Lonely Only? Or a Bevy of Siblings? - You Decide

By Kimberley Allen McNamara 

It’s been said you can’t pick your family but you can pick your friends. And sometimes within a group of friends you form a family.

This September is the 25th Anniversary of the television show Friends. If you’re like me, you’ve probably watched the reruns of the series numerous times. To be honest, it’s my go-to when I need a quick laugh. There is something comforting about these six twenty-somethings struggling in the late 90s in Manhattan, when connecting technology gadgets consisted of: caller id, pagers, and phone message machines and when jokes like “the fifth dentist caved. And now endorses Trident..” were relatable. 

Among these Friends, there is only one who is an ONLY child, Chandler. Joey is the only boy child in his family and his sisters rarely make an appearance, Phoebe is estranged from her twin, Ursula, and Rachel is one of three but her sisters also only make plot induced appearances like Joey’s sisters. The only working sibling relationship is the one between Monica and Ross. In a half hour sit-com, there really isn’t time to round out the families of the four characters (Chandler, Joey, Phoebe, and Rachel) and so the focus family  - the one that appears over and over throughout the years or intrudes into this Friends-Family is that of Monica and Ross.

One of the first things as a writer you need to decide when creating your Main Character/Protagonist is the composition of your MC’s family or family of friends. Are they a loner? (think Raymond Chandler’s noir detective) Or an orphan? (cue Anne Shirley of Green Gables, Harry Potter of Harry Potter) Or do they have siblings? And if so, how involved are these siblings with one another. Cue Monica and Ross Geller. 

So is your MC a Lonely Only or do they have a bevy of siblings?  

Less is More: 

There’s a reason why only children are abundantly the choice of writers - especially in the young adult genre, namely there are Less characters to juggle and your MC gets to steal the show as it were. Per Alexandra Schwartz in her article for the New Yorker on the subject of Onlies

“...books for young people are packed with only children, even disproportionately so. Without brothers and sisters to contend with, the protagonist finds herself alongside the writer at a vantage point slightly removed from the world, but free, too, of the world’s buffers: whatever adventures she might find are hers alone” (Shwartz)

Perhaps, the Grimm Brothers and Disney were onto something when it came to the Only child protagonist (often either orphaning them or killing off one parent and introducing an evil step parent) because the fact of being an orphan pits the Protagonist automatically against the world or by giving them an evil step parent,  an adversary or ready antagonist is provided. Consider: Snow White, Cinderella, and Tiana the Frog Princess of Disney/Grimm fame. All only children with deceased parents. 

Further, as  Schwartz cites:

“Literature is the group home of only children, the place where a solitary child can spy on families and insinuate herself into their ranks. There are the Lower East Side sisters of “All-of-a-Kind Family” and the March girls in “Little Women”; the freakishly synchronized teamwork of “The Hardy Boys” (much more fun than that priggish only child Nancy Drew); the friction between the Pevensie siblings in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”; the escape of Jamie and Claudia Kincaid from their stultifying routines in Westchester to the Metropolitan Museum in “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”; the love and companionship that binds Lizzie and Jane Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” a relationship as real and profound as it is precisely because the rest of their sisters are such astounding loons. I know what it’s like to be Lily Briscoe watching the Ramsays, awestruck and wary, among them but not of them, drawing on them as subjects even as she refuses them as models, searching for her own way of seeing.” (Shwartz)

It’s all about the Numbers: 

If you give your protagonist too many family members, it becomes difficult for the reader to follow -  a critique often given at workshops, where readers claim to struggle without a key or a family tree. Not everyone is capable of keeping track of more than a handful of characters. The creators of Friends understood this: Monica/Ross, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe - one handful of characters. In fact, in some episodes the characters who will be aligned with one another actually wear the same colors so as to be visually paired and thus help those who are not sure if Monica and Rachel are opposing Phoebe and Joey (ie: Monica and Rachel will be in green and Phoebe and Joey in red).

Sometimes Two or More is Better than One: 

However, a strong case for giving your main character/protagonist a sibling may be because to do so will give your character dimension in a manner that is palatable if only because it is a recognized pattern of human groupings/interactions. As Lily Rothman of Time Magazine spotlighted (regarding Time Magazine’s report on Siblings by Jeff Kluger), Kluger concluded the following:

“Our brothers and sisters are often the only people in our lives from beginning to end, and their influence is just as broad as that timeline.”

If the siblings of an individual can define/influence a person, then is this not true of a character?

Further, consider this excerpt of Kluger’s report on Siblings as spotlighted by Rothman:

“From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales. They are our scolds, protectors, goads, tormentors, playmates, counselors, sources of envy, objects of pride. They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to; how to conduct friendships and when to walk away from them. Sisters teach brothers about the mysteries of girls; brothers teach sisters about the puzzle of boys. Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we’ll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life. “Siblings,” says family sociologist Katherine Conger of the University of California, Davis, “are with us for the whole journey.” (Kluger, Siblings)

Again, if this is true, in Real Life, then shouldn’t it be true in your character’s fictional lives? 

In Suzanne Collins’ book The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is not terribly likable until she offers herself in tribute, in lieu of her sister, Prim. As many will point out, Prim is Katniss’ counterpoint character, or Katniss’ foil. (Prim is thoughtful, altruistic whereas Katniss is all about survival and impulsivity). But MOST importantly, Prim gives us a reason to like or identify with Katniss, who is willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of her sister when it comes right down to it. Many of us hope, we would be so brave. 

In Friends, there are six main characters and of the six, Monica and Ross are probably the most dimensional - only because their backstories are more fully realized (Ross and his break up with Carol, Monica and Fat-Monica) and their family makes entrances and influences so much of the early shows (grandmother dying, wedding anniversaries, weddings, Thanksgiving…) that they cannot help be a bit more rendered than the others. 

The characters of Friends are not fully round; they can’t be in the amount of space they are given on the stage. But within the constraints, they try to be. Monica and Rachel fight ‘like sisters’, Chandler and Joey and (sometimes) Ross ‘act like brothers’ and Phoebe is the ‘quirky sister/cousin’ who marches to a different beat. They form a family outside of the biological families they all have sprung from.

As a writer, you get to create your characters family, whether it be a biologically connected family or a family that is comprised of random or not so random friendships as in Friends. But these family members should enhance your protagonist/main character and make your MC more dimensional.

In search of writings on three dimensional characters, I found this solid bit of advice from author, Maureen McGowan, as she observed Robert McKee’s rules re: character dimensions:

“… if the protagonist is brave, we should see times when he/she is fearful. If a protagonist is kind, she should show hints of cruelty. If she’s self-assured, she should show moments of vulnerability. This helps creates a 3 dimensional character. A metaphor the reader will mistake for a real human being.” (http://maureenmcgowan.com/ * )

Sound advice indeed.

So Lonely Only or a Bevy of Siblings?

As writer and creator of your characters you get to decide. Just make sure whatever the sibling/family/friend-family you choose for your main character(s), the addition of such siblings is real. They should be real or as in the case of Friends, as real as a sit-com will allow.