Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Twins in Stories by Bonnie Le Hamilton



I’m a twin. I am not just a twin, and not just an identical twin I’m a mirror twin, hence the name of this blog. I’m also a writer. As a writer, I’m supposed to write what I know.

And it’s not as if I don’t write about twins. I have twins in fifteen of my stories (technically sixteen, but they’re less predominant in book 2 of that series, and yes, it’s the same twins, more than one set even.) Fifteen, or sixteen, out of fifty, and in only one of them is the main character a twin. And in all of them, the sets of twins present in the story are younger siblings, and or nieces (excluding that second book where they are the older cousins of the heroine).

I know twins. I know what it’s like to be a twin. I don’t know what’s it’s like to be a singleton because I am a twin. That’s just part of who I am. Yet as often as I write heroines who look like me, I’ve only written one who is a twin, and that was a fraternal twin, and said twin is dead.

I’ve written, well as I said, sixteen stories with twins in them, but I don’t have their POV’s in the stories (excluding the one story). I don’t have scenes where someone mistakes them for their twin.

Okay, maybe I don’t have that, because I consider this a bit cliché. Not that I’ve actually read them, I generally don’t read beyond the blurb when I realize it’s another switched places or got-mistaken-for-the-other type of story. It’s more than a little overdone.

But how to do you write stories about twins without mixing up or switching them?

In ways it makes since writer’s who have twins in their stories follow that line, but I’m getting the feeling that’s the only thing authors think of when they write about twins.

Off the top of my head, I can think of four published books with main characters who are a twin, which doesn’t do this. In two of the ones I can think of the main character is Kit Fielding, i.e. one of Dick Francis’ characters, and Kit is a fraternal twin, so mixing up and switching places is out of the question. One is a romance where the hero’s identical twin brother is brain damaged. No way to get them mixed up, despite how much they look alike. And the fourth is “And Jacob Have I loved.” Again, not about twins switching and getting mixed up.

In other words, I feel the getting-twins-mixed-up or the twins-switching-places stories are overused, overdone, and need to be scrapped.

And that explains why I’ve never had an identical twin as a main character.

Glad I finally figured it out.


Happy writing everyone! J

4 comments:

  1. Richard Paul Evans has a set of identical twins in his Michael Vey books though only one is a leading character, the other is secondary. And the closest he comes to doing a "miss them up scene" is the other twin trying to convince Michael and his mother that she is his girlfriend (ie her twin) and it doesn't work.

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  2. Konnie that doesn't even make sense, are you saying Michael's twin sister tries to say she's his girlfriend?

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  3. No, Michael's girlfriend's twin sister tries to get him to believe she's his girlfriend.

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