Secrets To Writing

(6c) 8 Secrets To Writing Strong Character Relationships

Character-Building is a crucial step in the creative writing process. However, we often become too focused on creating and developing isolated character profiles that we overlook one of the most crucial aspects of character-building: the relationships that exist between these characters.

A fictional world would collapse if not for the networks of people and creatures who hold it up.

As a writer, it becomes your imperative to shape the ways in which characters participate in dynamic interactions with one another, as well as the ways in which their stories influence and are influenced by the motives of other characters.

Use these 8 secrets to craft stronger characters, with more authentic relationships.

1. Characterization

Authentic characterisations is about characters and interactions. Whether it's about physical appearance or personality, describe your character in relation to your other characters. This technique is particularly useful when writing in first person or third person limited.

For example, rather than saying that Anna is five foot tall or that she is short, say that she only reaches to the protagonist's shoulder despite wearing high heels, or that the protagonist has to tilt his head downwards in order to meet her eyes.

In this way, you more vividly conjure an image of your character within the reader's mind. In other words, you're leveraging the 'show, don't tell' mantra. It's far more effective to use actions rather than abstract measurements (like "five feet") or ambiguous terms (like "short") to animate description.

2. Setting

Setting is all about authentic world-building. It's about framing your characters to portray them as you choose.Author Moira Allen notes that setting is brought to life, most often through the character's actions, mood, experience and sensory experiences. Setting has the capacity to build the reader's expectations of one character's relationship to another.

For instance, let's use the setting of a thunderstorm.

If you write about the dark clouds swallowing up any sign of light and the rain battering away every last drop of warmth that the characters have left between them, you evoke within the reader a sense of foreboding that indicates only to the doomed relationship that these two characters share.

If you use that same setting of the thunderstorm but instead choose to write about the way they laughed and danced in the rain and leapt into each other's arms every time the sky roared its majestic symphony, you end up generating an entirely different mood. One filled with hope and love, one that shows the reader the endurance of their friendship and their genuine trust in one another.

Rather than saying that "the wind blew", tell your readers how it "blew". Pathetic fallacy comes to play here. Did the wind moan? Did it rattle the windows like a prisoner in rage? Perhaps you may decide to simply infer the presence of the wind by describing the way the waves restlessly battered against the shore or the way the trees shook their heads in violent fury.

By employing these kinds of evocative phrases, you open up a portal of emotion through which the reader can discern whether it is turbulence or solidarity that exists between the characters.

3. Dialogue

Dialogue isn't an opportunity for an "information dump". It's a chance to explore a character's psyche. Authentic dialogue can divulge a wealth of information about the character's personality and feelings towards another character. As Stephen King so rightly says, it's a way of "bring[ing] characters to life through their speech". More than that, it is a way of bringing the malleable relationships between these characters to life.