Your Guide to Writing the Perfect Story

Developing Character Relationships

In this chapter, I'm mainly going to focus on platonic and antagonistic relationships because I already have multiple chapters in the works dedicated to love interests. Relationships are a huge part of the story so, yeah, they're kind of important. Hopefully this chapter will help you figure out how best to develop relationships. I'm going to split this chapter into two parts and then sub-categories so I can organize it better. So here it is.

Part One: Platonic Relationships

A platonic relationship is a relationship that is positive, but not romantic. This can refer to friendship, family, or partnership. In every case, the following applies. 

1. Why?

The first step to any relationship is for you to help the readers understand why it is there. If two characters have been friends for the longest of time, give it a reason. Maybe it's because they don't know who else to turn to or that they are too afraid let their friendship fade away. Perhaps both of their parents died in a freak accident and they turned to each other for consolation.

If there are issues in a relationship that you can't get out of, like family members, explain why this is. What is it that your protagonist sees in any new characters that they become close to? If your readers don't understand why the relationship is there in the first place, I can guarantee it won't work.

2. Mutual Respect

In any positive relationship, there must be mutual respect. If there isn't than it becomes antagonistic. That is not to say that your characters will always agree on anything or that they will be okay with each other's decisions; if that were true, your relationship would be no good. They can disagree with each other and they can become frustrated because they believe that the other person is not doing the right thing, but in the end they still treat each other with respect and neither believes they are superior to the other.

3. Sharing Experiences

If you are going to maintain the relationship, you need to give the characters something that they can relate to with each other. I've fallen out of friendship with people before because we just lost anything in common. Your characters can be starkly different but if they both are survivors of a plane crash, they have that significant event linking them together. As the story progresses, your characters will thrive only by fighting for the same thing or going through hell together.

4. Test the Relationship

When relationships are all sunshine and butterflies, it's boring. All published stories have some sort of disagreement or conflict thrown in. Test your character's bond. Think of a choice that your character will have to make that you know the other person in the relationship will not agree with. Or a certain situation can make one person feel betrayed by the other. A strong relationship will pass this test with time, but a weak one will fall apart. That's perfectly fine because it shows that these people were never meant to have a partnership. When it comes down to it, do your characters need each other or will they do just fine on their own?

A tip is to have both characters have strong opinions. That way, it will be easier to have them disagree. Wishy-washy characters are weak. 

5. Test the Protagonist

The next step is to test the protagonist, their priorities, and their loyalty to the person in question. Give them a choice that directly affects another person. How far will they go to protect the people they care about? I would argue that 90% of stories are centred around the protagonist's love for someone else. Interesting relationships change the direction of the story or cause roadblocks. But sometimes, they also help to solve the conflict. Create a balance.