People in books never have friends

[Lelophants]

Anyone else noticed that in books unless it’s a chic lit style book (in which case they have 1 or 2 other women that they have an intense relationship with toxic and ott normally) most book characters just don’t have friends? They’ll have a potential love interest or maybe one person but then they’ll move location or do something on their ‘adventure’ and they have nobody permanent in their lives that they check in with/catch up with occasionally? They’re always on their own.

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.

Yes so true

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

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

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

Jessica had loads of nephews and nieces.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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!

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

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!

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.