Inheritance
I was reading an article yesterday about novelist Valerie Martin. At one point she was talking about inheritance. She was writing about who was going to inherit a house, but my writer's mind immediately took off thinking about other kinds of inheritance.
Families fighting over money is an age-old theme. The monied family is torn apart on the death of the father when an illegitimate son or daughter appears demanding money from them. Inheritance can even be deadly. Think of Frodo Baggins inheriting the One Ring from Bilbo. Not the kind of inheritance most of us would wish to receive!
We inherit beliefs and values from the people who looked after us. If these care-givers are "good people"' then the chances are that we will absorb their beliefs and values of decency and honesty and become "good" too. But we might also inherit talents that our family disapproves of. In my novel Auroradawn, Baak, the younger child of a Great Family, is a talented artist. But his father was a military man and didn't tolerate that namby-pamby stuff, and Baak's talent was ridiculed and ignored. Not surprisingly, he ran away from home. Part of my story is about him returning home after his mother's death.
Ren Hunter, the heroine of my Panthera books, inherits her love of animals from her mother Lexa. The two of them spent a lot of time on the savannah together when Ren was small, and Ren grew up to be a wildlife conservationist, following in her mother's footsteps.
Inheritance can be a great driver for characters' actions. They might embark on a quest to recover something which is rightfully theirs, struggle against prejudice to get their talent recognized, or have to deal with an unwelcome problem they've inherited. There's enough material to keep you going in stories for years exploring the theme of inheritance.
Families fighting over money is an age-old theme. The monied family is torn apart on the death of the father when an illegitimate son or daughter appears demanding money from them. Inheritance can even be deadly. Think of Frodo Baggins inheriting the One Ring from Bilbo. Not the kind of inheritance most of us would wish to receive!
We inherit beliefs and values from the people who looked after us. If these care-givers are "good people"' then the chances are that we will absorb their beliefs and values of decency and honesty and become "good" too. But we might also inherit talents that our family disapproves of. In my novel Auroradawn, Baak, the younger child of a Great Family, is a talented artist. But his father was a military man and didn't tolerate that namby-pamby stuff, and Baak's talent was ridiculed and ignored. Not surprisingly, he ran away from home. Part of my story is about him returning home after his mother's death.
Ren Hunter, the heroine of my Panthera books, inherits her love of animals from her mother Lexa. The two of them spent a lot of time on the savannah together when Ren was small, and Ren grew up to be a wildlife conservationist, following in her mother's footsteps.
Inheritance can be a great driver for characters' actions. They might embark on a quest to recover something which is rightfully theirs, struggle against prejudice to get their talent recognized, or have to deal with an unwelcome problem they've inherited. There's enough material to keep you going in stories for years exploring the theme of inheritance.
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