People in books never have friends

I always laugh at TV weddings. - let’s say in Grey’s Anatomy, but I think it’s common - when the room has all the characters from the workplace and then a shit ton of people we have never seen before or since, who are allegedly friends/family of the main character(s) marrying!

That's more credible than screen weddings/funerals where you don't even get a mention of good friend/sibling/whoever, who has left the series, but IRL, the person would likely make a trip back to be there, or at least be talked about, "such a shame Caroline couldn't make it, but she's due to give birth next week," or whatever.

Mhairi McFarlane (who I think is great) writes good friends and family, but then, it is integral to the plot for the heroine to be able to flee romantic disaster, heal herself and then sally forth to find true love.

I always laugh at TV weddings. - let’s say in Grey’s Anatomy, but I think it’s common - when the room has all the characters from the workplace and then a shit ton of people we have never seen before or since, who are allegedly friends/family of the main character(s) marrying!

All this would be extra guff in writing. Everything unrelated to the plot would be edited out.

In The Seven Sisters Series (LR was a fabulous Author) which are one of my favourite series, lots of the characters have friends, albeit the stories are more family related. I do generally think the characters are dealing with bigger issues than meeting an old school mate for coffee! It would be really boring to read about meeting Sharon for cake on Tuesday and Carol for a glass of wine on Friday!

I'm reading Alan Hollinhurst in Our Evenings, he:s just said
' We hardly had friends in town and seemed not to feel the lack" then a lovely paragraph on how different connections had fallen through or never got off the ground. However I sense a friendship growing that might be plot pivotal.

It's raining here, I'm cancelling my day to read.

The Chalet School series extends school friendships into family life over many years and places, but that's why it feels smothering as well as lovely...

In the final Seven Sisters book, Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt, he makes a lot of friends along the way. Most of them are part of the plot though.

In Seven Sisters the whole point is that they are going somewhere they have never been to find people they don’t know - and even then, they do make some friends.

Yes, the Joe Wright one with Keira Knightley and Matthew McFadyen deleted Mrs Hurst, the married Bingley sister.

I suppose you can see why if you're trying to slim down a novel with lots of characters to fit into a feature film length (when the adaptation the viewing audience was most familiar with was a multi-part TV series which had much more leisure to be faithful to the novel) -- the advantage, too, is that rather than Caroline Bingley bitching about the awful Bennets to Mrs Hurst, she bitches to Darcy in this version, which brings his snobbery sooner to the foreground?

I think Maria Lucas isn't in that adaptation either?

It's true though, that 'taking advice from a sensible friend' or 'going out and moaning to your gang before taking any action' would totally wreck the plots of a certain type of fiction, just as having mobile phones would resolve key plot points of many films before they even got off the ground!

And insufficiently differentiated characters is a real pain. I'm an alert reader, but Kate Atkinson's Transcription just didn't work for me because of the preponderance of essentially similar besuited Englishmen called Godfrey, Perry, Oliver etc, whom I was never sure I could tell apart.

I think most of Enid Blyton's books are positively bulging with 'friends'.

It makes for very dull central characters though - it's why I enjoy series that allow for friendships and relationships generally to develop.

Totally agree it is a thing but as pp mentioned it keeps the story ‘clean’ and prevents unnecessary distraction. Also aside from v high concept plots a lot of storylines can be resolved v easily if someone had a sensible friend or sister who encourages them to address misunderstandings etc - a lot of novels now are also set back in 90s and early 2000s as mobile phones also solve many simple plots. You also have to think about when we are meeting the character who is about to embark on a journey of sorts - there needs to be a gap that needs to be filled or resolved.

From an author's point of view, unless the friends are important to the storyline then there's no point in bringing them in. It's the same with parents and family - I always have to make sure that my characters' parents are either deceased or living a long way away, because otherwise half the plots can be sorted by main characters just staying with their parents or talking to their mum!

You wouldn't want to read a book where a main character rehashed all her plot points to every friend, for friend to give advice and then never be heard of again, which is why we leave them out (unless they crop up throughout the story and add something to the plot).

It does depend on the genre though.

Yes - friends and/or family ie people connected to her somehow to invite her to new locations where a murder took place.

I think Miss Marple had quite a few Nephews as well - well at least in TV shows - I don't remember her books as well. However Poirot being Belgium in UK had to rely much more on friends and being a P.I. and getting invited to places.

Friend or family in crime novels are usually for a reason and it's often to get detective to a site/crime - or get them invested in outcome.

Jessica had loads of nephews and nieces.

One of the telvised or film servions of Pride and Prejudice merged the Bingley sisters into one.

Maybe I’m actually a book character because I have no friends.

I started reading this and immediately thought of Demon and Maggot!

Yes so true

A good point about books and TV - though where they do it's again for a reason.

Sci-fi it's often explore mismatch between TV and reality or explain language/familiarity skills. I've seen similar with non fiction reading -often romance vs RL or magic becoming real for character.

With non-fiction books it often to make that character an expert source - and can often be a major characteristic of the character.

In murder/crime it can be used to make some less than obvious realisation for someone and is a plot point.

Characters in books rarely seem to watch TV or read books themselves, either.

Yes, but the SS is very low-stakes, no-danger, secret society, kids snooping on little local mysteries, aimed at younger readers. The worst that happens is the naughty sister Suzy getting hold of the password.

When the stakes are higher, and child characters need to be in actual danger, ‘good’ parents/ teachers/authority figures need to be dead, absent or rendered ineffectual. So the Famous Five are always off on holidays somewhere remote alone, or Jack, Dinah, Lucy-Ann and Philip get separated from an ineffectual guide, or Kevin McAllister’s family go on holiday without him, all neighbours are away bar the scary old man, and he’s afraid to go to the police because he accidentally shoplifted a toothbrush, or Dumbledore has to be killed off, otherwise there’s an actual adult (kind of) standing between him and danger.

In adult fiction, some genres allow for more concentration on friendships than others. A lot of women’s commercial fiction focuses on relationships between characters, so friends will feature heavily. YA often has a big focus on friendship. Coming of age novels often involve the protagonist finding friends/their place in the world.

Sally Romney’s three novels are all about friendships and how they interact with romantic relationships.

Becky Chambers’ ‘cosy’ sci-fi is all about friendships — pretty much all of her novels are about interspecies friendships on spaceships or planets. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is less interested in whether the Wayfarer successfully completes its mission than how a bunch of different species interrelate on a year-long voyage. The Monk and Robot books are about a friendship between a human and a robot set in a Workd where robots developed consciousness and left the factories to live in the wilderness. A Closed and Common Orbit is about the friendships that emerge when five individuals from different species are stranded for a few days at a refuelling stop.

What I’m saying is that if you want novels that focus on friendships, they exist, but some novels will have a reason for their absence.

This was my main criticism of My Favourite Mistake. It was a ballache to keep up with all the characters. Approx. half of them could have been left out and it would have made zero difference to the plot, and it would have vastly improved the reading experience.

i hate books with too many characters. I like to get to know the characters I’m reading properly rather than too many hangers-on.

pp who mentioned SATC - they DO have family, but they are only mentioned when it’s relevant to the plot. Miranda’s mother dies. Steve’s ‘ma’ gets dementia. Samantha sleeps with Charlotte’s brother. Big’s mother goes to church. I think the majority of the characters moved to NYC from somewhere else, so it makes sense that on a day-to-day level, family from elsewhere doesn’t feature.

Funny - that's what I say about movies.

PP mentioned Julia Quinn and Regency novels - I like the ‘Bridgerton’ world where major characters become minor characters in other books (or vice versa depending on which order you read the books). Some are familial links but there are friendships between characters- mostly as it’s relevant to the plot or scene setting though.