Children Will Listen

Today's blog post comes with theme music!  

     On Friday, my mother got home from work as my brother and I were about to take a walk to the Dandy, so we invited her along.  We had a nice walk as a family, and when we got back my brother asked if we could go down to the mall so he could buy some hats he'd planned on picking up before some of his friends canceled on him.

     We were having a good time, so we hopped in the car and drove the 45 minutes or so down to the mall, where we almost never go.  As long as we were out, we decided to have dinner, so when John had picked out his Suicide Squad and Dipper Pines hats, we headed up to Friendly's on the second level, to feast on ice cream and get actual food to take home.

     As I have discussed before, I have Tourette's Syndrome, which is a neurological condition in which a dopaminurgic disregulation results in vocal and mechanical tics.  Essentially, I make weird involuntary noises and twitch a lot.  Sometimes I swear, sometimes I scream, sometimes I trill like a bird, and I never know what's coming next or when a new tic will present itself.

     As mentioned in previous posts, one of the things that sets off my tics is changes in temperature, and in NY state we've had a long string of very, very hot weeks, so everyone keeps their air conditioning cranked up to eleven, which means a pretty severe change in temp whenever I enter a public building.  I'm also cold blooded (actual Reptilian Maggie Coates for Overlord 2k16), so the cold gets to me fairly quickly.

     This is all to say that by the end of our dining experience, during which I consumed an ice cream sundae for bonus cold points, I was feeling pretty ticky.

      I wasn't really paying much attention to anyone else in the restaurant until I turned my head to shout "Goddamn" at the cushion of my seat, at which point I heard the mother of two at the table behind me say, "Well she's going to Hell."

     At this point I'd like to remind you that this is not a nice thing to say about anyone, regardless of your personal religious views, especially when you are well within earshot of the person to whom you are referring.

      The children laughed, because of course they would, Mommy made a funny, and when Mommy makes a funny, we laugh.  The little boy then proceeded to make coo-coo bird noises at me as I twitched and jerked about, and if I had looked behind me I probably would have caught him with a finger looping aerial circles around his ear.  His mother laughed and let him continue with this for about a minute before she told him he should probably be quieter.

     No shit, Mom.

     At no point did I turn to speak to her, though I wanted to.  After strike two I decided if they said anything further, I'd say something, but we left shortly thereafter.

     As soon as we left, I wished I had said something.  I always feel that way after I decide to "just ignore it."  It makes me feel as though I've betrayed my people--as though I've let down the entire human race, even. Certainly I've deprived those children of an early opportunity to learn from their mother's mistakes.

     "But Maggie, you're overreacting!  She couldn't have known you had Tourette's!"  Okay, yeah, maybe not.  But should that have mattered?  For one, when I do my herky-jerky tics, which I was doing then, I look a lot like I'm having a seizure or a stroke.  If you were having a seizure or a stroke, and you heard people making fun of you instead of maybe, I don't know, wondering if you were okay or maybe needed medical assistance, you wouldn't be super pleased, now would you?

     "But you weren't having a stroke or a seizure!"  Okay, true.  But it's still demeaning and dehumanizing, other-izing at the very least.  It's embarrassing enough to have people stare at you whenever you go out in public, to have to calm down the wait staff whenever you scream for no reason, or worry that that police officer is going to think you're flashing gang signs or flipping them off on purpose or is going to arrest you for public indecency (you can still, I'll remind you, be arrested or fined for public cursing in this country).  Having people openly mocking you, children, openly mocking you, is demoralizing at its best.

     And what if my actions weren't the result of a neurological disorder?  If I really was suffering from a nervous breakdown (which I have done before and will do again, or my surname isn't Coates), or delusions, or I had the DT's or some other form of withdrawal?  If I was having a psychotic episode, would that make me any less deserving of basic human empathy?  Would that make it any more right to mock me for something I couldn't control?

      There's no honor in mocking the disabled.

      Let me say it louder for the people in the back:  There is no honor in mocking the disabled.

     There's certainly no honor in (essentially) telling someone they're going to hell because they swore involuntarily.  I've been through that before, lady, my classmates in high school called me Satan for years, and every other week someone openly wonders if I'm possessed.  Brushing it off is second nature at this point.  Brushing a lot of things off is second nature at this point.

     And yet....

     I can't really let this one go until I get it off my chest, this you-didn't-say-anything guilt that I get.  Because it's me today, and I can take it--next week is someone just slightly less stable than I am, someone more vulnerable, someone younger, someone more afraid, someone less able to defend themselves, someone who hates themselves more, someone--anyone!  Because cruelty, especially cruelty to a stranger, doesn't stop with one person.  Cruelty to a stranger never stops with one person.

     And probably what bugs me most about this particular case was that this was a mother, teaching her two young children through example and tacit approval that it's perfectly acceptable to make fun of disabled people within their range of hearing.  Teaching her children, through example and tacit approval, that people with disabilities, people who behave a little oddly, people who dare to act a little different than the norm, do not deserve respect and exist to be ridiculed.

     And that--that right there--is what kills me.  That's what makes me so angry, so frustrated with myself for not speaking up.  It's one thing for a judgmental asshole to be wandering the world, making fun of young women (teenagers) for things they can't control.  But to teach your children that that is an acceptable lifestyle is unconscionable!  If it had been a child poking fun, and the parent had reprimanded them, I'd let it go--I'd know that the kid was in competent hands, and the parents were doing their best to do right by their kid.

     But it's not fair to me, or others like me, when a parent teaches their children to mock.  It's not fair to the children, that they're being taught by their parents to mock.  It's not fair to those children's children, either--and somewhere along that family line, there's going to be a child who ends up "off."  Tourette's has a typical onset of ages 7-12, so in the next six years, both those kids could wake up one day with tics!  They probably won't, and I wouldn't wish it on them (life is hard enough already, and with that kind of mother they don't need this kind of hot mess on their plates), but everyone who thinks they're normal eventually finds out they're wrong.  Unless they're deluding themselves.

     Here's the facts:  Children listen to what you say, watch what you do, and learn from what you teach, whether you intend them to or not.  If you're cruel to other people, your children will become cruel; if you're kind to other people, your children will become kind.

     But children also pay attention to what you don't say, to what you don't do, to what your face does when they do something.  They seek your approval and try to please you.  And if your son finds out that making fun of "crazies" makes you laugh, he'll do it again.  And again.  And again and again and again.  Because it makes Mommy happy, so it's the right thing to do.   Children follow in the footsteps of their parents and teachers, and a lot of the time, bullying begins with the adults.  With that we-are-both-sane-so-we-are-inherently-better laugh, or a smile that says "God that kid was so annoying, I have to reprimand you for hitting her but Jesus Christ did I want to do it myself, good job."

     Children want to make their parents happy.

      So be the person your Mom would want you to be.  Or, if your mother was an ass, be better than she was.  Encourage your children to be better than you are--why would we have children if we didn't want a better world for them than the world we grew up in ourselves?

     And if you're going to make fun of disabled people, don't do it in front of your kids.  They'll listen.

     Then they'll repeat.

Playing Favorites: Parents, Part 3

     On Monday I started a series on Parental Favoritism, and followed up on it on Wednesday--now, late on a Friday night, I'm finishing up the series, at least for the foreseeable future.  Here are the last four words that I currently have on the subject of how to spice up your parental favoritism (sub)plots.

7.  Put the protagonist somewhere in the middle

    People, especially young people but old people, too (and sometimes to far more harmful degrees), have this tendency to polarize the world--there is up and down, there is left and right, there is black and white, there is cold and hot, and there is nothing in between.  This comes from a lot of different places--childhood naiveté, absorbing too many stories with this same black vs. white mentality, a lack of empathy, strict teachings (usually theological) that stress the duology of an Cosmic Good and a Universal Evil in a universe that acts with an inherent morality, etc.
     Now universes with an inherent morality can be very interesting, but only if the universe's morality is the universe's, and not the character's--again, unless your character is some kind of God with special universe-bending powers, they probably shouldn't be the one calling the shots one hundred percent, and their viewpoint shouldn't be the only Absolutely Correct one.
     All that being said, sometimes there exists more than just Favorite and Least Favorite; a lot of kids have more than just one sibling.  If your character exists in a home where favoritism is going on, or is thought to be going on, instead of putting your character on due north or south, maybe place them somewhere more toward center stage--from this vantage, they can comment on the rivalry (if one exists) as they see it, on how the favoritism (if it exists) plays out, and how it affects the rest of the family--while at much less risk than a family Black Sheep, children who are neither favorite nor least favorite are every bit as affected by things like this, and, if they have a good voice and interesting things to say, could provide a fresh perspective on things.

8.  Don't let your kid get hung up on this shit for FOREVER

     If your character had to wash more dishes than their sibling as a kid, they shouldn't still be talking about it when they're thirty.  Unless you want them to come off as whiny, lazy, boring, and entitled, at least.
     Favoritism in a home can cause problems, it's true; some of those problems might last for the rest of the kid's life, or at least have lasting impacts.  But unless the wounds really are so deeply scarred, your little kids are likely to put it behind them sometime after college, if not during--you can't exactly pull the "I'm Mom's Favorite" card when your landlord asks you for rent, so privileged kids leading non-privileged lifestyles will learn pretty quick how bad a job Mommy and Daddy did setting them up in the world, while their baby brother, who always had to wash the dishes and clean the toilets and a million other things, will first of all be overjoyed to no longer be under his parents' thumb, but will second of all have a lot of skills that will serve him later on.
     Even if the wounds are deep, your character may revisit them from time to time, especially during rocky periods in their life, but they're not going to still be obsessing over it by the time they have a family of their own, because there will be more important matters to deal with than the way Mom used to look at you when you brought home C's on your report cards.
     Basically, while it can still be a part of them, don't let it define them.

9.  Let your character realize that their parents aren't actually playing favorites

     Sometimes it's all in your character's head.  Let that be the case sometimes.  Let them figure it out.  Let them deal with the fallout.  Maybe after all those years of thinking they were the least favorite they find out their sister thought she was the least favorite too, and they reconcile--maybe after believing they were the least favorite it turns out they were the favorite, and expected to stand on their own; maybe they thought they were the favorite, but they're only treated so well so they'll shut up and stop bothering their parents.
     Maybe their parents just love them the same amount as all their siblings, but in different ways, and your character is forced to face the fact that the universe actually does not revolve around them, and they can't be the center of it at every waking moment.


     This has been TheSpiderWriter's take on parental favoritism in fiction.  I hope the details provided here have been helpful, and that they serve you going forward.  If you have any thoughts to add or something you'd like to discuss, feel free to drop me a line!

Playing Favorites: Parents, Part 2

     On Monday, I posted an article about parental favoritism, said a bunch of words, and left off with more thoughts about how to spice up your parental favoritism plots stirring in my head.  These are those thoughts.  Please enjoy them.


4.  Have the favorite feel bad about it

     Most of the time in fiction, when a character finds out that they're the favorite they're super smug about it--they lord it over the other characters and do their best to make them as miserable as humanly possible.  OR, the favorite is totally oblivious to the favoritism, and feels neither one way nor the other about it once they do find out--maybe they aren't a dick about it, but they kind of just accept it as the status quo.
     And yeah, that's ONE way to think about it, but there's also another, perhaps more realistic alternative--delicious, delicious guilt.
     Whether it's because they love their siblings and don't want them to feel left out, or because their siblings treat them poorly because of their heightened station in the home, let the character feel bad about their position of privelege, whether they're the protagonist or not.  If they are the protagonist, this is a perfect way to shoehorn in your childhood angst without falling back on the age-old (and so oft poorly done) abuse tropes that clutter every genre in the history of man, and it makes them out to be a more sympathetic character than the Raging Doucheholic many favorites turn out to be.
     If they aren't the protagonist, it can help subvert the sibling rivalry trope and adds a further depth to their relationship and the general dynamic of the home; it makes for a more complex narrative and gives the protagonist more than just straw men to wail against--maybe they still hate them, but even so, at least we're seeing a character in a universe that is not protagonist-centered.
     Which is just another reason why you should

5.  Make the other siblings sympathetic characters

     They don't have to be heroes, and they can even be antagonists, but your protagonist's siblings are people, too; they have hopes and dreams and aspirations, wants and needs and motivations, ones that include your protagonist and ones that don't.  Their world does not revolve around bullying your protagonist for being better/smarter/worse/dumber than them.  I actually have a lot to say about sibling relationships that I won't put here (that's a post for another day), but as far as this article goes, it boils down to; it's (probably) not any of the siblings' faults that they're favored or disfavored.  Maybe your characters don't see it like that, and that's fine, but show that and then show why.
     No matter how antagonistic, let each sibling have something in them that's redeeming--a soft spot for cute things, a special affinity for helpless people, a shocking capacity for generosity, or even just a particularly witty scathing tongue.  Throw the audience a bone and give us a reason to like the favorite or least favorite--better yet, give the protagonist a reason to like or even love their sibling(s)!  Relationships are complicated, and it can be a love-hate thing if you want, but chances are good, after spending so many years together, there are at least some things the little brother likes about his older sister, and vice versa.

6.  Make the impact of the treatment realistic

     A lot of the time in fiction you see kids being treated unequally by their parents, and they either turn out right as roses when they should be dealing with some shit, or they get totally fucked up for years over the smallest of transgressions.
     If your character is their parents' favorite child, they're going to either grow up feeling entitled, because they get whatever they want and never have to work for it, and won't last long in the real world, or they will grow up walking on eggshells in a desperate bid for perfectionism, ever afraid that they could, at any moment, fall from grace.  They could be egotistical and think they're all that, or they could be neurotic about doing things The Right Way so as not to disappoint their dear dear parents.
     If your character grows up as their parents' least favorite child, they're likely to wind up with a lot of self-esteem issues and either pent-up aggression or open resentment, depending on the situation; they're more likely to suffer from depression and less likely to do well in school.  These may be the kids who end up throwing themselves into relationships with much older people later on in life, looking for the parental approval they could never get.
     Of course, these are only a few ways that parental favoritism could affect your characters, and I recommend doing research into how favorites and least favorites turn out, and figuring out how your character would blossom in the station they currently maintain and under whatever form of pleasure/displeasure their parentals dish out.

     Again, this isn't all I have to say, but I'll finish up this series on Friday.  If you have any thoughts on writing parental favoritism, feel free to drop some dialogue in the comment section!

Playing Favorites: Parents, Part 1

     In fiction, it's all too common to see parents play favorites.  This is, to some degree, a reflection of real life--as impartial as we try to be, we all have biases, and sometimes those biases sprinkle down to color what we think of our children.  Whether they try to or not, parents think of all their children in different ways, which doesn't mean that they don't love them equally--it's often equal, just different, much like the children themselves.
     A lot of the time when we see this trope, it's our protagonist who is most affected.  Either they're the favorite (like Thor from Thor) and deserve to be because their siblings are all such prats, or (far more common) they're the least favorite, like Loki, or pretty much any character that has siblings, in which case they either deserve it (usually retroactively) or they don't, which is where most protagonists  seem to end up.
     Nine times out of ten, this is done poorly; everything is painted in stark lines of black and white, the sibling(s) are shitheads, there's no reason why the protagonist should be treated the way they are, and when playing the part of the punching bag, it's either as the abused True Heir (ala Cinderella) or as the kid who has to do chores because God forbid they help out around the house a little.
     An easy solution is to just not bother with the favoritism dynamic, but it can be done well, and completely leaving out the reality of favoritism is like leaving out the reality of all the -isms in life; nice to see, but ultimately dishonest.  You can only run from the truth for so long.
     Anywho. here are 3 ways you can make your favoritism dynamic more interesting.

1.  Let there be subtlety

     In real life, favoritism is most often displayed in the small things.  It's not typically the grand, showy, "My sister got a car for her birthday and I got six months hard labor" that it's often made out to be.  Parents don't try to let their children know if they do have a favorite--they try very hard to hide it, but when it leaks out it's usually in the form of extra praise or admonishment for one party or the other, or they give slightly more lavish gifts to one than to the other--or, yes, maybe they sympathize more with character A's need to get homework done than they do with character B's, so they make character B do character A's chores for a night, or something like that.
     Your character's parents are people, and most people don't try to be mean or unfair "just because."  Which reminds me--

2.  There has to be a reason for the favoritism

     One of the best portrayals of "Least Favorite Child Syndrome" I've seen to date was in a book I read quite some time ago, but whose title I have, unfortunately, forgotten.  The basic plot was that this little girl was an outcast--her siblings were mean, her mother favored them above her, and she was bad at English and art but good at math.  She adopts a puppy at one point but doesn't want her family to know about it, her art teacher tries to help her get extra credit by taking her to the zoo, the dog almost gets eaten by a lion at some point....  The details are kind of hazy.  Like I said, it's been a while.  (If anyone knows the title of this book, let me know so I can cite it, it's a great book and I greatly recommend it)
     But like all children who think themselves unfairly treated, this little girl believes herself to be adopted, and daydreams about her "real family" finding her and stealing her away from her kidnappers in order to give her a better life.  This is, of course, bullshit, and the sister even points out as much while they're looking at old pictures of their mother, because little miss protagonist looks just like Mommy used to, which becomes extremely relevant towards the end of the book, when Miss Protag confronts Mommy Dearest and straight up asks why her sister is the favorite.
     Instead of denying it or telling Miss Protag to go to her room or burn in hell, Mommy Dearest starts to cry.  She admits that she's been playing favorites, and apologizes, and tells Miss Protag exactly why--because Miss Protag is exactly the same as Mommy Dearest was as a child, and Mom has a lot of pent up self-loathing that she's concentrated into the toxic chemical storm she rains down on her youngest child.
     This isn't right by any means, but it was an amazing moment that has (obviously) stuck with me ever since--you never see parents admitting to playing favorites, and you certainly never get to hear the story from their perspective, which means a lot of the time the favoritism is just this thing that happens for no discernible reason rather than something real that is the cause of an effect.
     Maybe your character's parents hate him because he's like them, or love him for the same reason--maybe he's favored or disfavored because he's the more able, or the less, or because he has interests that mesh with/conflict with his parents', or they dislike him because he's an asshole.
     Maybe, if he's the favorite, it's because he works the hardest, and doesn't ask for gifts, and does what he's told, and behaves himself, etc. etc.  Maybe he's earned every facet of that favoritism to such a degree that he doesn't feel he's the favorite even if he is; remember that your character's perceptions of reality will not always be in tune with the actuality of reality.

3.  Explore it from the parents' POV

     As I mentioned above, this, as with most things, is a nuanced issue.  Parents are just people, and all people are flawed; there are different sides to every story, and we have a tendency to focus inordinately on the part of the story that's written by the child--and if we're being honest, children have a pretty bad track record for understanding the way the world works.
     Let the parents tell their side of the story.  Maybe it's a horrible side to the story and they really are assholes, but at least give them the chance to try to make us understand--it could be that their intentions really are noble!  Or that they have no idea what they're doing and it's all just the subconscious effects of reproductive narcissism.  Maybe they don't really have favorites at all, but the sickly child needs more attention than the child who's perfectly healthy, or the problem child gets more attention because the parents feel the need to straighten her out.  A lot of the time, the more capable and trusted a child, the more likely they are to end up on the back burner while parents are distracted--they can have an infinite capacity for love, but they will always have a limited amount of time and energy.
     Maybe the parent is just reacting to the vibes they're getting from their kids--when I was growing up, my mother and my baby brother were upset with each other a good half of the time because my mother and I would go and have "Girls' Nights Out" while he stayed in the trailer park.  My brother might have thought it was a result of favoritism, but every time my mother would spring an unexpected event on us, I would be eager to go and John would insist that he would rather stay home and hang out with his friends.  My mother would argue, John would argue back, my mother would relent and then complain about it in the car (because she wanted to spend time with both of us, and he did this quite often), and then later, when we came home and told him about the movie we'd seen or the park we'd gone to, John would be upset that he "didn't get to go" when I "always did."
     It wasn't a matter of love or affection or favorites; it was just that he chose to use his time differently (and, to be perfectly honest, he had more friends than I did with whom to while his time), and then, being a kid, upon regretting the use of his time, blamed it on the person who had wanted him to use it differently in the first place.
     That rambling anecdote is to say, parenting is hard, and parents deserve the chance to have their stories told, too.
     Whether you explore it from their actual POV or in an honest (or semi-honest or just honest-as-they-see-it) confrontation with a child (or children), or if you write an entire book about it from the parents' perspective, make sure that the parent either sees it as a reasonable way to act, or that they struggle with the guilt of their actions--the Evil Stepmother trope is all well and good in fairytales, but we've stepped well past the battles of Static Good versus Static Evil in the modern age; all things are agathokakological.

     I have more to say, but this post is fairly long, so I think I'll end it here and pick up with number four on Wednesday.  In the meantime, what are your thoughts?  What do you look for in your favoritism subplots?  Are there any particularly good/bad portrayals you've come across recently?  Let us know!

Dual-Household Children

     Many children with separated or divorced parents experience visitation.  Sometimes the visitation is set up as a a visit paid to the child's house by the non-custodial parent, and other times the children will visit the other parent's household for a set period of time.  The latter's the one this article is designed to get you thinking about.  Forgive the slightly scattered format.


     1.          How your character feels about the situation will depend on, like everything else, the characters and situation.  Do they like the secondary parent?  More than the primary?  Or do they hate them?  Do they hate both parents?  Is there anyone living with their secondary or primary parent that they might want to spend more/less time with?  Spend some time figuring out how your characters feel about everyone involved.  Write it down and keep it in mind as you go forward.

     2.          How frequent is the visitation?  If they only see their secondary parent a few times a year, then they might be excited to get away/spend time with Parent Number 2, or they may dread the Christmas visits that they're forced into since they barely know the person at the other end of the trip.

    Some parents are very strict about visitation, and it can cause major issues if the kids can't/won't make it, but others are fairly loosey-goosey.  If the two parents in question have different outlooks, it can cause a lot of conflict.  Maybe Mom thinks Dad should be spending more time with his children, but Dad has a crazy job and doesn't think it's a big deal if he only misses two weekends a month, or maybe Dad is trying to keep the kids on track with their extracurriculars but Mom would rather have them in her house than at practice.  If the visitation is court-mandated, things can get even more tense, and whether or not the children have a say in what goes on can lessen or increase the conflict exponentially.

     When the visits are more frequent, feelings about visits might be more inconsistent and dependent on the Mood of the Week.  My brother and I are supposed to visit my father biweekly, but it switches up sometimes as our weekends fill up with extracurricular activities, two weeks on, two weeks off, week on, week off, week on, three weeks off....  (our family, you might say, is full of loose geese.)

     Sometimes we look forward to going, sometimes we feel like it's a chore.  How things are going in our heads and on the calendar impact the feelings greatly; during the school year, it can feel like an opportunity to get homework done or like a draw FROM homework (they don't have internet, which makes certain projects difficult--though perhaps your character's visitation parent is the only one WITH internet, which could certainly be a reason to enjoy/tolerate going), and in the summer it can feel like time well-spent with family out by the grill, or it can seem like time I could be spending doing something with more lasting effects.

     3.          Parents who are separated can have a myriad of different relationships--there are the unhealthy he-said-she-said types, the hateful don't-listen-to-them types, the laid back it-just-didn't-work types, the exasperated we're-so-done-I-don't-even-care-anymore types, etc. etc.

     My own parents get along pretty well--better than they ever did while they were married--but there's still friction from time-to-time.  My father can get paranoid, and he's very susceptible to the suggestions of his live-in brother and mother (disclosure: my uncle is not the best person) so sometimes there are misunderstandings and hang-ups that leave my brother and I in the middle and angry.

     4.          But by no means does this have to be the dynamic between the parents in your book!  By all means, experiment, change things up!  I get a little tired of the very cut-and-dry "I hate/love this parent and love/hate this other parent."  A lot of the time it's a lot more complicated than that, and I think it's important to make that complication more evident.

     Try drawing from your own experiences, or the experiences of your friends or family members (your own children, if the shoe fits).  It's a pretty safe bet that some individual in your life is or has been in a dual-household situation.  Ask around!  Unless their experience is particularly painful, most people won't be too hesitant to talk about it.  Hell, you could ask me, or someone else on the internet.  It's worth a shot!


     If you have any thoughts, tips, advice, or input on the subject, let me know!  The more experiences shared, the better!

Discussion: Are Your Characters Your Children?

     You'll hear a lot of writers say that they hate it when people refer to/think of their characters as their "children."  This is because they feel that the authors who act this way favor some of their characters above others and make things too easy for them--which makes for a boring (or, sometimes, masturbatory) story.  They're not wrong--your protagonist should not have it easy, people--but I think it's unfair to push all thought of the parenthood of our characters into one umbrella group and call it "bad."  See, it's not seeing the characters as your offspring that's bad--it's seeing them as babies.
 
     Here's the main distinction; children can grow up and take care of themselves but babies, confined to your care, cannot.

     Our characters are, for all intents and purposes, our children.  We create them by thought and pen them by hand--sometimes we adopt them, and I'll be the first to admit that I've done it more than once, but we care for them in a way that only we can do, raising them up from a carbon copy of their birth parent(s) into something all their own, something we can call ours.  And there's no shame in favoring our own characters over the characters of others--that's one of the finest rights of the parent, you know.  Otherwise who would you root for come time for school competitions?

     The problem comes in two forms: not allowing your children to grow up, and favoring some of your young over the others.

     A parent might keep favorites--they aren't supposed to, but they're only human.  However, a good parent will not let on.  They will treat all of their children fairly, with equal degrees of love, and react to them as individuals.  Even with twins, good parents will differentiate between the two and encourage the separate interests they may cultivate, and while some children, usually the frailer ones, will need more attention, it doesn't mean that their parents love them any more or less, and it doesn't mean that their parents stop trying to challenge them and help them grow.  Other children, self-reliant and resilient, may need less and give more, but a parent will still try to spend time with them, comfort them, help them through in difficult times.  How does this translate from offspring to character?  Like so:

     You need to love and encourage all of your characters equally.  Some will not need equal time--minor characters, cameos, walk-ons, one-liners, and the various background characters which people your world can be considered mostly grown, independent younglings.  They are off to college, so to speak, and while yes, every once in a while you may need to call them up to get in touch, make sure they're okay, see that they're happy and haven't burned down their apartment yet, for the most part you can leave them be; they can take care of themselves.

     Then there are the supporting characters, who may be somewhere between the ages of ten and seventeen (metaphorically speaking), old enough to stay home alone, feed themselves, maybe walk around town and hang out with friends, but they'll need a much closer eye kept on them to keep them out of trouble.  You need to watch and make sure they face the consequence of action, but that they retain their individuality.  You're cultivating a future adult here, remember!  They need to be able to function in the real world.

     And then there's the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s).  For the sake of our extended metaphor, these are the children that give you the toughest time.  Somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen, these characters are probably born of the same stuff, or similar stuff--possibly twins themselves, they could be extremely similar or as different as night and day.  They're probably both likely to be misunderstood, bullied, or generally dissatisfied with life, and somehow their interests are extremely conflicted.  As a parent, you are not technically allowed to take sides.  You have to let these two sort it out on their own terms, or the end result will be unsatisfactory.

     But as a parent, it is your job to make sure your characters--especially the protagonist--reap what they've sown.  You may love them, you may care, you may want what's best for them, you may even give them trinkets along the way (though it's wise to deal these out to other characters as well--antagonists can always use something convenient to help them out), but if your protagonist burns down the house he better get the shit beat out of him for it, because shit like that can't fly.  And if the antagonist manages to destroy the protagonist's favorite toy while he's bent over your knee.... Well, you didn't see it happen, did you?  It was probably just destroyed in the fire anyway.

     If you are going to favor any of the characters, it should actually be the antagonist--all interesting things will come from your protagonist's pain, frustration, and fight against opposition, and it can be easy for loud, whiney, or manipulative children to sway their parents in their favor; your antagonist is likely to be at least one of these things.

     And then there's the age-old problem of coddling--this ties into the favoring of some characters over others, but some writers can actually be afraid to let their characters so much as breathe without their permission.  Here's a little secret; as a writer, the best thing you can do is to let your characters live.  Sure, at the start you have to help them along, tell them to do things, move them hither and thither and yon, but they grow a lot quicker than actual babies, and pretty soon you'll find them doing things you didn't tell them to, maybe things that might conflict with what's in your head.  And that's what you want.

     When characters start to live, to breathe, to wonder and run and travel on their own, you have successfully raised your child to sentience--and instead of clamping down on their attempts at independence, you need to nurture it.  Follow where they lead!  They may be on to something--and if worse should come to worst, you can always trace back your path to find where things went wrong.

     If you keep your characters too far under your thumb, they'll forget there's a sky, and eventually, stop breathing--at which point you may have to decide whether to keep them on life support or pull the plug.  So don't be afraid to let go, and don't be afraid to hurt them--it's for their own good, and it will benefit everyone.

     So yes, I believe that my characters are something like children to me--but I maintain a healthy distance, and let them be themselves.  This mindset only works if you make sure not to coddle your characters or treat them as saints.  Sometimes they will do good things, and you might reward them--sometimes they will do awful things, and even if they meant well, they need to learn that meaning well and doing well are not the same thing.

     Now what do you think?  Should people consider their characters offspring, or detach themselves completely?  How do you feel about your own characters?  Are they friends, siblings, cousins, neighbors, those loud assholes who live down the street with the aggressive dog that's always going after your kids?  Let me know! I'm eager to hear your responses. :)