My eldest son worked out a couple of years ago he could make people laugh so he decided to do a stand up comedy routine at the end of term lunctime concert, but he wasn't quite sure where to start. We talked about what people laugh about, what people cry about and why, and we came up with "it's things in their everyday life, events they can relate to." For him that was middle school life....the food in the dining hall, the teacher who is always losing her glasses, and the ficticious missing student who is on the roll but never turns up and students give more and more outlandish reasons as to her absence.
This got me thinking about the films and books I relate to and why. I don't come from a huge family but when we sit down at Christmas there can be up to 17 of us and the men sit with bemused and perplexed expressions on their faces as the conversation rips around 
the table,
the table, topics tangling all over themselves, and half finished snippets which come back to be completed up to five minutes later. And the women manage to keep up! So when I watched the dinner scene in "While You Were Sleeping" I nearly fell off the couch. This was MY family! In fact I sat them all down to watch the scene :-)
I had the same reaction when I watched "Must Love Dogs" and her siblings came over to organise her. I howled with laughter when I listened to the talented Canadian comedian, Anita Renfroe sing 'A Day in the Life of a Mother' to the tune of the William Tell Overture. Pure comedy because every mother of a teenager has been there.
I also sobbed my heart out in "Billy Elliot" when the piano was cut up for firewood on Christmas Day. The piano represented so much that the Elliot family had lost, and I could relate to what it because of what the piano in our house means to everyone.
I've read too many wonderful family sagas to list them all and many of these books have been best sellers and I am sure it is because in every story there is something we can relate to because we have experienced a part of it in our own family.
When I started writing The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal I didn't really have it in my mind that Emily's family would play such a big role but suddenly I found I just HAD to plunge Linton into a large family dinner scene and see if he would sink or swim. Trying to write ten voices and a dog, and have it make sense, was one of the most challenging things I have done yet. But it was so much fun and by the end I wanted to be sitting around that table multi-generational table too.
So what favourite films or books have you seen snippets of your family in?
Fiona Lowe is a wife, daughter, a sister, an auntie and a mother as well as an Australian Romance Author. Her latest Outback book is, The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal , out now in the UK and Australia as well as being available on line . For more information about her and her books visit her website and blog
