the main heroes are always orphans...

[paranoid marvin]

I don't think I have any orphan characters in anything I've ever written. Even have grandparents hanging around in some stuff. Hmm.

Trying to think of things I've read with orphans in and can't either. Mind, I can't remember any parents either.

Oliver Twist and Harry Potter are two of the most famous, but there are plenty in between.

 

[Mouse]

I've not read either of those.

 

[Hex]

er... Series of Unfortunate Events, The Jungle Book, the Taran books, James and the Giant Peach, The Big Friendly Giant, Sabriel, The Blue Sword, the Belgariad (I think). Is Kitty in the Bartimaeus books an orphan?

Can't think of any more off the top of my head, but it does seem to be a theme.

@Mouse -- I think Sabriel is because isn't she trying to find her father in the realms of death? in fact isn't his death the inciting event (or whatever you want to call it) because she has to learn to use the bells etc.

 

[Mouse]

Only one of those I've read is Sabriel and I've been trying to remember if she had parents or not and couldn't. So I guess that's one I have read with an orphan then! (Was trying to work out if Nathaniel in Jonathan Stroud's books was an orphan too).

Hex, that does ring a vague bell. (Boom boom!)

 

[AnyaKimlin]

My junior fiction stories the children come from a happy family so I took Mum on the first adventure and now she knows where they go and who with.

My YA my character starts off as motherless (she was such a bitch that the story would have been much darker with her in it) and loses his father, with whom he has a turbulent but within realms of normal relationship, quickly. The main story is him becoming king so I had to kill off the reigning monarch. My MCs character was a wicked, evil king who killed everyone who blinked wrong.

The sequel the main character is one of two people (the first draft has left me undecided). Both still have parents alive. One is close to his parents so I have him kidnapped. The other his mother takes after her mother (the one I killed off seventeen years before first book and is better off without her) and his father has sent him away because of that.

 

[shamguy4]

Perhaps in view of this thread I will keep one parent alive in the end.
After all my character is 17. And perhaps he'll persuade his mother to let him go on some crazy adventure, I mean 17 nowadays is usually when they begin to roam free....

See the problem is you don't want to give the message that children can do whatever they want. If you keep the parents alive, you need to have a good reason why your character is holding a gun or a sword.
Well Anakin Skywalker somehow did it and I don't know how old he was....

 

[James Coote]

Isn't it the most heart-rendering thing when a child is finally old enough that there is nothing a parent can do to stop them leaving to go to war?

That feeling of not even knowing the fate of your own child, who you raised and cared for and know intimately, perhaps better than anyone. That breeds a kind of bitterness that without a target for hatred, can truly destroy a person

If you can get that down in writing, what a way to start a story!

It is understandable though that starting on such a dark and sombre note is not going to let you do the whole "seems like a grand adventure at first, but as things turn darker, MC grows correspondingly to face those challenges. I.e. coming of age"

Equally an orphan instantly makes the MC into an underdog character, gives them something we can instantly connect with and is universal (love for parents), makes it easier to build a sense of humbleness (humility?) that again is easy to connect with, and makes their struggle seem all the more corageous. Plus you can throw in 'issues' that everyone will have to deal with at some point, and are less likely to make the reader uncomfortable versus tackling heavier subjects such as racism or sexual exploitation head on.

Finally it is abstract. The death is vague and in the past. There is no need to look the MC's mother in the eyes one last time before they turn and get on the bus/train/spaceship that whisks them away to boot camp

 

[Lucky_Lola]

I never thought of her as an orphan, but my MC and her brother lose their family - and their entire household - a handful of chapters into the story. I've always thought about it as the catalyst, the shove that pushes my MC out of her comfort zone and into the 'big wide world', where she would never have ventured voluntarily. The idea of revenge, both righteous and futile, is a central theme.

I've definitely noticed the pattern of dead/missing parents, and I think you all have hit the nail on the head - parents = no adventures hehe!

 

[monsterchic]

Yep, noticed the orphan streak. My characters tend to have either no parents or non-supportive parents.

Although, if you want to see one case of parents not caring what their child does, look at Dora the Explorer