With Season 17 Coming Out Saturday I Felt Inspired To Finish This Old Project I Started Months Ago.

Writing great friendships

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.

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"No actually, I delight in being soaked in a torrental downpour whilst leaning against my car in an existential crisis"

Perhaps insane or simply shocked with odd cop in mechanisms, the stranger let out a bubbly, real laugh. Not a nervous, awkward one, just an unhinged laugh full of amusement and emotion.

"Well then-" They tipped an old fashioned top hat out of nowhere, pivoted on thier heel, and flashed a charismatic wink. "-call me if you go back on that statement"

I felt a slight pressure on my nose, and gazed upon a card resting upon its bridge, somehow balancing. It held a jumble of letter and number, and the blacks of the font seemed to shift as I blinked. The background was a shimmering fold with a pristine white outline. By the time I looked up they were gone, the rain slowing to a drizzle, then halting completely. The card was still dry, my sanity most likely un intact.

"Fuckin hell mate it was sarcasm."

Maybe stating the obvious would be better than staring at the cursed card, and maybe I need more sleep.

Everything had gone wrong today. First your microwave had almost blown up on you, shorting out the electricity in your home and leaving you without breakfast, then you had been early to work for once, only to find that the company had folded, and you had lost your job with no notice or lick of compassion. After that you had come home, only to find your partner cheating on you with someone else, in YOUR home, on YOUR bed, and it was only after two hours of emotional arguments and shouting, that you had managed to eject them from your home, and call someone to change the locks immediately. 

Overwhelmed and exhausted, you had decided to take a drive to clear your head, knowing of a small beach a couple of hours away. Now here you were, engine having failed in the middle of nowhere, keys accidentally locked in the car when you had gotten out to check, and trapped in a very sudden downpour. 

Completely drained, you slowly sank down onto the wet ground, folding your knees up to your chest as you tried to blank it all out and not break down completely.

Thunder rumbled ominously overhead, as if to remind you that things could in fact get worse, and you grimaced, resigned to whatever fate had in store next. Distracted by the weather and your own misery, you didn’t even hear or see the stranger approach until you found a jacket being held above you, shielding you from the increasingly harsh rain. 

Startled, you looked up to find the stranger smiling down at you awkwardly, their beauty surreal, and their strange eyes seeming almost inhuman with their shade and sharpness.

“Need some help?”

¡Corre a por ella!

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ugh fine my personal blog is not cutting so I’ll post here 

DO! NOT! DONATE! TO! AMAZON! CONSERVATION! NGOs! DO NOT!

they don’t act on the root of the problem, they don’t mitigate the effects of deforestation, they do have limited action and they don’t help conserve the forest land outside their very small grounds besides doing little to nothing to help the people who actually live in the amazon and conserve it on a daily basis

DONATE TO THE INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS INSTEAD

they are organized, they can keep woodcutting companies away from their land, they are getting murdered for it, they are the only reason there is any forest left at all

After two long nights, it’s finally finished

Writing Tip #1

Your characters are the most important aspect of your story. The best part isn’t what happens, it’s who it happens to. Spend time developing them.

You have no right

drawin in ur sketchbook like