In this chapter, I'm mainly going to focus on platonic and antagonistic relationships because I already have multiple chapters in the works dedicated to love interests. Relationships are a huge part of the story so, yeah, they're kind of important. Hopefully this chapter will help you figure out how best to develop relationships. I'm going to split this chapter into two parts and then sub-categories so I can organize it better. So here it is.

A platonic relationship is a relationship that is positive, but not romantic. This can refer to friendship, family, or partnership. In every case, the following applies.

The first step to any relationship is for you to help the readers understand why it is there. If two characters have been friends for the longest of time, give it a reason. Maybe it's because they don't know who else to turn to or that they are too afraid let their friendship fade away. Perhaps both of their parents died in a freak accident and they turned to each other for consolation.

If there are issues in a relationship that you can't get out of, like family members, explain why this is. What is it that your protagonist sees in any new characters that they become close to? If your readers don't understand why the relationship is there in the first place, I can guarantee it won't work.

In any positive relationship, there must be mutual respect. If there isn't than it becomes antagonistic. That is not to say that your characters will always agree on anything or that they will be okay with each other's decisions; if that were true, your relationship would be no good. They can disagree with each other and they can become frustrated because they believe that the other person is not doing the right thing, but in the end they still treat each other with respect and neither believes they are superior to the other.

If you are going to maintain the relationship, you need to give the characters something that they can relate to with each other. I've fallen out of friendship with people before because we just lost anything in common. Your characters can be starkly different but if they both are survivors of a plane crash, they have that significant event linking them together. As the story progresses, your characters will thrive only by fighting for the same thing or going through hell together.

When relationships are all sunshine and butterflies, it's boring. All published stories have some sort of disagreement or conflict thrown in. Test your character's bond. Think of a choice that your character will have to make that you know the other person in the relationship will not agree with. Or a certain situation can make one person feel betrayed by the other. A strong relationship will pass this test with time, but a weak one will fall apart. That's perfectly fine because it shows that these people were never meant to have a partnership. When it comes down to it, do your characters need each other or will they do just fine on their own?

A tip is to have both characters have strong opinions. That way, it will be easier to have them disagree. Wishy-washy characters are weak.

The next step is to test the protagonist, their priorities, and their loyalty to the person in question. Give them a choice that directly affects another person. How far will they go to protect the people they care about? I would argue that 90% of stories are centred around the protagonist's love for someone else. Interesting relationships change the direction of the story or cause roadblocks. But sometimes, they also help to solve the conflict. Create a balance.

Over time, your character's will change and, as a result, so will their relationships. This could potentially mean that they become closer but it can also mean they grow apart because the new people they become don't mix as well as they used to. Never force a relationship. If it isn't working and you can no longer answer the question "why" let them grow away from each other. New people will take their place and, don't worry, your story will not suffer.

Even if the characters do stay together, their relationship should still have changed. Whether that means they went from being friends to being partners in war or love interests, it doesn't matter. Maybe it's just that they used to need to tell each other how they feel but now they just know.

Going off of the last point, characters should be influenced by other people. Whether this means that they learn an important lesson or just naturally start to develop similar traits, it doesn't matter. The point is, characters that are close to your protagonist often have the most influence on them. This helps resolve the character's internal struggle.

Characters that mirror each other are boring. Why? Because it ensures they will always agree with each other and there will be no conflict. So long as they are very different (but still have something linking them together) the story will remain interesting. It's their interactions that drive the story and if they always talk about the same things or never once question each other, there's no point to the relationship. Every character should be unique.

Another reason why there should be contrast is because it makes them a good team. If they both have the same flaws, they are more vulnerable, but if one person's weaknesses are another's strengths it makes solving the conflict a lot easier and more engaging to write. How often have you seen the protagonist single-handedly defeat the villain? Probably never, even in superhero stories.

If you expect your readers to root for a relationship, both participants need to be likeable most of the time, or we need to at least understand where they are coming from. It's okay if the readers get annoyed at one of them sometimes because that's natural, but they should still be generally likeable characters.

Both characters need to have their own specific motives and their reason for it. A side character should not want the same thing as the protagonist just because they want it, they need to have their own reason. In other words, they do not have the same goals because they are friends; they are friends because they have the same goals.

Of course, that is not always true. Often times, people in a relationship together want different things and that makes it challenging, even if they really care about each other.

There needs to be an understanding between two characters because if they don't understand each other there's no way it will work. This doesn't need to happen right away, but as the relationship grows. The same goes for trust. Trust must be earned, but at some point in the relationship it should be had. Especially if one of the characters is very distrusting of others; this just shows how strong their bond is.

The last thing is support. Do your characters support the other? If they don't then maybe your relationship is destined to fail. Your protagonist needs someone to fall back on when they are feeling low or weak and, likewise, they should be the person a supporting character would turn to. Support is a basis for any platonic relationship.

In an antagonistic relationships, it means that both characters are in the way of what the other wants. Either that or the relationship is unhealthy, meaning that there is verbal or physical abuse. Often, these characters do not have respect for each other.

Again, why do your characters not get along? Does it have to do with something that happened in the past, do they have clashing viewpoints, or do they just want different things? If you can't answer this simple question, you either need to re-write the plot, or one of the characters. No one is mean for no reason.

It's a whole lot easier to hope for the downfall of a character if the protagonist has a personal reason for hating them. Revenge is a powerful thing, my friends. Maybe they murdered someone they care about, or ruined their life in a significant way. The best antagonistic relationships are personal. This is where backstory (always backstory) jumps into the mix. Where there is revenge involved, your characters will resort to desperate measures and that makes one hell of a story, especially when these desperate measures complicate things even more.

Most of the time (but not all) people that act antagonistically towards each other have different motives. This leads to clashing viewpoints and, therefore, conflict. If the motives are different, then the character must hate the antagonist because they stand in the way of their goal. Motives are arguably the most important part of character development. Without a reason for action, your story lacks the realism it needs.

In some cases, the motives are the same and yet the relationship is still antagonistic. There will be more on that later.

A lot of the time, two characters are forced to work together that just don't like each other. They want the same things, but have different morals and ideas of how to achieve it. For instance, one character may believe that violence is the answer to a problem but the other wants try for peace instead. Here are their clashing viewpoints.

Another way a relationship might be antagonistic is if both characters envy the other. They both want each other's lives because something about their own life is utterly unsatisfying.

Particularly in a Teen Fiction, this might be used. In this case, both characters want the exact same thing, but only one can get it. The more crucial it is to the protagonist (and antagonist) to get what they want, the better it will work.

The characters should not be the same. If they were the same, chances are they would get along. An important thing is that the antagonist should have qualities that the protagonist hates most, and vice versa.

Here's the fun part. Your characters must be different, but they also must be similar. Think of your protagonist's flaws. Whatever your character most hates about them self should be a flaw in the antagonist. For example, if your main character lies a lot and the antagonist does too, that would work. Why? Because your protagonist wants to be better; they hate their flaw, but they just can't seem to change it. They should hate their own flaws so much that when they see them in another person, they feel inclined to dislike them. They see themselves in that person and it makes them sick.They justify their actions against that person because they honestly believe that by defeating the antagonist, they are proving themselves to be the better man.

The difference between the two? Usually the protagonist wants to change their flaws and the antagonist has either accepted their issues or is content with them. Sometimes they even embrace their flaws and use them in negative ways.

Those are my main points for developing platonic and antagonistic relationships. You will probably notice me getting more into detail with this in later chapters, but for now I think this should satisfy what you need to know to create the basis of your relationships. The rest will come when you do some major editing in your second draft. I hope this was helpful! This is another chapter I quite enjoyed writing.