5 Best Tips for Writing the Found Family Trope
HelloOoOo everybody!
Today we're talking about one of the most popular tropes of all time: Found Family. The found family trope is pretty self-explanatory. A bunch of unrelated characters get together, they bond over time, and eventually their relationship looks something like a chosen familial bond. This trope is especially popular if you're working with orphaned or ostracized characters, any characters that were othered in some type of way, but you don't have to write it that way.
This is a trope that is super popular and loved by all kinds of readers. It's inspiring to read about characters who find a chosen family. It gives us hope that maybe we can do the same, especially if we're not accepted by our biological families.
This topic was requested by one of my patrons over on Patreon, Ray. If you'd like the chance to have a video dedicated to you, or if you want access to tons of other rewards, check me out on Patreon. It's linked right here. Now I'm diving into my tips for writing the found family trope in a way that is impactful for readers.
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Number 1: Figure Out Why Your Characters Need a Found Family
As we already covered, this trope is especially popular among outcast or isolated characters. Maybe the characters are misfits on the fringe of society. Maybe the characters literally don't have a family. It would make sense to utilize the found family trope with characters like this, because they are most in need of some type of loyal family unit. If your characters have a functional and loving biological family, then they might not need a chosen family, right?
This is when a second and third option can come into play. Sometimes characters aren’t orphaned or rejected, but the found family trope can still be useful to them. Maybe they're estranged from their biological family due to hardship. This found family unit could act as a surrogate, as they're working to bring their biological family back together. By the end of the series, your character has two loving families. That lucky bitch.
The last option is overlapping goals. No matter your character's place in society or biological family, they probably have a dilemma they're dealing with or a goal they're working toward, because that's how novels work. If they meet other characters whose goals align with theirs, this is an easy gateway for them to become allies and then friends and then possibly chosen family.
Ultimately, there are several roads to get to this place, but there needs to be a reason. Something needs to bond these characters, both for realism and for the plot to move forward.
Number 2: Each Character Needs a Purpose
The found family trope often heavily overlaps with the merry band of misfits. In fact, sometimes they're one and the same. Either way, the found family is working together to move the plot forward, which means every character within that family needs to serve a purpose. No two characters should feel too similar or offer the same content in the story. If that's the case, the characters are going to read as boring or replaceable.
This does not mean we should resort to one-dimensional labels. He's the strong one. He's the comic relief. He's the one with a tragic backstory. It's absolutely possible to have a character who's stronger than the others or funnier than the others, but they need to be more well-rounded than that. Each character should have their own voice, personality, and role in the story that separates them from the others. They can't just be another member of the family for the sake of having another member of the family.
Number 3: Limit the Numbers
I know it's tempting, but not every character needs to be a part of the found family. We love all of our characters, and we want to showcase them, but too many cooks spoil the broth. And I know real-life families can be huge. I'm Italian and Puerto Rican. I have a zillion cousins.
But if your found family is too large, you are thinning each character’s responsibilities and page time. That means there are fewer exciting moments per character, fewer chances to showcase the character's personality, and fewer chances to make the character memorable to readers. In other words, you are at a very high risk of your readers not becoming emotionally attached to any of these characters.
You do not want that. You want the characters to feel valuable. You want the readers to feel like if this character left the family, the whole operation would fall apart. In my opinion, and others may feel differently, a good idea is to cap a found family at six characters. If you get bigger than that, you're pushing it.
Number 4: Figure Out a Transition Moment
People don't just become family overnight. A lot of found family characters start off as enemies, or at the very least, they don't like each other. Their relationships are usually dysfunctional at the start, so it's not believable that they’d go from hating each other to trusting one another in an instant.
This is why it's important to create some type of transition moment. A scene where something happens that triggers the start of a shift in the relationship. This is very similar to writing Enemies to Lovers. There's usually a scene where one of the characters realizes “maybe I can potentially respect this person.”
You've got to do the same thing with found families, just with a lot less romance, because that would be weird. Be actively thinking about how you can show these characters in a new light to one another. Again, we're looking for a transition moment, not a total transformation. The characters aren't going to go from enemies to family in one single moment. The idea is to start the transformation. To get the characters thinking “maybe this person isn't who I thought they were.” Then you can slowly build their relationship over time, so eventually they become family.
Number 5: Give Them a Reason To Develop Loyalty
We just discussed that found families can't happen too quickly. It takes time to form a solid friendship, and it takes even more time to look at someone and consider them a part of your family. We already discussed in the last point that you need to include a transition scene where the character's relationship begins to shift from enemies or dislike to something potentially positive in the future.
But the family element is created through loyalty. Something needs to happen along the character's journey to cement trust. I call this the “save a life” moment. It's something I discuss in my writing craft book, How to Write Romantasy, but it's also relevant to the found family trope as well. One character has to save the other character's life in order to establish a feeling of loyalty. This could be a literal life-saving moment. Maybe character A saves character B from the jaws of death. But it doesn't have to be.
A “save a life” moment just means that one character is putting themselves at risk in order to benefit another character. This could be sticking your neck out for someone at work. This could be giving someone a meal when you yourself are really hungry. This could be distracting a monster so your friend can get away. When you put yourself in some sort of precarious position in order to help someone else, you are telling them “you can depend on me, I will be here for you.” It's true in the real world, and it's true in fiction.
Include a “save a life” moment. It can be small or big. Doesn't matter. It just needs to validate loyalty between the characters and get the readers rooting for the friendship.
So that's all I've got for you today!
The third book in my award-winning romantasy series, The Savior's Army, is available right now. It's also available in Kindle Unlimited. And if you need help writing your very own book, check out my writing craft books, Shut Up and Write the Book, as well as How to Write Romantasy. I’ve got everything you need to know in there for easy reference.
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I’ve always connected deeply with characters forming unique bonds. It’s like piecing together a puzzle, much like finding that elusive wordle hint. How do you think personal experiences shape character dynamics in this trope?
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