Activity

Hear, hear! Popcorn relationships is hence christened.

@ethryndal I appreciated your point about how just the presence of different people changes how a character acts. That’s such a powerful external for showing the depths of their relationship.

On thing that’s helped me with character development is just to write longer “reaction scenes”. Like, after the battle, what happens? These scenes are often rich in character relationships.

Another thing that matters to relationship development is the characters’ ghosts. By ghosts, I mean the ghosts of their past. The mistakes they’ve made, abuse they’ve suffered, doubts that gnaw at them. On the one hand, these can create tension in a relationship as characters try to hide their ghosts. There may also be the tension of them wanting, but not daring, to reveal their ghosts. This makes it really painful when two friends can’t really fully connect with one another and it can make it extremely joyous when they do learn to be vulnerable.