Referring to characters that are too familiar for a name
This question is very similar to this one. However, I felt it was different enough, and I also did not find an answer.
In the tale I am currently writing, a girl, whose parents have both been long dead, is talking with her adoptive father. I'm having trouble referring to him.
Normally a name is what would be used. However, I don't want to use a name because the girl thinks of the father as her actual father (She knows he isn't her true father, but loves him as if he were). It's the same relationship. Therefore, referring to him by name would just be weird.
Simply using 'father' would be the next option, except I don't want to do that. The reader does not yet know that the father is not the girl's actual father. Therefore, I don't want to refer to him as the girl's father, because when I reveal the truth, that could get confusing (This question is actually the main bridging conflict, so I can't really remove it).
The father has a daughter of his own (referred to here as 'Y'), so I've been referring to him as Y's father. This has worked, but I have nothing else to call him, and the repetition is showing. Removing taglines (the scene is mostly dialogue) and utilizing pronouns has helped some, but I can't use them everywhere.
How can I refer to this character, who is too familiar to be referred to by name?
1 answer
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.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17319. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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