Roderick
asked
Kevin Sands:
Great wrap-up to the mystery of who the Raven is, but I wanted more between the characters I've grown to love. What about Tom's sisters? Why is there no mention of Tom's family anymore? How are they doing? Does he never visit them? He is wonderful as Christopher's faithful friend, but he does have loving siblings of his own, as well as a caring mother (even if his father is a jerk).
Kevin Sands
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[In writing, just like in life, there's no such thing as a free lunch. What that means in this context is that it's not simple to just add scenes, because the novel as a whole is affected by everything you do.
Adding even a single scene, for example, especially a character-focused one, changes the pacing of the story. Specifically, it slows it down. It may also add other elements that then need to be addressed—because if everything in a complicated situation can be resolved in one scene and then not brought up again, then that scene has no relevance to the plot and should never have been included in the first place.
A reunion with Tom's family is exactly this, which is why while I considered putting one in for both books 5 and 6, I never did. There was no reasonable role, plotwise, for his sisters or parents to play in either story, so putting this in would just slow the books down. (And these two were the fastest-paced of the series, and anything that slowed them down would be a mistake.) Furthermore, it's not just a matter of saying hello. Of course Tom would be overjoyed to see his sisters, and they him, but his relationship with his parents is much more complicated. His father alone will not forgive Tom's choosing to stay with Christopher at the end of book 2, while also being scheming regarding Tom's newfound patronage by the king. And Tom himself has started to come into his own, plus other things. Ultimately, it would take the focus off where the story needs to be, which is the constant state of threat. (hide spoiler)]
Adding even a single scene, for example, especially a character-focused one, changes the pacing of the story. Specifically, it slows it down. It may also add other elements that then need to be addressed—because if everything in a complicated situation can be resolved in one scene and then not brought up again, then that scene has no relevance to the plot and should never have been included in the first place.
A reunion with Tom's family is exactly this, which is why while I considered putting one in for both books 5 and 6, I never did. There was no reasonable role, plotwise, for his sisters or parents to play in either story, so putting this in would just slow the books down. (And these two were the fastest-paced of the series, and anything that slowed them down would be a mistake.) Furthermore, it's not just a matter of saying hello. Of course Tom would be overjoyed to see his sisters, and they him, but his relationship with his parents is much more complicated. His father alone will not forgive Tom's choosing to stay with Christopher at the end of book 2, while also being scheming regarding Tom's newfound patronage by the king. And Tom himself has started to come into his own, plus other things. Ultimately, it would take the focus off where the story needs to be, which is the constant state of threat. (hide spoiler)]
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