When you’re by yourself, or with one other companion, keeping track of your own personal story, or that of you and your companion, is fairly simple. But when you also have to deal with the demands of family–your partner, kids, and any other combination of relations–how do you keep up a coherent narrative, and deal with all of those people?
Well, it all depends on if this is indeed a story about something you learned about your family, or if this is a story about what you learned independent of your family.
If this is in fact a story about how your family unit became closer, or learned about each other’s strengths, or came together to overcome a challenge, then you do have to spend some time and some scenes differentiating the various members of your family so that we readers get a sense of their personalities. Showing rather than telling is of course best here. The key is to find scenes that relate to your overall story that also allow you to provide those key details about these members of your family.
However, don’t forget that the main character of this story is always you. You are still central, and it is still your eyes through which we view this story and the people who populate it. So do provide us with your insights into these family members, and the ways in which you are indeed becoming closer as a unit or overcoming a challenge together.
This may involve scenes of the whole family together, and some one-on-one scenes of you, our protagonist, with one of your children, or just your partner, to give us a sense of the overall family dynamics as well as individual relationships.
If it is indeed the case that this story is about a family experience and the way, from your point of view, your family has gone through a change, then it is also a good idea to plant in the beginning of the story what that initial family quest is. Was the purpose of your trip explicitly to bond within your family unit, or was that a by-product? Was this the last trip together before the kids go off to college and you planned to make the most of this time together? Has it been a tough year for the family and this trip is all about release?
It’s a good idea to frame the intention of the trip. Even if there isn’t an explicit goal in mind, you might think deeply and manage to come up with a purpose that wasn’t exactly explicit, but was at the back of your mind.
If you are not in fact writing about how your family has changed, but how you alone have changed, then your family doesn’t need to be a big part of the story. You certainly don’t want to lie and pretend you were all alone when you weren’t, even for the sake of a clearer narrative.
You can name the people in your family travelling with you, but you don’t need to focus on them or present their personality sketches. They can just remain in the background as your story focuses on the more individual quest and change that transpired within you.
So, here are my tips for writing about travel with family:
Work out if this story is about an individual change, or a family change.
Tell us the intention of the trip—to bond as a family? To commemorate something? To provide release after a loss?
Provide scenes of the whole family together, as well as individual relationships in order to help us to get to know these family members as individuals.
These scenes also need to move us in the direction of the change your family went through.
Remember that this story is still from your point of view, so do narrate your particular insights and perceptions about your family members and this new setting.
