Jessie's Tips for Better Writing

Parents in Stories

PARENTS IN STORIES

If your story is about about a teenage kid in this normal world, then this is my tip for you to make your story realistic.

1. All parents aren't dumb. -So please stop acting like they are. I'm a teenager, so I know that sometimes we can feel like we know everything and that our parents are stupid. I thought that about a couple years ago, but now I've come to realize that everything they do is out of their love and concern for me. (Yeah, I know you've heard it before, but it's true.) 

So don't write about your character's parents being so, so incredibly idiotic and oblivious to their child's actions. If I spent the night at a guys house (like many girls seem to "accidently" do in stories) do you know how mad my parents would be? I'd be grounded until the next presidential inauguration. Yet parents in stories don't even care. The girl never gets in trouble with them for spending the night at a guy's house, it's actually like she never disappeared at all! The parents seem completely oblivious to the fact that their daughter was missing! Don't you think parents of a teenage girl would wonder where she went if she didn't come home? Most parents worry about their kids being kidnapped.

On this note, try not to make your parents the most strict, most cruel parents on this earth who only have hate for the child and want to make their lives miserable! If they hated you, why would they have kept you once you were born? They love you. Seriously. So don't make the parents some sadistic people unless the character has serial killers for parents :O That'd actually be kind of interesting.

Back to the point, don't make them evil for absolutely no reason. Remember, REASONS.

Need I say more? If your character does something that would normally be punished in a normal household, then have her be punished. Authors on here typically do one of these three things:

1. Make their parents completely lenient and care-free! Sure, it's okay if their daughter goes and spends a week at her friends house for no reason, she's clearly not doing anything wrong at ALL during this stay and there's no way there'll be boys involved. Sure, it's okay if she goes to parties every night and fails her classes! NO.

2. Make their parents completely strict and cruel. Their daughter can NEVER do anything right. For example, one of these moms might say something like: "Maddie I can't believe you got a B on that test! You are grounded from everything for two months and you can only sit in your room and study and you can't see your boyfriend ever! " This is way overused as a cause for a girl not to see a boy. OOOOH Drama! No, just no.

3. Make their parents invisible. Yeah, I'm serious. This is kind of like number 1, except in the story your character seems to have no parents at all. Yeah...sorry, but most of us don't have the kind of freedom to run to parties every night,  (not to mention she's also getting perfect grades on top of it? Whaaat?) so your teenager character shouldn't either.

CHALLENGE: This was more of a how-to, not so much of a challenging chapter. However, just stop and think about what I've said, and think about the parents in your story. Are they present in the character's lives? What are his/her views about them, what's the relationship like? Every teenager has parents, whether he/she's born to them, adopted, fostered by them, etc. So don't pretend like he/she doesn't.