Some of the best chemistry/relationships in fiction exist between characters who are/become friends. Here are some tips for making friendships come alive on the page:
1. Banter
One of the most interesting aspects of fictional friendships is the way the characters interact with each other whilst important plot points are occurring.
If your characters have easy banter, teasing one another without missing a beat and managing to bounce off each other even in the toughest circumstances, it will be clear to the reader that these two are/should be good friends.
Friends know each other well. They know the other’s character so well that they can easily find something to tease each other over. However, this also means knowing which topics are off-limits.
If you want to write a good, healthy friendship, your characters shouldn’t use humour/sarcasm as a way to hurt the other. It should be good-natured and understood as such from both sides.
Different friendships will have different types of chemistry. Some friends may tease each other with facial expressions. Others may already anticipate a snarky remark and counter it before it’s been spoken. Others will have physical ways of goofing around.
Some friends might not tease each other at all. Banter isn’t necessary; it’s just a good way to make your characters come alive and make their friendship one that is loved by readers.
What’s important is chemistry - the way they automatically react to each other.
Think Sam and Dean in Supernatural or Juliette and Kenji in the Shatter Me series.
2. Mutual support
Unless you purposefully want to write an unhealthy/toxic friendship, your characters should both be supportive of the other.
This means that, even if one is the MC and the other the side-kick, both should be cognisant of the other’s feelings and problems, and should be considerate in this regard.
Few things will make your MC as likable as remembering to check in and be there for their best friend even when they are in the thick of a crisis.
You need to show your characters being vulnerable in front of each other and being supportive in ways that are tailored to the needs of each friend.
So, if one of the characters really responds to physical comfort, the other should know to give hugs/rub their back when they’re not feeling well. Similarly, if one of them doesn’t like being touched and responds to material comfort, have the other bring them ice cream and join them for a movie marathon. Whatever works for your characters.
What gets me every time is when a character is falling apart and won’t listen to/be consoled by anyone but their best friend (but this is just personal preference).
3. Knowing the other’s past/family life
This really only applies to characters who have been friends for quite a while.
Good friends know each other’s backstory - the highs and lows and mundane details. They know they layout of their family home and they probably know their family members well.
Friends will often talk about these things, only having to mention a few words for the other to know what they’re talking about i.e. “The ‘09 Thanksgiving disaster” or “You know how Uncle Fred is”
This will instantly make it clear that your characters are close and have come a long way together.
Perhaps there are issues at home/trauma from the past that the other character will immediately understand. So, if one character appears with a black eye, their friend might know that the father was probably drunk the night before and got violent. Or if the character has a nightmare, the friend might know that it was about childhood abuse etc.
This can also apply to good things i.e. if one of the characters gets a nice note in their lunchbox, the other might know that their grandma is in town.
Whatever works for your story should be used to indicate the level of unspoken understanding the friends have.
4. Being protective
Few things will make your readers love a friendship more than the friends being fiercely protective of each other (in a healthy, non-territorial way).
Has someone hurt one of the characters? The other should be furious and want to exact revenge. Does someone say something demeaning to one of the friends? The other should defend them immediately and vehemently.
This can also take on a humorous twist if one of the characters starts dating someone. The friend can make extra sure that said date is sincere and promise to exact vengeance if their friend is hurt.
This can also be a great plot device, since it could explain why the MC’s best friend joins the quest/goes along on the journey. Perhaps this is the main plot point: a character seeking to protect/avenge their friend.
If you want to go in a toxic direction, this can be taken too far i.e. a friend who never lets the other spend time with anyone else/stalks the other/is patronising etc.
5. Common interest(s)
Even if the two characters are vastly different, there should be something that keeps them together besides loyalty.
This is especially important for characters who become friends throughout the course of the novel.
This doesn’t have to mean that both of them go hiking every weekend or want to become pilots one day. It could be something small, like a love of cheesy movies or a shared taste in music. Maybe they both enjoy silence/don’t like other people. Maybe they are both social justice warriors, but for different causes.
This could also be common characteristics instead of interests. Perhaps both are very ambitious/funny/social.
There should just be some factor that ignited the friendship and brings the two of them together.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be a big part of your story, but you should at least have it mentioned to make the friendship appear more authentic.
Reblog if you found these tips useful. Comment if you would like a Part 2. Follow me for similar content.
I love writing friendships and these are awesome points.
The Closer Look: While this channel is primarily dedicated to the story telling in movies that doesn’t mean you can’t translate a lot of these story telling mechanics into writing. The video in the link covers how to make a compelling villain with one of my favorite villains of the DC Universe, so give them a look.
Extra Credits:Just like the last entry, this one doesn’t have much to do with writing novels or fiction. Rather, Extra Credits covers game design a lot of the time. But they also cover how to write the stories for those games and offer some interesting insight. Couple this with their other segments Extra Sci Fi and Extra History, and you have the makings of an amazing tool kit for writers of any medium.
Overly Sarcastic Productions:There is not enough praise I can throw at this channel. Anything from Trope Talk to Miscellaneous Myths and even Classics Summarized is able offer something to even the most seasoned writer. Just like Extra Credits too, they also cover a bunch of historical stuff too. Which, as a history buff myself, is always a plus.
Tale Foundry:By now, i’m sure you’ve gotten the theme. All of these channels are amazing, but this one is more writing focused then the rest thus far. The channel dedicates itself to taking a closer look at genera and sub-genera and the big players therein. It gives the audience a chance to take a look at these things under the microscope for an easier means of dissection for their own work.
Hello Future Me:I found this channel when I was scrolling through YouTube randomly and found their video on Writing a Hard Magic Systemand it gave me plenty of food for thought on the fantasy novel I was working on. They go on to cover a Soft Magic Systemwhich was able to really draw the line in black and white as to the difference between the two. From there, the channel has been able to offer a few good videos on matters of writing fiction and one that comes with a recommendation for me.
PlagueOfGripes:This one, you’ll need to take with a grain of salt as the host is a little rough around the edges. While he primarily covers art streams and other shenanigans like that, he did a three part video essay on writing that had quite a bit to teach. I personally found his cynical nature to be charming and funny, but if that isn’t your thing, maybe pass him by just this once.
All the links to the channels are located in their respective titles.
break up your paragraphs. big paragraphs are scary, your readers will get scared
fuuuuck epithets. “the other man got up” “the taller woman sat down” “the blonde walked away” nahhh. call them by their names or rework the sentence. you can do so much better than this (exception: if the reader doesn’t know the character(s) you’re referring to yet, it’s a-okay to refer to them by an identifying trait)
blunette is not a thing
new speaker, new paragraph. please.
“said” is such a great word. use it. make sweet love to it. but don’t kill it
use “said” more than you use synonyms for it. that way the use of synonyms gets more exciting. getting a sudden description of how a character is saying something (screaming, mumbling, sighing) is more interesting that way.
if your summary says “I suck at summaries” or “story better than summary” you’re turning off the reader, my dude. your summary is supposed to be your hook. you gotta own it, just like you’re gonna own the story they’re about to read
follow long sentences w short ones and short ones w long ones. same goes for paragraphs
your writing is always better than you think it is. you just think it’s bad because the story’s always gonna be predicable to the one who’s writing it
Change the background colour of the pages to a mint green shade.
It is said that green is a calming colour, however, the main reason why I like this, is because I can write for a much longer period of time now, as a white background I used before made my eyes dry and exhausted after just a few hours of working.
It is basically much more soft and careful to the eyes. I can’t precisely explain why that is. I think it’s that by making a pinch softer contrast of the text and the background, your eyes does not get exposed to as much light.
Just make sure to not make the background too dark, or else your eyes will get exhausted do to over-fixating the lack of contrast between text and background.
And maybe you find a nice pastel/light background shade that fits you; give it a try.
Different things work out and fits for different people. And I just felt like sharing this.
Here’s the shade numbers I used to get my preferred colour:
Thanks for reading.
DUDE
You just solved a very real problem for me! Thanks!
For those who might not know where to find this: It’s in the Page Layout tab.
I had no idea this was possible before today!
Open Office Writer has a similar function under Format - Page - Background.
WHAT
Is this why I can write on yellow paper longer too?
I’m guessing it’s like using a coloured overlay?
You can also do this in Google Docs by going to File > Page Setup… > Page Color!
Proposal: instead of creating fantasy names by inventively misspelling real names, create fantasy names by cutting real names in half and stapling them back together with mismatched counterparts. e.g.:
This was meant to provide motivation, but honestly, this is more of a list of ways to make sure you get it done, rather than make yourself “motivated”. Either way, this should benefit you somehow.
In the words of Chuck Wendig, “do not fucking multitask”. Carve out a specific time to write and use it to write. Don’t try to simultaneously write and tweet and check your email. Whether it be 15 minutes or 2 hours, write, and only write.
Take breaks occasionally. You can’t just sit there and fog up your creative lens. Go outside and go for a walk. Go to coffee with your friends for an hour. Do something to relax your brain for a while. It’s the same with studying. Don’t drive yourself up the wall because you feel you’re “on a roll”. Your ideas and plans will still be there when you get back. If you begin to get frustrated or your foot starts to fall asleep, take a break.
Use a rewards system. Say, for every 100 words, you get a piece of chocolate. After eating a regular sized Hershey’s bar, you’ve got 1200 words. Go you! (I personally fine this incredibly useful.)
Have people you trust hold you accountable. Have your best friend (or partner, if you’ve got one) check in when they know you should be writing to make sure you did.
Read books like a writer. Read a shitty book and pick it apart to find what you don’t like about it. Read a good book to find what you do like. Use these reflections and apply them to your own work. Nothing helps quite like learning from other people’s mistakes and success.
Don’t get stuck in the planning stages. You may get really excited while planning a story, that huge plot twist, a minor character’s backstory, etc, but keep in mind that at some point you’re going to have to sit down and hash it out. A lot of promising writers never get past the planning stages, so in the words of my very wise boyfriend: “Just write”.
Write in places that make your creative juices flow. Get cozy in bed with your laptop open to a word document, light a few candles, make some tea, get that incense going, and write. Music really helps to get in the mood as well, and if you would like to take a look at my writing playlist, here it is, free for public consumption.
Keep your mind open to new ideas and changes to your story. Your idea will develop and evolve over time, and the beauty of writing is that you can change anything you want and there are no consequences. If you decide to completely scrap a character, remove a subplot, add one in, or change the plot but keep the same characters, you’re totally free to do so. Nothing about writing is set in stone, so stay open minded to new concepts and changes and, most importantly, criticism. (I won’t elaborate on this because I might end up making a whole other post about this topic in the future.)
As always, this is just a compilation of the tips and tricks I’ve found the most useful in my own experience. They may not help, they may help a lot, it really could go either way or somewhere in between, but all the same, I hope this proves useful to you.
