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As a writer, you know how essential it is to create believable and relatable characters and relationships in your story. You want to be sure you’re doing everything as a writer to portray convincing and authentic relationships between your characters. Instead of focusing on literary devices and tricks you can use, we will focus on your character’s psychological aspects. We want you to put yourself into your character’s shoes, figure out how they feel about the people around them, and write in a way that shows the audience the character’s relationship dynamics. I know this can be a bit difficult to wrap your head around - trust me - but follow along and I promise it’ll all make sense in the end. We’ll go through a checklist of recommendations that you could use to better understand and express your character’s relationships. These include:
Figuring Out the Dynamics
To Trust or Not to Trust
How is Your Character Impacted?
Multiple Masks
Is That Healthy?
For the sake of uniformity, we will be referring to a singular character, but you can use all of these with multiple characters within a single story. With that being said, let’s move on to our first suggestion!
I. Figuring Out the Dynamics
Before you can begin fleshing out a relationship, you have to figure out what kind of relationships you want your character to have. There are so many kinds of relationships that require different types of interactions. For instance, in Little Women, the main characters are all sisters, which is a familial relationship. The author establishes this relationship by showing the sisters teasing, caring for, and loving each other in sisterly ways. When Laurie is introduced, Jo is skeptical of him (he is a stranger and a boy after all). As they continue to get to know each other though, it can be seen that Jo interacts with him the same way she would with her sisters, implying that he is like her brother.
You would want to decide if the relationships you're showing fall into the categories of stranger, platonic, romantic, familial, or enemy. By deciding where a person fits in with your character, you’ll have a better understanding of how to write interactions between them. I already talked about how Jo interacted with Laurie when they were strangers vs when they became brother/sister-like. For an example of a romantic dynamic, Meg and her lover, Mr. Brooke, exchange nervous glances and Meg has a tendency to go into a dream-like state when talking about Mr. Brooke. As for enemies, even though Aunt March and Jo are related, Jo does not enjoy Aunt March’s company and vice versa. They talk ill of one another and hate being around each other, which is typical enemy behavior.
Through these different examples, you can see that different dynamics require different interactions between the characters. You could read through any story and easily categorize every one of the main character’s relationships into one - or more - of these dynamics. It’s important to know what dynamic you’d like so you know how to show your readers their dynamic. Have you ever seen a movie where it feels like the brother and sister’s dynamic is a little bit… more than familial? Yeah, we want to try to avoid that in your writing. A good rule of thumb is to try to use real-life experiences as a guide. How would you interact with a stranger who holds the door open for you? Someone hitting on you at a bar? Your sister pulling a prank on you? All these interactions showcase different dynamics and are essential for your reader to understand your character’s relationships.
II. To Trust or Not to Trust
One fundamental part of any relationship is the level of trust between the two individuals. This ties back into the different dynamics we previously talked about, as you wouldn’t (shouldn’t) trust a stranger with your life, but you would have a lot of trust in a lifelong friend or sibling. So how does a writer show the levels of trust their character has in their relationships? Sure, a reader could infer that your character trusts their family or their partner as a default, but is that really enough?
The key to showing trust between the two characters is through their interactions with one another - are you seeing the pattern here? A relationship with less trust could show your character intentionally keeping secrets, never confiding in the other person, or just intentionally keeping them out of the loop. Whereas a relationship that has more trust could be the exact opposite. Through the character’s dialogue and interactions - as well as the internal monologue of the character - the reader can see the influx or lack of trust they have in one another.
This can also create strain on the relationships in the story. For instance, if one character is always confiding in and talking to the main character, but the main character doesn’t reciprocate, then it can be assumed that the feelings are unrequited. The main character doesn’t feel strongly enough for the other character to put that much trust in them, but the other character does so to the main character.
This is only one example of what you can do as a writer, so imagine what other possibilities are out there. These different levels of trust can strengthen or deplete the readers' perception of a relationship. This is a magnificent tool that a writer can use to make their relationships more interesting, complex, and realistic.
III. How is Your Character Impacted?
We already established how important it is to show different interactions between two characters. When readers are able to see the different interactions your character has in their relationships, they’re able to understand your character more. They’re able to justify their actions, understand their feelings, and sometimes relate to their relationship troubles. But what about the aftermath of these interactions?
Do you know that moment after an argument where you’re left to ruminate on your feelings and the things that were done or said? Being forced to sit in that discomfort and evaluate the situation and the person is painful but needed. It’s something that makes us agonizingly human, so it’s important to flesh out that part of your character as well. Having a character move past a traumatic moment or difficult conversation without exploring the way it changed them is unrealistic.
A way you can show these deep and tumultuous changes in a character can be in their actions, in their internal monologue, and in their external dialogue with other characters. Your character could confide in their partner or a life-long friend about their feelings on the issue. They could physically stop doing things they used to love doing or indulge in unsafe habits to emphasize the effect that the situation had on them. You, as a writer, could also write the character’s inner monologue to show that the character is struggling with what happened and has mixed or negative feelings or perceptions about the other person now.
No matter how you choose to show your character’s turmoil, it’s important to show the reader that your character is going through these internal or external changes. Relationships fluctuate and have an impact on us, so be sure that they also have an impact on your character.
IV. Multiple Masks
This point is similar to the dynamics we talked about previously, but it’s on a more individual level rather than general dynamics. For example, even though you have familial relationships, you might present yourself differently to your sister than you would to your father. This is where the multiple masks come in, essentially saying that you wear different invisible masks depending on your relationship with the other person.
Exploring your character’s multiple masks can show the readers that you thought about and understand how complex relationships can be. Sure, a lot of relationship dynamics fit into different categories and archetypes, but having cookie-cutter relationships can become boring quickly. Plus, this ties back into the different levels of trust. Just because someone is your family member doesn’t mean you automatically trust them to show certain aspects of yourself.
When you're writing your character, you can show the different masks or presentations your character has around different people. This doesn’t mean you show them physically switching masks or make them do a complete 180 from how they were acting before. The changes should be subtle and clever, only noticeable to the readers and the other characters who know them well. The character could avoid eye contact, their body language could shift, they could avoid talking about their personal life, and they could laugh at jokes they never would have before. Anything that shows the character changing a part or multiple parts of themselves to “fit in” or appear differently than usual.
The multiple masks really highlight your character’s psyche and thought process. If they were made to feel as though they had to act a certain way around certain individuals, isn’t that telling of the kind of relationship they have? If they don’t feel comfortable being their authentic self, then that’s a clear indication that a level of trust hasn’t been met in their relationship.
V. Is That Healthy?
Onto our last suggestion on fleshing out your relationships: be honest with yourself. Is the relationship you’re creating healthy or toxic? Really take a look at your character’s actions, feelings, and interactions and decide if this is a relationship you would like to portray in your writing.
There has been an influx of artists recently that have unintentionally glamorized and romanticized toxic relationships. There are community fan bases that ship unhealthy relationships because the author portrays it in an attractive way. This can be dangerous, especially for younger, impressionable readers who don’t have the life experience to deduce that the relationship is not desirable.
If you want to write an intentionally unhealthy relationship, you want to be sure you and the characters acknowledge that it’s unhealthy. Have the character’s friends and family members talk to them about it, put them in situations that are clearly not right, and have the victim understand how toxic the relationship is. This way, there is no space for readers to interpret the actions as romantic and the unhealthy attributes (manipulation, love bombing, jealousy, etc.) are clear.
On the other end, healthy relationships should have all the necessary fundamentals present: respect, trust, safety, and equality. This isn’t just for romantic relationships either, this applies to any healthy, serious relationship. In order to show your character is in a healthy relationship, you want to be sure that the reader can see the care, love, and respect they have for one another. For example, someone who is in a healthy relationship wouldn’t undermine their counterpart’s feelings or go behind their back. Instead, they would listen to their feelings, validate them, and offer solutions or ways to cheer up their counterpart. There are so many different scenarios you can write to showcase healthy and thriving relationships between your characters.
You Don’t Have to Know Psychology…
No one is asking you to go to a four-year university and get a degree in psychology in order to write. We just want to ensure that you’re doing everything you can as an up-and-coming New York Times Bestseller to create real connections between your characters. After all, it is one of the biggest fundamentals of writing. Reading a story that has one-dimensional character and relationship development is never a fun time. Take care to evaluate and analyze your character’s relationships to ensure that you’re writing them correctly. You want to realistically show the mental aspect of relationships so that your character feels real and complex, like any other human being.
As always, don’t be afraid to get some help and let some of your close friends and family read through your work. Take your time, make mistakes, learn from them, and keep pushing on. Learning isn’t linear, and neither is writing, so don’t be scared if it doesn’t come out perfect the first time. You can’t succeed without failing at first.
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