“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family
in another city.” —George Burns
When we think about family, we think about memoir or autobiography.
In our Memoir, family is a main character, the center of the book. It can be cathartic or a revenge piece, a direct outlet for your version of a childhood moment or a family story. Autobiography is all about you regardless of any absolute truth (because what you experience is your own truth). There are many wonderful books and organizations to help you write your memoir and or autobiography, but this is not one of them.
What we are exploring here is how to use family personalities and dynamics to add volume and drama to your fiction. Your parents, siblings and cousins can all contribute to your novel through adding depth for more interesting characters, being the first person souce for an outrageous plot line or just helpfully add in colorful and completely misremembered emotional holidays and stand-up comedy routines.
“A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.”
—Ogden Nash
—Ogden Nash
Let’s start with the favorite family stories. Family stories have always served as the raw material for scenes, poems, comedy, pretty much anything but an accurate account of the past. What are your family stories? Can you recall or will you need to make a concerted effort to ask for those stories again during the holidays? I would suggest recording your uncle or brother as he tells about the time he jumped from roof to save the family cat, but if they know you are paying close attention, they may become self-consicous and the story will be edited for polite company. You don’t want that. What you want is the raw story the details of which inexplicably change with each telling. This is the stuff of character backstory, who is your character? Did she love the family cat more than anyone else? Were you the one stuck with cleaning the litter box? Why doesn’t anyone else remember that?
What are the personalities according to birth order? You can begin with common wisdom:
The oldest makes the rules
The middle is the reasons we have rules
For the youngest, rules don’t apply.
Compare the broad generalities to the specific sibling personalities. What emerges?
How did your birth order change or color your family memories? Does the oldest remember it differently? Does the youngest?
Because of birth order, your siblings lived a different childhood from you. It is pointless to confirm your memories against theirs. You don’t need to ask them “Is this real? Or Did this really happen this way?” Your reality is your reality, use it, exploit it. Go with it.
Is your character the the pleasing oldest daughter or the youngest sibling who forgot the boiling water on the stove and almost burned down the house?
Describe your parents’ relationship from two perspectives, yours and a siblings, or imagine their relationship from your grandparent’s perspective. Both Frank McCourt and Jeanette Walls used imagined perspective to create their fictionalize parents and grandparents.
Think of examples of when you’ve been in business or in a social situation and you learn about the birth order of your boss or friend and you think AH HA!
Use that in your descriptions and motivation for your characters.
These are all great approaches to a fuller character and to help give you a quick backstory to aid in a fictional conversation: the rule follower confronts the rule breaker.
Another happy use of family stories for fictional work is the turn around. Was there a time in the murky family past when the “problem child” abruptly stepped up during an emergency and took care of the situation? Did you have a spinster aunt who up and married a traveling salesman?What are the family secrets and can you modify them to create a wonderful sub-plot to your book? If it can happen in real life, it probably can happen in fiction.
“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” —Jane Howard, journalist.
Here are some memoirs to help remind you of what is possible when an author launches into his or her family past.
1. “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank (1947)
2.”Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt (1996)
3.”The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls (2005)
4.”Educated” by Tara Westover (2018)
5.”Night” by Elie Wiesel (1958)
6.”Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah (2016)
7.”Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez” by Richard Rodriguez (1982)
8.”The Liars’ Club” by Mary Karr (1995)
9.”Just Kids” by Patti Smith (2010)
10.”Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” by Cheryl Strayed (2012)
Your family can be an Open Source for fictional characters. When you are faced with a character that refuses to come to life, consider his or her birth order – why do they do what they do? Recall a family story that has always explained why your uncle is a little crazy, or why your cousin went off the deep end. Also remember that fiction demands a reasonable conclusion and the ending must make sense. To this end, you aren’t describing everything about your family member, nor are you telling their whole story, you are merely borrowing a feature of a family member to create a more rounded fictional character. Birth order, family legends, long buried dynamics can enhance to your fictional characters and made them jump off the page or off the roof.
When your siblings confront you, deny everything.
New Collection! I’m working on a new book – Out Loud – A Writing Adventure for Women. Learn how to tap into your creativity, organize your next non-fiction book and embrace your writing life! Launches in the Winter of 2025.
