old go up against the greatest evil in the universe when they themselves have the power to stop it... why should the MC's?

In my story (being read by an agent now) the father of my main character is intimately involved with the plot, to the extent of having to be rescued by the main character - as he's out of action or not at his best for a good part of the book, it's up to his two daughters to sort things out.

LeeFlower said:

My rec would be to go ahead and write the parents' reactions into the story, but then come back and cut most of it back out. That way, even if it's not directly in the story, it will color your characterization. But that's just me.

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I think this is outstanding advice. I intend to use it!

I'm not a parent (yet), but after three years in "teacher school" working with high school kids, 12 years of hardcore babysitting, and a staff position at a parenting magazine, I find that I have a lot of parental reactions to children/teens in my life and children/teens in my writing.

Does this mean I'm turning into my mother? Oh, wait, this is the YA forum, not the horror forum. ;]

Kristen

Once the parents are absent, the protagonists can then choose which mentors or parental figures to latch onto (if any). It's interesting to consider who they choose & why.

Evaine said:

In my story (being read by an agent now) the father of my main character is intimately involved with the plot

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I have a similar situation. The single-mother in my YA story is trying to hide the identity of the real father from the main character (her son), so she is part of the plot.

Maybe that is your answer. Either make the parents part of the plot or totally cut them out. Then again, there is no perfect answer

Hmmm. If you've introduced the parents, and IF they find out what's going on, you need to do something with them. If they fail to react, readers will think of them as "bad" parents (which is true for 90% of the parents in teenage movies, anyway). However, (like LeeFlower said), write it in and possibly pull most of it out later. Remember, this is fiction about your young MC, and if the parents get in the way of your STORY, you'll need to deal with them (get them out of the way logically).

Sorry, I have to think in terms of teenage movies. Think of the good movies that had "good" parents (i.e., believable parents). They're not in the movie all that much, but every second of their time on screen counts and adds so much to the movie. Just watched Basketball Diaries. The mom ain't in it all that much, but the times she's on screen really counts. Or for something fluffier, think of Pretty in Pink (though the dad actually has his own story arc in the movie).

I have a similar problem with my WIP. My protagonist is around 18 years old and something of the supernatural variety happens to her. Dealing with her parents' reactions is becoming very awkward! But I don't want to write them out with some kind of "convenient" excuse, because I think their presence is important (even though I don't fully see why yet).

I'm going to keep plugging away at it, and probably follow LeeFlower's suggestion. And I'll keep an eye on this thread!

My MC's parents are vital to the story... Her mother is murdered and my MC goes on a quest to find the killer. Along the way, she finds out that her father isn't really her father, her grandmother is a lunatic, and that she has a half sister out there that's a b*tch.

I'm working on it.

Great topic! As a parent, I also struggle with this. All good advice here. I'll try to follow it myself!

I often go even further, trying to end the novel with the didactic approach of a parent and teacher, which so far has ruined my first novel. I completely watered down my MC from her attitude at the beginning to a "completely reformed" teenager.

I even abandoned this work several years ago because I couldn't imagine a "real" ending that didn't turn my young gal into a complete nun. I think I need to start over at about chapter six!

Again, love this topic. We really needed this forum, and I promise to be more active out here!

In my last YA novel Tyger Tyger, book one of The Goblin Wars, the parents are integral to the plot--and fun fascinating characters as well. They--and other parental figures--have a *huge* influence on the main characters and remain important through the whole trilogy.

It is a Celtic story, and in Celtic stories you never journey alone.

Since my fantasy book is about a stagnant, fascist society with strict, traditional roles (gender, class, hierarchy, et cetera) the main character's parents are really just extensions of the world they live in, rather than wholly characters themselves.

His mother is an empty shell of a woman who exists to cook her husband dinner and toil in a sweatshop for a pittance, while his father is a brutal "sweat-off-my-brow!" engineer who beats his children into submission to take the edge off the fact that he's been passed over for promotion. The parents are never really more than archetypical plot devices, but then again, no one in the clockwork city is ever really alive, they just kind of....keep on ticking.

Parents pop in and out in my stories. My MCs always have some sort of relationship with their folks rather estranged or close so that it affects them in a way. I'm only able to see things from one angle and that's the kid's POV so it's an interesting take to be on both sides.

So far if/when my young characters get into trouble, the parents aren't fully aware until after the fact. And by then sometimes it's too late for their actions to do anything.

Parents were a sticky situation in my dystopian, as several characters have recently lost theirs. Other authority figures sort of step in when help is required.

For the contemporary, the MC's parents are across the country while she's staying with her aunt and uncle who pop in to check on her at intervals between stints at the hospital. They're there, and she still reacts to them, but they aren't overbearing.

I like to bring the parents in, sporadically, and have them build bonds and conflict with the protagonist, and then take them away halfway through the story. Muahahaha! Well, that's what I did last time, anyway. Protag had to grow up fast in act 3.

I just sat in on a class about this. The adults in mg and ya have to have purpose, but the kid/teen should be the "agent of change". Otherwise the story becomes that of the adults, not the mc. Best class ever. You could "Google this: role of adults in children's lit.

In my first stories, parents were absent. (Well, more accurately, the kids were out on their own for one reason or another.) In my current WIP, it's about the protag's relationship with her parents, so their reactions are as important as anything. Three cheers for YA novels about family!

The parents/guardians usually become really important to the MC. One of my WIPs is all about the main character coming of age and learning to detach himself from his parents (with whom he's rather to close, for an eighteen-year-old guy), in another, the parents are the antagonists. In another, the grandparents raised the MC, and pretty much all of his conflict stems from complex relationships with them.

I think parental relationships are a goldmine for writing material in YA. I wish more writers would dig there.