Just thought I'd get some opinions on this real quick. What do you call your character's parents in narration? In first-person, I'll generally just say 'mom' or 'dad'. But what about third-person? What about third-person bound? Would you call them 'mom'? 'Sara's mom'? 'Mrs. Peters'? Do you just call them by their first names? My biggest problem is when writing in third-person but switching characters perspectives from chapter to chapter since different characters call different adults different names. Let me know your thoughts and techniques and how not to confuse your readers. Thanks!
It all depends. I usually write in third-person limited, meaning focused on one person at a time. I usually say "[character]'s father/mother" or depending on whether I need another reference, "the king", "the baker", etc. Hope this helps!
think about how they're important to the reader or what the reader needs to know., For example, let's say this adult is the mom of X and a teacher of Y. If your perspective was of X, then X's mom/mother shows the relationship to the character in perspective. In Y's perspective, if they are familiar with the teacher and she is a recurring character (one teacher among many), then Ms. Name shows that she's an important character, or that she's related to X through last names. If Y and X are friends or have some sort of relationship the reader is aware of, then X's mom would still probably work and show a secondary relationship to the adult (family of a friend, etc.). If Y had no relationship, secondary or otherwise, and it was unnecessary to know the adult's name, then calling them the teacher (profession/title) works and doesn't add more names for the reader to have to remember
that's how I go about it anyways, hopefully this is not that confusing and it helps!
Mostly, I just default to (character')s mother/father, but one thing that helped me was to keep in mind that even though you're writing in the 3rd person, things are still sort of filtered through your character's eyes. So basically, how would your characters be referring to these other adults? You have a couple different options really, but I just go with how the POV character would refer to them. For instance, my character who is a prince would refer to his parents as his mother/father. When the POV shifts to my character who is a chimney sweep, those same characters are referred to as the king and queen.
If it helps (or maybe this will make things more confusing) I find that all your examples ( mom/ Sara's mom/ Mrs. Peters) sort of have different implications.
- Sara's mom implies that that the POV character knows Sara better than they know Sara's mother.
- Mrs. Peters feels more formal.
- Another one to consider is that referring to a character by their first name implies that the POV character is on a first name basis with them and that they know each other pretty well.
Good question!
First person: I have a protagonist who knows that he's not the real son of somebody he very much dislikes anyway, so I actively avoid having him call a specific character "dad", even though that character carries the father's name on the protagonist's birth certificate. It's [Title/Honorific] [Surname].
Third person limited: [Protagonist]'s mother, unless I want formal distance that's also maybe more flexible or expedient.
Third person omniscient: First name of the parents, or their best-known nickname, unless they remain a role rather than a developed character.
Thanks for everyone's helpful input! It's good to know what everyone else things on the subject :)
I think Naomi's mother is Véronique and her father is Etienne (although the latter was forcibly ejected from her life fairly early on). CJ's mother is probably Yodit (but goes by Judy). Kieron's father is probably Sione. That said: none of those names are set or have been used.
My Avatarverse OC's (adoptive, but no less "real" for it) parents' names were retroactively chosen for phonetic thematic reasons.
(Not me just dropping in here to share :)
I think of my characters parents as characters as well. I have backstories, personalities, ect for them. Including names obviously lol.
What I normally do is treat them as any other character in my stories while I write if that helps at all. Idk if it did lol
