We've all got parents in some form or other. Maybe they're biological. Maybe they're adopted, maybe they're a mad scientist deep in the confines of a musty laboratory. Who knows. Parents, to young kids and even older kids, can often be a bit of a drag, what with their wisdom and experience and ability to help us in many aspects of our life. Those pesky problem solvers, ruining our tales with their responsibility.
In short, parents can make telling certain stories harder to do, especially if they're good parents. Good parents tend to get killed very often before the story leaves chapter one by the mere virtue that if the protagonist still had those good parents, they wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
Parents, with all their emotional bonds and attachments, also make really good characters to kill (same goes for those wizened old mentors in many fantasy and science fiction tales). Their deaths can punch us in the gut. Their deaths can be a really fast, powerful way to build an emotional bridge from character to reader. Yes, that bridge is built from tears and heartache, but we human beings love reading about tragedy and overcoming it and having those "this is for you, mom" moments toward the story climax. Parental love eats at our core like a tapeworm.
[Okay, time out. Spending the start of nano neck-deep in horror and paranormal has my brain going the wrong way for writing these types of post, lol]
Anyway, dead parents that leave behind our poor, orphaned protagonist are super common across several genres.
There are also (usually) only two logical, realistic options for the state of parents in any story:
1. Alive.
2. Dead (or undead, if you prefer).
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
So yeah, no matter what you do, you're probably going to do something lots of people have done before. Sorry.
What can we do to make this cliche more unique and original to our story?
1. Would your character realistically have two deceased parents? The standards and casualty rates differ from a plague-ravaged war-torn kingdom vs today. Sure you have your Bruce Waynes and Harry Potters, but you can still have a lot of development and plot if there's a surviving parent.
2. Give the parents personality beyond "sucky", "careless", and "best ever." Parents are characters too. They should sound more like characters and less like caricatures. They might actually prove to be really interesting foils!
In Run Cold, Allie's parents are both alive. Her mother is a noble-winning scientist who pressures her daughter into following in her footsteps. Her mother is brilliant, but she has trouble connecting with people on an emotional level- which is unfortunately the only thing her daughter needs, and the friction there results in a lot of conflict. Allie's mother felt very real to some of my readers because she's got more depth to her than just being "no don't do that." They can understand that she wants the best for her daughter and tries to give her daughter the best, even while hating some of the things she does. I could've made her Evil Stepmother 2.0, but because she has more personality, she makes many readers feel like she's their mom, too!
3. Move the focus off their 'death' and onto other elements. A lot of the 'ugh dead parents' cliche comes from the reader always having to deal with the orphaned protagonist going 'boohoo they died and are dead.' We get it. Your character is sad and has to go on living their life without their parents, but try and focus on other aspects that might be important. In Frozen, Elsa and Anna lose their parents to a storm out on the high seas. However, a lot of what matters to the story is what their parents did rather than how they died (or the fact that they're dead). The parents influenced the plot.
To look at Disney, king of orphans, we can see other ways in which parents have other influences. Simba's dad didn't just die. Mufasa's death was a part of the plot (Simba thinks he killed his father). You can do interesting things like that, too! Parents don't just have to be the emotional springboard. Look what happened to Dexter after he and his brother watched their mom get murdered. We see how it changed him, in more than just "boohoo."
What can we do about parents?
1. If they aren't important to the story at all, don't mention them. * The 49 year old hardboiled detective doesn't need to inform his readers that his parents are dead unless there's a reason for it, like he's chasing his mother's killer or he runs into an old cop his father used to work with, etc.
*Unless realistically there would be parents. Then you should at least give them a passing mention so it doesn't feel stupid. Like in high school stories. The 15 year old kid doesn't usually own the house. It's okay for mom and dad not to be there, but at least have a reasonable reason why. Sometimes that teensy little mention can make your story go from unbelievable to 'okay I'll buy this.'
2. Don't bring up the dead parents on every page. Don't bring up the same thing about the dead parents every time. You don't want to exhaust your reader with too much repetition. A little can be okay, but don't overdo it or your character might sound melodramatic.
3. Give parents lives. Want a character's parents out of the picture without offing them? Try giving them lives. They don't have to be dying or laying in a ditch shooting up heroin, either. You can have a mom always away on business trips to foreign countries. You can have a nurse that works evenings and goes in at 3pm so he only sees his kids at breakfast. And if they're divorced? Now you only have one parent to worry about, and if they're busy...Well would you look at that. You talked yourself out of having to kill one of them so your protagonist can be home alone all night!
4. Give them a memorable, meaningful death, or show it in a novel light. Sometimes Mom&Pop are going down no matter what. In that case, use details. Be specific. Make their death something unique. They died in a car crash? Okay, not unique but realistic. So focus on what makes that car crash unique. When Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered (in an alternate universe I believe), one of the most iconic images, used today in multiple versions) is that her pearl necklace breaks. Sometimes, that's all you need to do to elevate the death.
Bambi's mother also got shot and died. We see Bambi running alone. He finally gets to safety and goes out in the snow to look for her... The snow gets thicker and heavier as he calls for her, and then he runs into the stag. Even though we don't see her death, we still get a powerful scene.
What have you done with parents in your stories? How have you made them (or their death) stand out?
