Family tragedies mark everyone they touch, usually in very disruptive ways. Modern stories reflecting that are Ordinary People, The Descendants, the TV series Revenge, and that international hit, Dallas.
Some family situations are so stereotypical you just need one phrase to conjure up an entire palette of behaviours and emotions: mother-in-law, stepfather, kissing cousins, you’re like a brother to me, sugar daddy, momma’s boy, daddy’s little princess, and that poor red-headed stepchild.
In this category we focus on stories where the family relationships drive the plot and the character arcs, rather than stories that just have families in them as character background, etc.
The Defining Myths
King Agamemnon sacrificed his virgin daughter Iphigenia to get the winds to sail the Greek fleet to Troy and begin the Trojan War. Upon his return ten years later his still angry and grieving wife Clytemnestra murdered him with the help of her ambitious lover, who coincidentally was not a good stepfather to the remaining children.
Wagner’s Ring Cycle operas have all sorts of family dynamics going on among the Teutonic gods, mortal, demi-gods, dwarves, giants and sea nymph sisters, a lot of it rather troublesome and tragic but set to quite stirring music.
Exemplar Movies
On Golden Pond and The Descendants
Why it exists (evolutionary back-story)
Family units are a genetic insurance policy. The members collaborate, look out for each other, and help ensure the survive-and-thrive of their unique family gene pool.
The wicked stepmother is a staple in fairy tales. Some say this genetic cleansing followed by re-booting the gene pool explains why step-parents are often so cruel to the step-children – it’s instinctual. You see it in animals, such as when a new tomcat kills the other tomcat’s kittens, breeds with all the female cats and starts a new gene pool.
This execution of an entire family line happened a lot in ancient times in many royal bloodline situations. Regicide, infanticide, fratricide, etc. are so common as to be the unremarkable in the history books. Read or watch I, Claudius for some bloody dramatic examples of this concept of purifying or wiping out a bloodline.
Filial piety is a moral construct meant to ensure that the mutiple generations of a family support each other. Ancestor worship is a part of this system. Many feared the one-child policy of China would undermine the system and old people would be left to fend for themselves. We still have not seen the final results of this societal shift.
How it works (physiology & psychology)
Geneology is the emotional attachment to heritage, a search for personal identity and a sense of belonging, and if you’re lucky, the importance of your ancestors. Everyone looks for that lost duke but many find horsethieves instead.
Siblings can be a mirroring device leading to self-knowledge: you can quite clearly see what you want and do not want to be. Some parents try to live their own unfulfilled dreams through their children; typically this does not go well. Two extravagant examples are Mama Rose in Gypsy and Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest.
Families have a shared history of experience that others simply cannot understand. There are special languages and stories that when retold at family gatherings strengthen the familial emotional bonds.
In True Lies and The Last Boy Scout you have dysfunctional daughters who don’t like their fathers. Both dads live a lie: Arnold Schwarzenegger as a secret agent and Bruce Willis as a detective. In Contact, Jodie Foster’s dad was very supportive of her celestial ambitions.
The mother-son relationship in The Grifters is particularly twisted by crime and incest. In Sons and Lovers the emotionally possessive mother-son relationship hinders the young man’s ability to have a healthy love relationship with a girl his own age.
Many stories are about finding the father and/or winning the father’s love. E.g. Thor, Indiana Jones, and The Great Santini. The complex family dynamics of Luke Skywalker, his sister Princess Leia, and their father Darth Vader are foundational plot points for the entire Star Wars series. The wonderful Young Indiana Jones TV series has a through-line of Indy’s remote father not being able to express his love.
How it serves us now
Even in this fractured world of global interconnections, families split by work, diverse interests, distracting media, and new family ties, there is something about that core family that still exerts a pull.
Think of all the drama around holiday family gatherings - weddings, births, funerals...all are ripe fodder for your stories.
A family’s support or lack thereof can create tight situations for your heroine. In many cultures there is still the expectation that elderly parents will be cared for by the unmarried daughter, the eldest son and his family, the gay son, etc. And yet, most Americans place their elders in “assisted living” homes.
Just as we learn a lot from watching our friends around their families, you the writer can reveal a lot about a character by showing us her family, either directly or via her back-story.
Examples in Myth and Legend
The Atriedes clan in Greek mythology took family loyalty to cannibalistic extremes.
Another Greek myth tells about Medea, who when spurned by her husband Jason for a younger local princess killed the interloper, killed her own two sons by Jason, and fled the country.
In the Arthurian legends, Morgaine is King Arthur’s half-sister and she seduces him in some versions. In Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, she is tasked as a child to “take care of” her little brother, Arthur. Their mating is part of a seasonal pagan ritual, rather than a calculated seduction.
Examples in History and Current Events
Dynasties from the ancient Egyptian to the Chinese, the Roman Empire, and the ruling families of Europe are complex inter-woven webs of family blood, loyalties, and rivalries.
A number of ancient societies married brother and sister to keep the blood line pure. Many feudal systems practiced le droit signuer where the lord of the land deflowers every bride, fathering a lot of children and keeping that genetic connection active within his fiefdom. That was a major emotional event in Braveheart.
In modern times there are still ruling families in business [Rupert Murdoch’s, the Coors family], in show biz [Fondas, Clooneys, Danner/Paltrow], the Kardashians] and in politics [the Kennedys, the Bushes].
And in the adventure side of show biz you have the Flying Walendas, and Evel Knievel and his son Robbie.
Communes of the American Hippie era attempted to create a lateral family from non-related people with no structural heirarchy. Vertical families are the typical grandma, grandad, mom, dad, kids, etc. The retired spies in RED were a lateral family.
A high divorce rate and more non-married moms has created a lot of single-parent families and blended families. The lack of the large support structure of an extended family is often thought to be detrimental.
Running vendettas sometimes pit family members against each other, sometimes it’s family against family, as in the Hatfields and the McCoys, and the Taylors and Suttons.
Examples in Media
Game of Thrones is rich with family intrigue, loyalties, and betrayals that drive the plot of the stories. Same with The Borgias.
Love Actually has many different types of familial relationships in varying states of strength or disarray.
Frank Herbert’s Dune series of novels contains feudal houses patterned after those of Medieval and Renaissance Europe.
Sibling rivalry drives many people and many stories: East of Eden, the Danish film Brothers, A River Runs Through It, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Twins. A fun example of sibling loyalty is Boondock Saints.
In Quigley Down Under Laura san Giocomo plays a mother who has accidentally smothered her child trying to keep it quiet during an Indian attack. It drives her over the edge of madness with grief and remorse. Sophie’s Choice is a different setup but is steeped in the guilt over a child’s death.
In Peter Pan there are three family clu
sters: the Darlings, Peter and the Lost Boys with Wendy as mom and Peter as Dad, and the Pirates.
In the Harry Potter stories the Dursleys are a wretched family Harry is happy to escape. The Weasely family is his ideal and he spends lots of time with Ron, Ginnie, the twins, and their parents.
Boogie Nights isn’t really about the porn industry, it is about creating a lateral family.
The Royal Tenenbaums is about an eccentric father who wants to make things right with his three grown children, who are all prodigies of some kind, and their mother.
In TV we’ve had The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, The Bill Cosby Show, All in the Family, Malcolm in the Middle, Bonanza, Married with Children, Fresh Prince of Bel Air.. Mid-century American TV programming suggested an ideal of what the American family should have been like in Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, The Danny Thomas Show, The Donna Reed Show. In the mid-late 60s it became painfully apparent this ideal was definitely not real.
This absurdity peaked with The Partridge Family and then came All in the Family, in which Norman Lear was able to make socio-political statements about family and society couched in an irreverant comedy series.
And who can ever forget those first nighttime soaps from the 80s, Dallas and Dynasty.
Dysfunctional families fill the airwaves these days with The Simpsons (the longest running TV show in America), Arrested Development, Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, Numbers, Fringe, and many more.
Water for Chocolate is an example of someone fighting the demands of filial piety.
Examples in Music
“Chicken Fried” - Zac Brown Band
"In Color".- Jamey Johnson
“If Heaven Wasn't So Far Away” - Justin Moore
“Together” from Gypsy
“We are Family” – Sly and the Family Stone
The Jackson Five, Hanson Brothers, Jonas Brothers, and the Lennon Sisters.
Symbols
Some birthmark or heraldry item. In Game of Thrones there is the dragon symbol.
The identity of the “hidden baby” in many stories is revealed by a physical feature such as nose, hair or eye colour. The Importance of Being Earnest is a charming story woven around this hidden baby plot.
Knots.
Trees.
Interlocking hands.
Blood.
Key Element – the Shining Moment
Fierce loyalty -- as when in the latest incarnation Star Trek film young Spock fights the other young Vulcan boys because they dissed his mom.
The rescue. Sometimes the young ones save elders like in Spy Kids; sometimes it’s vice versa.
The embrace of reconciliation.
The welcoming celebration ala the Prodigal Son Bible story.
Written Descriptions
Show a sense of both similarity and differences. “Tall like his brother, he was broader in the shoulders.”
Have two or more characters do the same thing, say the same phrase, something to denote their mutual background. In The Italian Job when bad guy Ed Norton realizes Charlize Theron is Donald Sutherland’s daughter when she repeats one of his catch-phrases.
In Wyatt Earp starring Kevin Costne,r the father Nicholas [Gene Hackman] says to his boys, “Remember this, all of you. Nothing counts so much as blood. The rest are just strangers.”
In British crime shows there is often an undiscovered brother or sister working at back angles to the main story, providing dramatic plot twists in the end when all is revealed. Good examples are the Hercule Poirot mysteries, The Importance of Being Earnest, and the Mrs. Bradley mysteries.
In Romance novels the “secret baby” is a popular trope.
Other ways to convey familial relationships include birthmarks, eye colour, accents, or other physical traits like in The Coneheads – it’s real obvious they’re related.
Cinematic Techniques
In mutilple family-member situations instead of camera angles use wardrobe and props to differentiate each distinct sibling.
In blocking, put the predominant sibling in the foreground, or looming large in the background.
Since this concept is about people of the same flesh, show hands (or other body parts such as arms, heads, lips) touching or going apart.
Between adult and child is a downward angle to show the hierarchy, power and protection or unfortunately sometimes, power and suppression or abuse. Between siblings the angles are more face to face, and between adults it’s more face to face.
Be very specific with your angles to get across the point of who has the power and how they are using it. Use an upward angle to show sinister intent; a downward angle to reveal innocence. Thought they are not about family in particular some exagerated examples of this technique are The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm205953024/tt0010323 for an example of the former and the old silent movie series The Perils of Pauline for the latter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perils_of_Pauline_(1914_serial)
Conclusion
No matter your story’s genre, style, setting, or main plot you can enrich your characters and add dramatic tension by including some family dynamics, whether with the presence of the actual related people or by reference to them through conversation, photos, etc.
Family sagas are always popular and offer you lots of great opportunities to explore various versions of and intensities of Familial Love.
In your writing, give us a sense of similarities and differences. “Though decades apart in age, that smile was so similar as to remove any doubt about their shared heritage.”
Keep in mind that families make us who we are, whether they are present or not. Genetics, psychology, philosophies all influence us in varying ways at various ages. By including some family dynamics in your stories you will give your audiences much richer and more memorable characters.
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Exercise #1 – Awareness
What is the most dramatic example of familial love or hate you can think of, from myth, media, or actual life?
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Exercise #2 – Writing
Write or select a scene of at least three exchanges of dialogue where two people are not related.
Then write the same scene with the two people related in some way: parents, siblings, cousins.
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Further Reading
The Genesis account of Cain and Abel
The Bible account of Joseph and his brothers selling him into slavery
A River Runs Through It – Norman Maclean
Bastard out of Carolina – Dorothy Allison
East of Eden – John Steinbeck
Forsyte Saga, The – John Galsworthy
Joy Luck Club, The – Amy Tan
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Further Viewing
Adams Family, The
Auntie Mame
Big Fish, The
Birdcage / La Cage au Folle
Boogie Nights
Brady Bunch, The – TV series
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Christmas Story, The
Chronicles of Narnia
Dallas – TV series
Departed, The
Fringe – TV series
Gypsy
Home Alone
Incredibles, the
Juno
Kids are Allright, The
Little Miss Sunshine
Mulan
National Lampoon’s Family Vacation
Numbers – TV series
Revenge – TV series
Sons of Katie Elder
Sophie’s Choice
Sound of Music, the
Stepfather
Swiss Family Robinson
Terms of Endearment
Tree of Life
Two and a Half Men – TV series
Wyatt Earp
Yours, Mine, and Ours
CHAPTER THREE
BFF = Best Friends Forever
I love you, You love
me,
We're best friends like friends should be.
Sung by Barney the purple dinosaur,
words and music by Elmer Bernstein
A True Friend...
Scolds like a dad.
Cares like a mom.
Teases like a sister.
Irritates like a brother.
Platonic love can be defined as a closeness, an affinity, loyalty, and enjoyment of the other person with no tinge of the erotic from either party.
This kind of love can be primary or a very important secondary part of your plot.
Regardless of whether or not the people see each other a lot or just every once in awhile, once that bond is made it holds true in spite of the years, political views, relatives, etc. You can call them up after twenty years and the bond is still there. When you see each other after a long time apart, it’s like you were just together yesterday and you pick up right where you left off.
The Protagonist can have friends, sure. But unless that friendship itself is integral to the plot or to that character’s development, it doesn’t qualify as a BFF story.
Show Me the Love! Page 3
