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Q&A Referring to characters that are too familiar for a name

Having your character calling the man raising her father isn't a problem. She knows he's not her biological dad but as far as she is concerned, he is her father and will call him as such. Where y...

posted 9y ago by Stephen‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:04:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17319
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Stephen‭ · 2019-12-08T04:04:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
Having your character calling the man raising her father isn't a problem. She knows he's not her biological dad but as far as she is concerned, he is her father and will call him as such.

Where you seem to be having trouble is the reveal that he is in fact not who you have said he is.

There are various ways this can be done depending on the type of story you're trying to tell.

There's the obvious flashpoint. "You're not my dad!"

There's the more subtle method (using someone elses example of meeting the boyfriend) of "You don't look like your dad." "He's not my real dad. My parents died when I was young."

Obviously, the different methods will have different outcomes and speaking from what I've observed hearing "you're not my dad" is one of the worst thing any man can hear from a child he has done his best to raise.

Whichever method you choose, you can have hints to lead up to it if you don't want it to be a complete surprise. The girl could have a picture of her birth mum and dad on their wedding day but her dad's description is totally different to that of her father. If the parents died together she could have newspaper clippings of that day.

A lot can be done but most of it will depend on what the plot of your story is and where you want to take it.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-05-18T08:48:42Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 0