Sailing on the seas of NaNoWriMo, is your quill sword powerful enough to help you fight against the evil pirates of writer's block? Is your determination strong enough to lead you across the sea of procrastination so as to reach the island of victor...
Everybody has relationships. In your fiction—as in life—you want to take those connections beyond the obvious. Like descriptions, relationships can lapse into cliché. Think of the hero and his wisecracking sidekick, the frustrated housewife and the handsome neighbor, the befuddled father and his precocious child, the renegade cop and the stupid chief.
Then, explore who they are beyond themselves.
Here’s how.
1. Make them stop and think.
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Introspection is the easiest and clearest way to develop your characters’ relationships. Make your characters think about their bonds; make them challenge their own thoughts and feelings. I love him, but why? What’s the real reason I hate her? What needs to happen so I can get over this?
So, take a little time to tell your readers what your characters are thinking about the others. Say you’re writing a story in which a son kills his abusive father. What agonies would he go through, if the act were premeditated? And if it weren’t, what bad would he experience afterward? Think.
2. Give them strong opinions.
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Some writers seem reluctant to give their characters strong opinions—maybe because we don’t like to seem overbearing ourselves. True, being overbearing may be a flaw, but in fiction, flaws are good. Give your characters flaws that can be fatal.
Much of the story’s power comes from the feelings the characters have for—and against—one another. We identify with their love, and we’re appalled by their callousness. We are also educated by it. This is how some people live. Is it shallow or deeper than it really seems? Desirable or undesirable? We hold ourselves up to its mirror.
In your own work, remember that every narrator has a personality. Let that narrator’s opinions inform her character. And by all means, let characters gossip among themselves. That'll add the required cringe to the story.
