Creating a Believable Relationship

Relationships can make or break a story, and unless there's only one character in your book, relationships are imminent. If readers can't or don't understand the relationship, it could completely change the predicted outcome of the story or have readers rooting for the wrong character. It's either something that can be easily decided at the beginning of the story, or maybe you'd prefer to let them set their own relationship as the plot progresses. Either way, it's important to take these points into consideration:

• Your Characters as Individuals 

If you haven't figured out who your characters are as individuals, it's going to be very difficult to create a relationship between them. Your characters need to know who they are as much as you do, and they need to be aware of what they want. You wouldn't be able to know if you get along with someone else or not if you don't know if you agree with their views, right? It's the same thing with your characters. Even if it's something as simple as liking cheese on their burgers or not, these little details can build up to important decisions. And if you don't know from the start if your character likes cheese, when they're asked if they'd like a cheeseburger later on and they say yes, readers might notice that before, they weren't sure. See where it comes into play? Sure, opinions change over time, but not for no reason. If they start with an opinion and change it, that's a crucial part of character development that needs to be visited.

• Goals

This is important for your individual characters in the first place, but when you're deciding on relationships, this could play the vital factor in whether they become friends or enemies, or start off as one and become the other. Characters start off the story with goals that become clearer and (most of the time) less attainable as the plot progresses.  Do these characters share goals? Do they have opposing goals? Are they actively fighting against each other to attain their own? Do they want what the other has? All these are things you have to think about as well as where the end up at the resolution. Do their goals still oppose or are they still shared? How does that affect the way they feel about each other?

• General Questions

How did they meet? Was it intentional (did someone/something set it up?) or a coincidence? What are their jobs, if any? Maybe they met at work or school or getting coffee? do they have the same interests and that's what led them to meet? All of these can have an affect on what their relationship might be. If they're going to be a love interest, what attracted one to the other? What didn't? Think about questions like this when you're doing character building, and make sure you have most, if not all, of them answered, just to make it easier on yourself down the road!

• Dialogue

I could do an entire post on just dialogue, and I probably will, but good dialogue is also a good way to develop characters and their relationship. Just like you get to know people by talking to them, your characters can do this as well! Action is just one way to move the story along, but dialogue can be extremely important as well ad you're telling the story or emotions from the character's first-hand account. This is where your development really comes in, where we as readers can determine how two characters interact with each other and determine how we think it's going to play out in the end.

• Limitations

Listen, all people have limitations. All people have boundaries. Don't force characters to be together or even friends if they don't want to be. Not every story needs romance. Chemistry can exist in all types of ways. If it ends up they're just friends, or try a relationship and realize it doesn't work, that's okay! Alternatively, you can always mold and change characters as you see fit to make their relationship what you want, but make sure it doesn't impact the story if you're going to do that. Readers can tell if it seems forced and unnatural.