Character Design: Inter-Character Relationships
By Ben Miff
So you have your characters, warped and twisted
though they may be. Now comes one important facet to consider; how are they
going to react to each other? Will they be friends, lovers, mortal enemies, sort
of enemies, friend of a friend of a friend, what? This is important to figure
out.
Firstly, you need to decide how they are likely
to meet with each other, and whether they actually meet with each other at all.
If it’s going to be only over the internet, ugliness is unlikely to have much
effect, for example. And if they are never going to meet, then making up what
they’ll do when they meet is a bit pointless, to be honest. Still, once you
have the possible character meetings likely, then it may be an idea to draw up
a “spider web” to help you remember your character relationships. Simply draw
lines between each of the characters that are going to meet, and park a small description of the main meeting
type on said line.
Next, you need to consider the likely reactions
to each other at the “first encounter”. Obviously, this can be a variety of
occasions, each with their own set problems. However,
it is also important, as these first meetings often set up the basis of the
characters relationships. View the situation to first decide what facets of the
characters personality and appearance will be shown; a telephone conversation
will ignore appearance, while seeing them across the street will be almost
purely appearance. Next, decide how the character is likely to affect the other
character’s view of this character; will their personalities, interests, and
beliefs conflict, or will they compliment each other? In the first case, it is
more likely that they won’t get on; in the second, it’s more likely they will.
This is necessary to shape the base of the relationship between the characters,
and while the relationship can change, it is difficult.
The next stage is to decide these changes in the
relationship. If there were facets of personalities that were held back in the
first meetings, then it is likely that you can get the relationship to change
by revealing these. Also, you can begin to drag in bits of appearance and
personality that may have been obscured due to the nature of the first
meetings. Another way to change the relationship is to have the characters
actions directly affect the other. While these character actions have to be
within reason (you can’t have your character suddenly confessing his undying
love to someone they’ve hated for the last two thirds of the story), they can
be a good influencing force upon the story. Also, you can to some degree get
away with indirect effects; character A does something
that causes B, intending to affect C, but also effects character D; if
character D traces this back to character A, then depending on B, the character
relationship can worsen or improve, in the D -> A direction anyway.
Once you have the character relationships
roughly charted for the story, there is only one more important facet to
consider. That is that the chart is a rough chart. While writing, often there
will be bits and pieces that do not work within the story,
that are placed in the plan, and bits and pieces that aren’t there that
are necessary. Unless it’s going to effect the main story in some drastic way,
so it becomes completely unbelievable, then it is likely that it can be worked
around. Chopping and changing is an integral part of writing; stiffness can
often lead to many many problems.