posted
I'm writing a short story set on a lunar colony. The main characters are two teenage girls, sisters. I'm tripping over writing the dialog w/their parents. The parents aren't going to be main characters, and my POV is primarily focused on one of the two girls. To her, she hears her mom say x, her dad say y. However, I'm finding that "her mother said" and "her father said" seem stilted after two or three exchanges.
Do I need to give the parents names? It seems like that would also be odd, because to the main characters, they are mom and dad, not Emma and Ian (or whatever names I make up.)
I feel like I'm missing some obvious tip or trick and would love some pointers in the right direction. Thanks in advance!
posted
Is the POV that of the teenage girl? If so, I would use whatever tag she would use to refer to her parents, such as 'Mom' or 'Dad'. If she would typically refer to her parents as Bill and Jane (as some teens do), then use that. One implies respect, the other implies a more rebelllious nature.
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posted
In a short there really should only be one POV.
Pick a sister and then refer to the parents the way she would: Ma, Mom, Mommy, or the infamous - Mother - when the daughter is annoyed, or even Emma if the relationship warrants it.
posted
Yes, you refer to the parents however your POV does. You can use "her father said" or "Father said". If you're in your POV's head, you would use "Father said" or "Dad said".
In my WIP I have two sets of parents. One set got names because they have an important scene in the beginning. This scene was from someone else's POV than the child. Afterwards, though, they are never referred to by their names. The other set, though they appeared in a scene, the scene was not as important, and so they weren't named.
posted
I got hung up a while ago in a story, third person, on how to refer to the mother of the protagonist and one other character. Do I call her, oh, what did I name those characters? Been awhile and I forget...
I kept winding up with "So-and-so's mom said" around dialog. I didn't particularly want to name her (not sure if I did, come to think of it), since it was all the viewpoint of the protagonist, who would call her "Mom"---but third-person didn't play quite right, either. And I couldn't go on calling her "Protagonist's Mom," because she was also the mother of another character.
Ah, well. One of these days I'll get back to it, rewrite another version, and maybe come up with a fix.
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