The brunt of negative attention from his mother Judy (who herself had been criticized by her own mother) fell on his sister, who learned to (overly) exert control on all areas of her own life: her eating, her work, her environment, and her relationships.ĭue to the very obvious favoritism Ross received from both of his parents, his relationship with Monica has been fraught with competition all throughout childhood and even somewhat in present day. Ross, age 36, is a man who is the older brother of Monica who is two years junior. Even then, those aliens and animals (and humans) have relationships.īelow is an example of a genogram I pulled from the web, but shows the relationships, career, and ethnicity of the artist Frida Kahlo.Ĭheck out the description of the above from the counselor who put it together. Our characters, however, are humans, unless they are aliens or animals. Much of the research behind genograms and genogram assessment is based in the clinical. I also believe they have a utility with writers who might need to find a character’s deeper motivation. Genograms are used by doctors, therapists, genealogists, sociologists, social workers, and researchers. You can see the how various patterns might emerge in the psychology of some of your characters by discovering issues within–or outside of–a family. For example, you can track who dislikes character X or Y, who had an affair with character Z, who died and why. I wanted a way not only to track that, but also see if there was something more that could be discovered.Ī genogram is a family tree that contains additional information about relationships. Lives outside of everything we’ve ever written or plan to write. Why? Because characters in novels have lives. In that first article, I brought up the idea of genograms. Rather than focus on the fact that this person and that person gave birth to this other person who then married someone and gave birth to a few more people, genograms dig into the relationships of those people. Stemming from the world of therapy, genograms are intended to map patterns of a family through several generations. In the simplest terms, a genogram is a modern family tree, but it can be so much more than that, and I have found it especially useful as a writer.