by Lynette M. Burrows

To borrow and slightly twist Samwise Gamgee’s words*, the great stories, the ones that really matter, are stories about people, about their relationships. Relationships are a large part of what your readers relate to because we can’t escape them. We all have relationships with other people. Whether they are friends, acquaintances, enemies, or lovers, your characters' relationships can break a reader’s suspension of disbelief or indelibly mark your reader’s heart.

This is the first of a two-part series that will help you learn to develop unique and compelling relationships by understanding that each relationship is its own entity and how to create compelling relationships in your stories.

The Relationship As An Entity

Friend or foe, character A doesn’t act exactly the same way when she is alone as she does when she’s with Character B (and vice versa for B.) One key point K.M. Weiland teaches is to make the relationship an entity in itself. Basically, she means treat the relationship as a third character. One way to embrace this idea is to think about how the ethics of a group can lead an individual to behave differently than she would if she were alone.

Knowing what the relationship is and how the group reacts differently as a group than each individual would, will give your story more depth and meaning to your readers.

Relationships are composed of many parts. Some of those parts may not overtly be in the story but will influence every interaction between the characters. First, you must understand that there are many types of relationships.

Types of Relationships

Your characters may only have one relationship or many relationships in your book. Choose the type of relationships you will create for your characters with your story goals in mind. Here are a few types to consider:

• Parent and child
• Siblings
• Romantic partners
• Friends
• Teacher and student
• Mentor and mentee
• In-laws
• Neighbors
• Business Partners
• Parent and teen
• Roommates
• Extended family
• Doctor and patient

There are many more types of relationships. In longer stories, relationships can be interconnected such as the antagonist is the ex-boyfriend of the big sister or best friend of the protagonist. Revisit the stories you love and look for the clues to the relationships the main characters have.

When you treat the relationship as an entity in your story, the dynamics between your characters will create motivation and movement that keeps your story from becoming too plot driven. 

Example

The story of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, is a quest. If Tolkien hadn't created the friendship between Frodo and Samwise Gamgee, it would have been an entirely different story. Tolkien created that relationship out of his own experiences, but that relationship influences how the plot of the story moves forward.

Samwise is a loyal friend and servant to Frodo at the beginning. And Frodo accepts his role as master. 

Over the course of the story, Frodo questions Sam's loyalty and resents his protectiveness. Samwise learns kindness and acceptance from Frodo. Over the corse of the story, Sam also gains confidence in his decisions. As both characters learn, they change, and their relationship changes from master and servant to equals. 

How Many Relationships

As with any other story writing advice, there is no right way to creating relationships. Nor is there a right number of relationships.

Studies show that in real life, people can have 150 relationships during a lifetime. At any point, in a person's lifetime, only 3-5 of those relationships are likely to be close ones. Each relationship is unique to the two or more people involved.

The number of relationships your character has and forms during your story will depend on the genre, the plot, and the theme or point of your story. Be deliberate about the relationships you develop. Start with the smallest number of characters.

In any story, there are at least two entities, a protagonist and an antagonist. Both of these characters have a relationship with each other, even if it's only as antagonist to one another. Usually, they each also have relationships with other characters.

Once you've identified the relationship between your antagonist and protagonist, identify the other types of relationships you may need. For your story to work, does the protagonist need a best friend or a lover? What about school friends or work friends and neighbors? The easiest and most natural relationships of your protagonist are family members. But unless your story is a family saga, you don’t want all your protagonist’s close relationships to be family. 

Do the same process for your antagonist.

Words of Caution

Unless you are writing super long sagas, you cannot recreate the numbers of, or the complexities of, real-life relationships.

Make certain only one relationship fulfills a specific role in your story. Too many similar relationships can muddle the story so much your reader stops reading. 

You now have a list of anywhere from two to ten (or more) different relationship types, ie characters, to fill in your story. It’s time to make them work for the story. How?

Make the Most of Your Story Relationships

As in real life, story relationships are more complicated than a role or what they can learn from one another. The key elements to making the relationships in your story memorable to begin with interesting groupings of individuals.  

Choose Interesting Groupings

By interesting, I mean choose character groups or pairings that will create some tension. (See "Beguile Your Readers with Tension, Suspense and Conflict" for the difference between tension and conflict.) A few ways tension can exist between characters include attraction, natural antagonism, language barriers, or societal rules. 

Look at the pairings in your favorites, in classics, and in bestseller fiction. Examples include: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Romeo and Juliet, the trio of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Luke Skywalker and Leia, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, or Hawkeye and Black Widow. What causes the tension between each of these groupings? 

Make your main relationship, the one between your primary characters, different from the relationships with side or supporting characters. 

Make Your Characters Individuals

If a character is only developed as “the friend” or “the spouse,” that character will be flat and uninteresting. Every character that shows up as an individual gives your reader another chance to connect. Yes, even the spear carriers, passersby, and crowds should be an individual in some small way. 

Wait, you say? You’re protesting that to make every character an individual will make your book too long and too boring? 

Think about the movie, Toy Story. The main characters, Woody and Buzz Lightyear, have obvious differences that make them individuals. Their roles of cowboy and astronaut influence their actions and dialogue. But Woody has leadership skills, a grasp of reality, and will put himself at risk for others. Buzz has charm and confidence but doesn’t know he’s a toy.

Now think about the side characters. Hamm, the piggy bank, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, and Rex each display their own personalities through their much smaller but unique bits of action and dialogue. The writers probably know a lot more about these characters and their relationships to Woody and Buzz, but only a little shows on the screen.

Return to that favorite book of yours and look for the side characters and how their relationships come across. How does the dialogue and actions between characters help you understand what their relationship is?

Relationships in Fiction Are Complicated

So far, we’ve touched on how each relationship is a unique entity in your story, relationship types, relationship groupings, and making each character an individual.

Overwhelmed yet? Don’t be. You get to decide how complicated and deep each relationship is in your story. 

Creating fictional relationships can be an organic discovery process that you improve with rewrites and practice. You can base your fictional relationships on the real ones you experience or observe. Analyzing other authors’ books for how the relationships work in their books will help you internalize what works for you.

Part Two discusses what components you need to create relationships your readers can’t stop reading about.

Which fictional relationships have you enjoyed the most? Do you write the relationships between characters as a separate entity?

* * * * * *

* “It's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered.” Samwise Gamgee, The Fellowship of the Ring, Lord of the Rings, J. R.R. Tolkien

About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, blogger, creativity advocate, and Yorkie wrangler. She survived moving seventeen times between kindergarten and her high school graduation. This alone makes her uniquely qualified to write an adventure or two.

Her Fellowship series is a “chillingly realistic” dystopian alternate history. The story follows Miranda, one of the elite who dared to break the rules but in 1961 Fellowship America following the rules isn’t optional. Even the elite can be judged an unbeliever and hunted by the Angels of Death. Books one and two, My Soul to Keep, and  If I Should Die, are available everywhere books are sold online. Book three, And When I Wake, is scheduled to be published in late 2024.

Lynette lives in the land of OZ. She is a certifiable chocoholic and coffee lover. When she’s not blogging or writing or researching her next book, she avoids housework and plays with her two Yorkshire terriers. You can find Lynette online on Facebook or on her website.

Images within the post were purchased from DepositPhotos.com