Character Development — Writing Realistic Relationships
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Character development tips for creative writing –
create new interesting,
original and memorable characters…
or give established characters a breath of fresh air.
One of the most important aspects of a character’s life is the relationships that character forms with other characters. Just like real people, a living character may be ruled by emotion and connections to those around them. There are many different degrees of relationships that characters can have… from family to friends to rivals and enemies. But the two most powerful emotions that can be invoked between characters are love and hate.
V-Day is coming up… and I noticed that in the course of my past few articles that when other Authors shared their character development stories, there was always some sign of romantic involvement in these tales. That’s because — and I’m a true believer of this — no matter how much your writing may NOT be about romance, the realism of the relationships that your main characters have can make or break the story.
Relationships and Reader Emotional Response
What makes a reader want to keep reading? Nine times out of ten, it’s because the reader has emotionally connected and invested something of themselves into your characters and story. They can identify with the feelings… maybe even see a bit of themselves in certain characters. They cheer, laugh and cry along with the writing on the page.
That’s why when you sit down to develop something as important as a romantic connection between characters, it’s so important that your readers, at the least, find the relationship to be realistic and, at the best, are able relate to that relationship on a personal level. If you can make your readers say “Yeah. I know exactly what that feels like…” or “Man, one of my friends dated a guy like that…” then you know you’re on the right track.
Realism in Writing Romance
Is there really such thing as true love at first sight?
Well, I can’t really answer that question, I suppose. But when it comes to developing a relationship in my work, it’s not something I’d ever risk writing.
I believe that building realistic relationships take time to develop. There may be a certain attraction between characters from the start… but to call it love…? To bypass all the most rewarding bits of writing the relationship and simply throw two characters together?
Not something I’d suggest.
Think about the times you’ve read a story or watched a movie where it was just so terribly obvious that the pair would get together. Or how about the ones that for the length of the story weren’t romantically inclined and then suddenly do a huge passionate 360 for no real understandable reason somewhere between the middle and the end. Let’s not count the number of fan fics out there that enjoy setting up all sorts of pairing that never existed by the original Author’s hand… the ones that plain-out should not exist.
Here’s another pet peeve. When you have a pair of obviously unbalanced characters that are shoved together in a relationship just for the sake of having a romantic thread in the story. You may have an uber cool hero or heroine that everyone really likes… paired off with a sub-par character who no one is really impressed with. You know, the one who feels like nothing but a flat concoction designed to play the part of The Significant Other… with no other purpose in the story (well, except to be annoying)?
I’m sure you’ve encountered stories with these elements. And when you did, what was your reaction as the reader or viewer. You weren’t too convinced, were you?
Keeping It Real
Here are a few tips I keep in mind when I write romantic relationships:
The journey is just as important as the destination… sometimes even more. If you want readers to emotionally invest and believe in your relationship, you have to show what both characters did to finally arrive at the point where the relationship began. This is the best part to write — trust me! All sorts of tension, struggles, learning and developing can happen on this road. Let the reward (or punishment) be the outcome of your characters’ journey.
Your characters must approve… or disapprove. Going back to the importance of respecting your characters’ wishes, nothing is more cardboard than when an Author forces a relationship simply to please readers or for plot purposes. If your characters don’t love each other, there’s nothing you can do to make it happen. Forcing them together will be too obvious to your readers and will probably not earn you the emotional response you’re hoping for.
On the other hand, if your purpose is to write a story with the topic of disharmony in a relationship… make sure your characters have agreed to disagree and won’t come out of the story bitter and despondent towards you. That’s a very difficult kind of story to write. I’d tread lightly.
It’s about THEM… not YOU. This relationship belongs to your characters. It’s a central part of their lives… an important part of your story. It’s not a place for you to vent your frustrations or play out your dark secret innermost passions…. unless that’s the kind of writing you’re going for. It’s not a place to get back at your ex… or recreate scenes from your best friend’s big breakup.
Sure these experiences can all help add elements of realism to the relationship and fuel emotions. But if your writing has become about yourself instead of your characters, you’ll run the risk of soap opera melodrama. There’s a certain amount personal experiences that can carry over into your writing. Just be aware of when you need to step back and detach yourself in order to stay focused on what is for the good of your characters.
Rhyme, time and reason. It takes time to develop something that’s real… spend that time wisely. Don’t rush it for your characters or for the reader. In the end, it’ll be all that more rewarding for everyone to celebrate the “Finally! They got together!” thing.
There has to be a reason for attraction. Even if the characters can’t voice that reason, your readers have to sense and feel it. If I’m reading a story where two characters suddenly fall for each other — boom! — with no lead up, no development, no logical explanation… sorry. I’m not going to buy it. Would you?
These aren’t, by far the only tips out there, I’m sure. If you have some guidelines that you use that you’d like to add, or thoughts on the ones above, feel free to discuss!
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11 Comments on Character Development — Writing Realistic Relationships
KJ sez:
I’m pretty sure this will spark enough discussion– and storytelling– that I was going to start a new forum topic for it. But I’m getting the impression you really want to foster connections through Wayfarer Wings as well… so I’ll hold off. (Though in time I bet a Figment Relationships topic would be a lot of fun!)
“Characters must approve or disapprove…” Well, yep. It doesn’t get much truer than that. I already talked about Joi and Telion, who sum that up pretty well. (Although, as I told Gaby over AIM, I may have given up pushing– but I haven’t given up hope. XD)
Speaking of journeys and destinations reminds me of one of the things I love about Robin McKinley’s stories, particularly “Spindle’s End” and “The Blue Sword.” Both are solidly unromantic stories– until the very end, when the reader realizes that the MCs have been in love for a long time. I know this sounds like springing it on them at the last minute, but what I’ve found is that McKinley is a skilled enough writer to have woven subtle, practically subliminal hints throughout the story, so that in the end, instead of going “What? Where did that come from?” the reader says “What? Ohhhh! I see now! It all makes sense!”
In regards to my own figments… switching tales for a moment here, since KoH and RS have NOT been at the top of my mind lately. I’ve had a story for a long time about this angry revolutionary chick and her allies’ fight against an oppressive government, and it was always a thoroughly unromantic story. The “love of her life” was already dead, and dealing with that drove a lot of her character development. The story wound around politics and around Icarus’ transition from a bitter, explosive, suspicious woman to a kinder, more steady one. Still a rebel, though.
Anyhow, as I wrote, there was this guy Colby– another rebel leader– whom she was always butting heads with, seeing him as a rival. It turned out that while the two of them argued, he was actually defending her to their other allies, and played an enormous part in taming her temper. Around 3/4 through the story he mentioned his personal concern for her to a mutual friend… and ended up defying his own orders to save her in the end. And I said “You love her, don’t you?” His answer: “You didn’t know?”
This didn’t actually change anything in the story. His feelings remained pretty well unknown to her, although they did become friendlier. And the story ended. Except that about a week ago, she reappeared, told me that she and Colby were married, and that there were two more stories for me to write.
I’m still a little flabbergasted by this, because as far as I knew, her feelings for him were rather ambivalent. Interestingly… they still are. What I’m hearing is that they kind of got married on a whim… and two years in, she isn’t sure how she feels about this. It isn’t the adoring, be-all end-all love she felt for someone else, and so she is questioning whether it is love. Personally, I think it is– just a different brand of love, the love of loyalty and friendship, rather than romance.
Either way, I take no blame for whether or not this works out, because it was a figment decision, not an author’s. I’m interested in seeing how it plays out and resolves.
KJ sez:
Ooh… I wish you were online so I could play you the song that just came on, because it TOTALLY fits.
There are things in this world that I don’t understand
Like love, war, gravity, or the lay of the land
But all of these remain mysteries
But one thing is for sure: you are worth living for
You know who would have benefitted from reading this topic? Whoever wrote the story for FFVIII. Squall/Rinoa is one of the most forced and unbelievable love stories I’ve ever seen. The guy spends over half of the game ignoring her and her Mary Sue antics and then, once she goes into a coma he’s all “OH NOES, PLEASE BE OKAY, I LUV YOU!!!” *makes exaggerated gagging sounds* Sure, I preferred Squall to be the more open individual he is at the end than the assholish introverted guy he is for most of it, but the results could have been achieved differently than the writers pairing him with Miss Damsel-in-distress.
Anyway, enough ranting about FFVIII. >_>
I made the mistake of originally creating a character just to be the love interest of another one (I give you three guesses as to who it is). It didn’t work out. I ended up with a Mary Sue and a very unbelievable relationship.
I ended up scrapping that version of the story and starting it again with the same characters, but without trying for romance. It worked better this time; they went through some roller coaster of a relationship. They started on the wrong foot (very wrong foot), and were then asked by a third character to work together for something, which they reluctantly agreed to. Bickering ensued, and they were practically at each others throat (or rather, one had a spear and the other could just zap him from afar with a powerful spell).
Then stuff happen. They don’t like each other immediately as a consequence, but at least they start developing some mutual respect. Which, after more stuff, develops into camaraderie, and then friendship, and then more. So, even if I didn’t hope for it that time, they still ended up together, as planned originally, but in a less forced way. In fact, I’d say the love between those two characters ended up being stronger than it was in the previous story due to how it evolved.
Hah, I love being vague. Not in a spoiler mood tonight.
KJ: Well, I wasn’t going to write about relationships until after the comments on the previous post sparked that idea in my head. That’s why when you mentioned it in the comments there, I tried to tell you to wait up a little.
Not that you CAN’T start a thread on the forum. But, yeah, I’m trying to get communication going on this blog… and the Sygnus writers are the only firm writing base I know of to hope to discuss things with so far.
I love the forums, don’t get me wrong. But as this blog has shifted topics and focus and various other things… I decided I wanted a place to consolidate my thoughts on writing and character and art and other things where a wider group of people would read it. The forums are good for folks that are regulars at Sygnus.org. But it’s doubtful that a random passer-by would stop to filter through the forums for my thoughts on writing — even if I made it a little area on its own there.
This blog gives me the ability to spread the word and open up ideas to people beyond just the beloved Sygnus crowd… which is really what I want to do. Plus it gives me a layout and a domain name that allows me to organize and publicize my work. Whereas the forums are a great community place for random things, this blog is a little more formulated in its approach. I see it as a place to share information and discussion in a slightly different way.
So those are my thoughts on that!
Thanks for sharing more of your thoughts and experiences with us. I knew you had a story about a character named Icarus. Funny thing is… I have a character named Colby, too (short for Cobalt)… but I doubt they’re anything at all alike!
I have to admit that I’ve never had characters come back to me after the fact of the story and inform me of their wedding. I wish you luck in exploring that one, though. It sounds like it will be interesting!
You need to show us your work sometime! *nudge*
KJ sez:
Wren: You have a Colby, hm? May I confess– for a point of irony– that mine is short for Cobalt as well? *embarrassed*
I do plan on showing my work– soon. There’s just one thing I have to do first.
Gaby: Hahahah… I never finished FFVIII… but I had that sort of idea in my head when I wrote some of this. How did you know? ^_~
You know the awesome thing about reading this experience with your characters is that it’s really inspiring! Nothing is so far gone that it has to be lost. Even if you start off on the wrong track, if you can identify that, go back and approach it all in a different situation, your figments may show you a far better way to get to the same outcome in the end. And that’s great! I’m glad all of that worked out for everyone… well… mostly.
I have my own semi-Mary-Sue story. I say semi… because the character wasn’t really my own and it wasn’t written out of my desire to have a character hook up with a cannon character. So I don’t really know what you’d consider it.
In the original story of Darkstar, some folks might remember that Silver was actually a main character for a long time. In fact, she was even a main character all the way up until the newest version… where I realized I was simply having too much trouble writing her character and that she was no longer meant to play the part that she once did in my stories.
Silver was my sister’s online character. When I first started writing Darkstar, there was no such term as “Mary Sue”. Fanfic was still very young. Fanfic.net didn’t exist yet and wouldn’t for a few years… There were no blogs. There was no MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournals. No widespread AIM. If you wrote something, you had to have your own Geocities page and know enough HTML to get it out there to the rest of the net. That’s why sites like the Fan Archives came to be and were so important — not everyone knew how to post up their work. So dedicated fans created sites and hosted other peoples’ writing for them.
Well, as you know… those days are gone now. Anyone who can sign up for a Blogger or Fanfic.net account can post their writing. But I regress… back to the topic.
Anyhow… Mary Sues existed but there just wasn’t a term for it that was widely used on the net. Silver was a character who had this massive love pentagon thing going on… Well, it wasn’t so much that she was in love as she was just attracted to a number of guys. Including Kain (because my sister was a Kain fan) and Ben (because it was fun to see him squirm).
There were always hints along the way that she might be leaning towards one or the other. And strangely enough, people really seemed to be shipping for one or the other, always wondering who Silver would pick. It became increasingly obvious that Ben would not be the one… and arrows started pointing to Kain. Again… I like Kain, but I’m not one of the huge fangirls. So though I was writing a character that was designed by my sister who WAS a Kain fan, I don’t know how close that falls as being a Mary Sue.
Oh… and in the end, Silver didn’t choose anyone. She took her ship, the Barnburner, said her goodbyes and sailed off into the sunset. Not your typical fangirl ending.. heh.
Uh, yeah. So when I went back to rewrite Darkstar, I realized… I didn’t really want to have to deal with this story within a story. It was fun the first time around. But this time, I’d rather concentrate on characters like Joran (who moved up from being a side character to a more developed main character) and I wanted Chase to become closer to Ben… which in the past, I had a hard time because Silver was like his sidekick (think Leonaish).
Anyhow. I love my sister. I love her character. Silver remains in Darkstar in the spirit of the pirate captain of the Barnburner. All is well.
KJ: Wow!? Really?? How weird! Why did you choose Cobalt, if I may ask? Or is it a spoiler. I’ll share mine if you share yours? ^_~
KJ sez:
Wren: Well… Colby got dubbed “The Man with a Hundred Names” at once point. He’s a highly important figure in Icarus’ revolution… even higher than she knows. So he has a dozen or more aliases and false names to protect him from enemies outside and traitors inside.
I called him Colby before I knew it came from Cobalt, but it made sense. Cobalt was derived from Blue Rose, one of his more well-known names, as a name people could call him in public that didn’t sound too weird and suspicious.
Ahhh! That makes sense!
Well… my Cobalt… spoiler time. XD
He’s the son of Azure and KoGuRai, though not an only child. Rach started in on naming his sister after a shade of blue, of course passed down from their mother. So I followed suit because I’m terrible about thinking names up on the fly. Cobalt sounded like a good, robust guy’s name. And here I thought I was so original to pick it! Heh!
KJ sez:
I actually guessed as much, if you can believe it… Or at least that he has something to do with Azure.
I like the name Cobalt. I like the actual colour too, but that’s another topic. I guess great minds think alike; I don’t have a character named Colby/Cobalt, but I do have one named Tane, and you have a character named Tane in Shimmer.
Oh, Old Darkstar Silver… She had a shard of Incrytan embedded in her hand, didn’t she?
I could start ranting more about FFVIII, but this isn’t the place for it. I noticed however that a lot of Rinoa fans say Rosa is a mediocre character because she’s “a damsel-in-distress”. That always makes me laugh. >_>