Young Writers Society

I have to questions I decided to put into the same topic, I hope you guys don't mind.
Anyway, question number one...

When writing in third person bystander* should you call the character's parents Mom and Dad or by their names?

I mean, technically speaking I can change who I'm following at any reasonable time (end of scenes/chapters and whatnot) so if I called them Mom and Dad because that's what the character I'm following calls them then I'd have to switch over to their names if I where to change viewpoint. But if I call them by their names to begin with then it may not seem like I am really following that one particular character.

*For those of you who don't know, this is when you write from an outside perspective (calling everyone by names, and not using the words I, me, you, or similar things outside of dialogue and thoughts) This can be done in three ways, 1) omniscient (where the narrator knows what everyone is thinking/feeling), 2) limited (where the narrator knows only what one character is thinking), or 3) bystander (where the narrator doesn't know what anyone is thinking).

And now for question two...

What kind of illness would be reasonable for this story?

For NaNoWriMo I have had this one idea I've really wanted to do, but there are some things in it that are waaaaaaaay underdeveloped. So I need some help to get through those spots.
One of the things I know for sure about this story is that the main character's little sister has some sort of illness that could be (or is) fatal (in the end she does die) and has somewhat expensive treatment. I didn't really put much thought into what it is, so now NaNo is here and I'm like "How could you not have thought of this before?!" and I really need help figuring it out.
The obvious choice would be to say that she has cancer. But I feel like that is too obvious and might be kind of cliche. So I was wondering if you guys know of any other illnesses that would fit (and I'd greatly appreciate some info about how things would work out with living with someone who has said illness).

And if I do end up going with cancer, can you provide any information of what would be expected from living with someone with cancer? And maybe a bit more info on the different types of cancer. (I really don't know much about it)

hi!
i'm not really an expert in this, but it sounds like a great story, so i'm going to add my input.
to answer the first question... it depends.
going for the 'mom and dad' approach sort of deepens your connection with a character whose voice you're writing in. however, if you're going to be switching viewpoints around a lot, it's better NOT to do that, because you want an equal amount of connection with each person you write about. hope that isn't too confusing.
for the second question... there are lots and lots of people with cancer. there are lots and lots of kinds of cancers. If you're going to do cancer, then definitely look up a specific one and research like crazy. I for one do not know too much about it, but you know...when someone is dying slowly of a disease, you can guess...frustration, depression. The people around her would most likely be stressed out and always on edge, because they never know when she's going to get worse. and her sibling(s) might be either neglected, and/or very, very mature, because they've learned how to cope with this.
I'm sorry that i don't have any other deadly diseases to offer you. i don't have much experience.
good luck on your story!

Thanks for the help Satira.

For your illness who can always make your character immunosuppressed meaning that there immune system doesn't function properly due to development issues, previous illnesses etc. This will allow for illnesses to become more dangerous and therefor require more extensive treatments. For expensive procedures you're character could have had spent money on hospitalization many times in the past and it has put a drain on their resources.
Another expensive and possibly risky procedure could be an organ transplant of some kind due to injury or infection.
Hope this helps

For the perspective question, I think the way that makes the most sense is "Jane's mom/dad" or "her mom/dad" when following Jane or someone else who would think of them like that (e.g. Jane's friends or boyfriend). If, however, it switches to the perspective of someone who would call them by their first names (say, Jane's aunt or her mom's friends), then I think it makes sense to switch to their names. Assuming the perspective switch is clear, it should make sense to the reader.

About the disease aspect, I don't have much else to add except research carefully and pick something that would make sense for a child that age to have. For example, some cancers commonly occur in children or young adults, while others occur more in older adults.

Question 1

Depends on how close you want the narrative to feel. Calling parents by the names the character would call them feels closer to inside the character's head, but calling them by names feels far more distant. I tend to not like characters parents being referred to by their actual names, because the characters talk about them using "mom" and "dad" so I'm very prone to forgetting parents' names.

Question 2

So. A caution: if you're going for chronic illness, it can be really easy to misrepresent. With cancer in particular, you can risk exploiting them to generate profit, because you're using the tragedy of their death in a story that uses cancer more as a tool to get the character sick instead of actually thinking about every little thing that happens because a character is chronically ill. I'm not going to say much about this because simply googling "exploiting cancer patients" is a well populated search.

Now, if you actually do take this into account, then be very, very careful to not make the struggles of living with somebody who has that illness worse than having the actual illness. This happens a lot in narratives and in real life; people abandon friends or family with chronic illness because it's "too hard" to deal with, and they don't take into account that actually having that illness is worse than living with somebody who has a chronic illness.

This little principle is called ableism, and is actually really quite terrible. Disabled and chronically ill people are literally neglected to death (or outright murdered) because their caregivers stop wanting to care for them. So if you have the person without chronic illness as the one suffering "more"... please reconsider this, because no, trust me, living with chronic illness is worse than living with somebody who has it.

I'd also recommend not making the chronically ill person abusive, bratty, or demanding simply because she's chronically ill and can get away with it. It'd be nice for chronically ill people to have some variety in their characterization, especially since most people I know with chronic illness are not like that and are actually very respectful. Yes, manipulative chronically ill people exist, but their percentage is about the same percentage as the general population.

And when it comes for chronic illness treatment, if there is treatment at all, it's going to be pretty expensive. Prescription medication for non-terminal illnesses can be in the thousands a month, and that's just medication. Doctor's appointments are frequent and, predictably, expensive. If the person experiences psychiatric effects— which are surprisingly common— then add in therapists and potentially medicine for that. Psychiatric effects can include the side effects of isolation, or struggling with how your body is failing you, or how you sometimes let everybody around you down because you simply can't do something right at this moment.

I personally wouldn't do cancer because that is done a lot. My Sister's Keeper and The Fault in Our Stars are both fairly recent stories that centre around cancer and hit a lot of mass appeal. It wouldn't surprise me if publishers stopped accepting cancer stories for awhile because the market is fairly saturated.

Also cancer survival rates are increasing all the time, so if you want "guaranteed terminal" then you'd have to go for a very specific type of cancer in a very specific time period where it can be terminal. Or, you can go for treatment complications. Which happen a surprising amount (drugs and their conflicting side effects can actually cancel each other out, or your body can simply not handle the side effects). Somebody else suggested a compromised immune system, which also happens a surprising amount. It's why vaccinating yourself is so important.

Or. You can. You know. Have her with a chronic illness and she doesn't die from it and instead she dies from something else.

Non terminal chronically ill people exist. They're probably the vast majority of people who have chronic illness. We just never hear about their stories because chronically ill people come in two types: those who die and those who make a 100% recovery right in time for the credits so you never see the repercussions of rebuilding your life after getting chronic illness. Because there are a lot of repercussions even if you "get better", including debt, psychiatric effects of having been sick, and generally rebuilding your life because friends probably left you and you might've quit work. You might also not be 100% better and have little (or big) things different the rest of your life; you might end up with a disability you never had before, even. And heaven forbid a character be sick and be fine with it, have that sickness for the rest of their lives, and go through treatment and sink vast amounts of money into themselves and there's no chance of recovery.

Some of these people want a cure, some people don't want a cure because their chronic illness becomes part of their identity. Sometimes they do want a cure. No right way to have a chronic illness, and there is massive variety in the people who have chronic illness, just like there is massive variety of people without chronic illness. There's even a metaphor for them: spoon theory.

It would be very nice to see somebody chronically ill who's not there to be the ill girl or littlest cancer patient or used as a health care motivation. All of those tropes turn chronically ill people into a plot device instead of actual people.

Chronically ill people are people. They do not exist to simply be sick, which is how the main narrative around chronically ill people exists in society (much like how disabled people exist to be inspirations to non disabled people because if a disabled person can do it you have no excuse. It's a form of objectification). If you really want to do something different with a chronically ill character, have her be a fully vibrant character who's got a role in the plot. Yes, she might not be able to do some things because of chronic illness (or she could do everything some days and barely do anything other days), and yes, she will have treatments, and yes it will impact the main character's life. But just because a person is chronically ill, does not mean they're bedridden and doesn't mean their life completely stops. They're still people with interests and dreams and passions and they can still succeed at them even when they're chronically ill.

I'd like more of those stories. Yes, she can still die, but it doesn't absolutely have to be from chronic illness even if she has one.