Weekly Writing Memo: 3 Keys of Writing Relationships

Whether you’re writing friendships, families, couples, or even enemies, the relationship between the characters has to be established very clearly in order for the audience to understand it.In general, any time two people are in a scene of a story together, there is some kind of relationship between them, even if it is something as simple as salesman to client.

Those passing relationships are easier to establish because there’s not any history between the two people so there’s less subtext going on. All you need to show for those relationships is to establish what each character wants, and keep their actions true to their goals.

The want of each character is of course something you establish for anyone in your story, but for core characters your protagonist interacts with there is a bit more that should be shown. The three key things that need to be portrayed to make the relationship work for an audience are listed below. These are things that are especially true for when you are portraying newly established relationships such as in romantic stories, or team-up or friendship stories.

What brings the pair together?

Sometimes this element is a given, such as when the characters are family, coworkers, classmates, etc. You have to show the audience why these two characters are together for the story. We don’t need to see their entire history of how they met or anything, but we need to understand what it was that brought these two characters into each other’s lives.

In romantic stories, often times two characters are brought together initially by physical attraction. In fantasy or action stories, often times characters are brought together because of a similar goal. The key is, the audience has to understand how these two particular characters, whatever their relationship is, came to occupy the same space and form a relationship.

For example, if you have two best friends, one who is a hobo and another a CEO, and you don’t give us some indication of how they came together, the audience will not buy the story. This doesn’t mean you need to spell it out, all it means is you need to find a way to imply. In the CEO/Hobo example, you could spell it out by having the pair meet because the hobo parks outside the CEO’s office building. OR, if you want to go for a subtler and a new type of connection, maybe the CEO already knows the hobo and comes to him for advice, and the hobo says something that implies he once was a big businessman himself. That would give the audience an idea of how they could have met—when the hobo wasn’t a hobo.

The point is, the audience needs to understand how the two characters you are showing us were brought together. Did they work together? Are they family? Do they go to school together? Are they invited by a wizard to a secret meeting in the Shire? Etc. What is it that makes their worlds collide?

What keeps them together?

This is something I see often gets forgotten in stories involving friendships between odd pairs. Writers like showing us really quirky friends, but they often forget to show us why these two people who are so different are friends in the first place. People come together for a variety of reason, but the reason they end up maintaining the relationship is not always the same as the thing that brought them together.

This is important to show because even if we believe that two people were brought together because of a specific thing (like high school or work), if they don’t seem like two people that would continue spending time together than we won’t believe the relationship has lasted. There has to be something shown that is strong enough to keep these two characters maintaining contact with each other despite their differences.

For example, the hobo and the CEO. Maybe they used to work together, and that is how they met. Their lives have taken very different paths, and for a lot of audiences it’d be hard to believe that the CEO would continue to hang out with the hobo, or that the hobo for that matter would continue spending time with a big CEO who might look down on him. IF, however, you establish that the CEO comes to the hobo for advice, and that the Hobo comes to the CEO for aid now and then, then you have shown the audience what keeps the pair coming back to each other.

Whatever this element is that keeps the pair interacting, it has to be mutually beneficial/appreciated by the pair. Otherwise, the audience will be asking themselves why the characters bother with each other since they are so different. This thing is often show in stories about couples who have been together for a long time. We often see them longing for whatever the initial thing was that brought them together, and through the story we see the characters discover that while they no longer have that initial thing, they have something stronger that is the thing that has kept them together for all the years of their relationship.

What pulls them apart?

Every pair of people, when thrown together, has something that they disagree on and differ on. This can be as simple as the fact that one person is messy and the other is organized. The reason this is important to show in stories is that how people deal with conflict between friends, lovers, family, etc, can tell the audience a huge amount about the characters themselves and the type of relationship the two people have.

For example, if you have two best friends disagree about something as simple as dinner, how they go about the disagreement can tell the audience a lot. Do they get into a vicious argument that ends abruptly and then revert back to friendly banter? Does one character give in to whatever the other wants? Do they both refuse to concede?

Arguments are great at showing the dynamics between two characters. If one always concedes, they might be the peacekeeper, or the other might be domineering. If the argument is written in a way that the audience can see this pair has had it before, it can show very quickly that the pair has a long history together. The point is, you can learn just as much, if not more, by showing what characters disagree on rather than what they agree on.

This also works well to establish relationships because showing that two people are still in a relationship of some sort despite what they disagree on, can show the audience how important that relationship is for the pair. If a character is willing to ignore huge flaws in another character, then there must be something of value there. Just remember to show us why the characters ignore the flaws if they’re ones that are big enough to be relationship ending.

Weekly Writing Memo: Do’s and Don’ts of World Building

World building is something I hear writers spend a lot of time anxiously freaking out about. All the tips on Where to Start a Story and How to Make Your Audience Care won’t help you get writing if you’re stuck in the preliminary stages of world building, so I thought I’d do a post on the basic do’s and don’ts of developing the world for your story.

When I talk about world building, I don’t just mean fantasy worlds or futuristic science fiction stuff. World building encompasses every story ever written, even ones based on true stories. Whenever you write you are building the world for your audience, so that those whose world view is different can “buy in” and believe the world is real. So every story involves showing the world it takes place in, the ones based on the real world just take a little less set-up because it’s easier for people to accept and figure out.

1. DO establish “normal”

Every story has a baseline for what is normal in it. Establishing this just means you are saying to your audience that this is the world the story takes place in, and everything from this point forward will be based on that. To decide what needs to be established in this way, think of what is different in your world than the world we live in.

Do you have monsters that kill people? Do your characters have strong emotional/societal differences? Like in Invention of Lying where they can’t tell a lie, or in horror movies where the monster is supernatural, these things have to be established early on to orient the audience in the world of the story.

You don’t need to show us everything, but do show us what is important for understanding your plot, characters, and anything necessary for the story to work. It’s about small details, and consistency. So first decide what needs to be established, and then look for the easiest, and shortest, way to establish it, preferably in a way that helps move the story forward.

2. DON’T over explain

It’s easy to get wrapped up in describing the details of a world because it can be fun to write. If you spend too much time laying out the world, however, it’ll start to feel like a history book of facts rather than a story. The key is to find a balance.

How much information does your audience need to know in order to understand the story? How much do they need in order to get a feel for the world? If you tell the audience just enough to get oriented in how the world works, without going too far past that, they will know what they need for the story and not feel like they’re bogged down by unnecessary details. Ask yourself with every detail, whether it is pertinent to the story, and how the story would be different without it.

3. DO find one specific thing

The rule I use whenever I’m world building is to give one specific detail about anything that may be different from our modern world. So if I invent a new corporation, or a new style of car, I give one specific detail about it that tells the audience what this thing is, and how it fits in my world. This gives the audience something to latch onto for visualization, and something to define this “new” thing by.

As a side note, I also use this for minor characters and such in stories. I give them at least one specific detail about them that stands out, be it physical, personality, or history. It helps personalize each character, and make them their own.

4. DON’T spend more time world building than writing

I’ve heard more than a few stories about writers who spend years building the world of their story. They think they need maps, and history, and every species planned out, and religions, and etc. While this kind of thing is a version of storytelling in itself, if you aren’t actually ever getting to write the story, you aren’t writing.

The key, as mentioned above, is to figure out what is important to the story and plan those things without going off on any side tangents. If you really feel you need to develop more of the world in order to deepen your story or to solidify the world for yourself, that’s fine, but set limits. Tell yourself you can plan out 3 or 4 main things that are the core of that subject (religion, politics, geography, etc), then force yourself to move on. If it’s not the core of your story, then you don’t really need more than that to get writing.

5. DO remember to touch on the big things

Even though I say don’t get sidetracked by things that aren’t necessary to your story, there are several big things that should be touched upon if you are creating a new world. These things are things that are a part of every society, and even if your story works without them, it’ll be more realistic if you have some mention (even minor) of them.

The big 5, I think, are: politics, religion, culture (fashion, music, art, etc), transportation, and commerce (agriculture, industry, production, markets, etc). There are more, but these are the ones that no matter where your character is, there will always be touches of them present somewhere.

They don’t require an in depth expository segment on them, they just require the small details being integrated throughout your story wherever there is an easy opportunity for them. Your character passes people in a hall, we’ll see touches of their culture in clothes and appearance, and maybe even faith in jewelry or tattoos and such. The passing details can tell us a lot.

6. DON’T compare

Don’t go the easy route and say anything that can be summed up as “unlike the world you know, this world works like this.” If you’re creating your world, our world probably doesn’t exist in it. Now, if you’re writing a character who is from “our” world and goes to another, then of course this doesn’t apply. If, however, you’re writing your completely original world, then it doesn’t make sense for your narrator to talk about a world they shouldn’t even know about.

You can use things from the known world in your world, that’s done all the time, just don’t point them out as being from our world. Your narrator is the one telling the story, so stay true to how they’d describe things. If their world doesn’t have bicycles, don’t describe something that looks like a spoked circle as being “like a bicycle wheel.” You have to stay true to the narrator.

Final Notes:

All of this kind of sums up to one major point. Do only as much planning as necessary to develop the basis of your world, and try to avoid overindulging in the development stage. A lot of the world building can happen as you work.

Personally, I develop what is necessary for the plot first, then start writing. While I write, I keep a Word document with new details I add. If I name a gadget or a city as I go, I write it on the Word document so I don’t forget what it’s named. It’s something I keep open as I write so I can reference and update it as needed. As with the post on researching, the thing to remember is that all roads should lead to writing and telling the story, so try to world build with that in mind.