Successful stories are driven by authentic and interesting characters, so it’s important to craft them carefully. But characters don’t usually exist in a vacuum; throughout the course of your story, they’ll live, work, play, and fight with other cast members. Some of those relationships are positive and supportive, pushing the protagonist to positive growth and helping them achieve their goals. Other relationships do exactly the opposite, derailing your character’s confidence and self-worth or they cause friction and conflict that leads to fallout and disruption. Many relationships hover somewhere in the middle. A balanced story will require a mix of these dynamics.

The purpose of this thesaurus is to encourage you to explore the kinds of relationships that might be good for your story and figure out what each might look like. Think about what a character needs (good and bad), and build a network of connections for him or her that will challenge them, showcase their innermost qualities, and bind readers to their relationship trials and triumphs.

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Description: A “friends with benefits” relationship is not the same as a hookup or no-strings-attached scenario as the characters involved are friends, and if the sex stopped, that friendship should (hopefully) remain intact. Partners will have strong physical chemistry and develop a level of intimacy where they can share things about their lives as friends, but there’s no sense of ownership, obligation, or expectation of commitment.

Dynamics of a Healthy Relationship
Characters in this relationship value the friendship and respect each other’s autonomy
Partners have rules in place that both agree to (possibly to meet on a schedule, to never stay the night, to not “date” as a couple, etc.)
If one or both partners enter a committed relationship with another, all benefits are halted
Problems, challenges, and concerns regarding the relationship are discussed and worked through (good communication)
Both parties work to provide what the other needs in the bedroom and out of it
Personal boundaries and privacy are respected
Demands and expectations are not placed on one another
There is not an expectation of permanence
If the characters halt sexual encounters (perhaps because one enters a romantic relationship) they still check in on each other
The two practice safe sex

Dynamics of an Unhealthy Relationship
Rules not being followed (showing up unannounced, asking to stay the night, wanting to bring the partner to events as their date, or whatever else breaks the rules)
Showing up unexpectedly (at the other’s work, a family event, or somewhere else that was always off-limits)
Demanding to know what the other is doing when not together
Displaying jealousy, control issues, and possessiveness
Emotional volatility and drama due to one person wanting more than the other is willing to give
A partner’s request for distance not being respected
Making ultimatums and threats (one partner demanding the relationship evolve or they are out)
Failing to halt “benefits” when one or both are also in romantic relationships (leading to affairs and emotional dependance)
Keeping secrets (an STI is discovered but not disclosed, a characetr’s feelings have changed, etc.)

Conflicting Desires That Can Impair the Relationship
If one partner meets someone they wish to have a romantic relationship with and the other is too invested and unabe to give the F-W-B up
Wanting to have other friends-with-benefits relationships (or bring a third into the mix) yet the character’s partner does not
Changing needs in the bedroom that both aren’t on board with
One partner developing feelings and wanting to evolve the relationship while the other is happy with the status quo

Clashing Personality Trait Combinations: Adventurous and Timid, Generous and Selfish, Needy and Independent, Perceptive and Inattentive, Affectionate and Inhibited

Negative Outcomes of Friction
The loss of a friendship because both parties are no longer in agreement about what they want
A broken heart
Unrequited love
Struggling with intimacy moving forward
Closing off to other satisfying relationships because this one ended badly
New emotional wounds involving relationships and trust issues
Secrets shared in confidence being made public out of revenge, damaging the partner’s reputation or their relationship with others

Scenarios That Could Turn These Characters into Allies
Characters feeling the pressure from family or society to have “a significant other” when they don’t want one can mutually agree to play the role of the other’s partner when needed

Characters who are incapable of intimacy and yet still have needs (both sexually and also to be understood or accepted) may find this relationship gives them what they need. This could be a good arrangement for sociopaths, for example (albeit closer to “allies with benefits”)

Characters who are friends and have no interest in romantic relationships and yet occasionally desire sexual interaction could choose this relationship as it can be a good fit for both.

Ways a Healthy Relationship Can Encourage Positive Change
A character who is struggling with sexual dysfunction may find the right partner in this dynamic provides them with a safe way to work through their challenges without pressure

Characters looking to experiment sexually may find this relationship is a good fit so they can do so free from judgment so they better know what they are looking for in future romantic relationships

A character who has been deeply hurt in the past romantically may regain their confidence through a friends-with-benefits type relationship because they can set rules that discourage attachment

Themes and Symbols That Can Be Explored through This Relationship
Beginnings, Coming of Age, Freedom, Friendship, Journeys, Knowledge, Loss, Love, Obstacles, Transformation, Vulnerability

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (15 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough, and then give our Free Trial a spin.

CONTEST IS CLOSED. SEE YOU NEXT MONTH 🙂

It’s time for our monthly critique contest, and the wonderful Marissa Graff is back to provide feedback for two lucky winners!

If you’re game to enter this month’s contest, here’s the amazing person you could be working with: 

Marissa has been a freelance editor and reader for literary agent Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency for five years. In conjunction with Angelella Editorial, she offers developmental editing, author coaching, and more. She specializes in middle-grade and young-adult fiction, but also works with adult fiction. Marissa feels if she’s done her job well, a client should probably never need her help again because she’s given them a crash-course MFA via deep editorial support and/or coaching.

Twitter/Instagram/Facebook

CONTEST GUIDELINES

This month’s contest will be a little different because Marissa is offering up a critique on the FIRST FIVE PAGES of TWO WINNERS‘ stories!

If you’re working on a story opening (anything except erotica, nonfiction, or picture books) and would like some objective feedback, please leave a comment. Any comment :). As long as the email address associated with your WordPress account/comment profile is up-to-date, Marissa will be able to contact you if you win. Just please know that if she’s unable to get in touch with you through that address, you’ll have to forfeit your win.

Please be sure your story opening is ready to go so she can critique it before next month’s contest rolls around. If it needs some work and you won’t be able to get it to her right away, let me ask that you plan on entering the next contest once any necessary tweaking has been taken care of.

Two commenters’ names will be randomly drawn and posted here tomorrow. If you win, Marissa will be in contact to get your pages and offer her feedback. 

Best of luck!

One More Thing…

It’s One Stop for Writers’ 5th Birthday this month, and we have a special discount code for you.

To find out the details, and to discover why One Stop for Writers should be in your writing toolkit, just head over here to our birthday post.

Thank you so much to the team at Writers Helping Writers for asking me to be part of the Resident Writing Coaches program. I’m honoured and delighted to be working with such a wonderful community of writers and look forward to helping you with your craft.

Developing characters is one of the joys of writing and it’s a dream when we understand them and what they’re about. Inevitably, though, there comes a time when our characters do and say things that don’t make sense to us, we feel they’re one-dimensional, or we just don’t know how they should react to situations. This can stall our story.

Character interviews are a fabulous way to address these problems. Not only does interviewing your character help you learn more about them, you’ll be able to note the hesitations or uncertainties so you can drill deeper into those areas. It can also give you a better feel for their voice, which can sometimes be hard to nail down.

But there are so may interviews and questionnaires available on the internet, and we can lose a lot of time answering questions that may not be relevant to understanding our character. So how do we know which questions are the right questions? Which ones will help us dig deeper into our characters and, ultimately, strengthen our story?

Breaking questions into categories can be extremely useful; that way you can focus on what you need to know. For example, take a character who uses humor in intense family situations. Is it just a nervous reaction or is something deeper going in, perhaps a protective measure because of a traumatic family event in the past? In this case, asking pertinent, probing questions about relationships with each family member is a way to delve deeper into your character and understand them better.

Whether you cherry-pick from existing questionnaires or create your own, the questions need to be in-depth. And don’t let your character shy away from answering. If you uncover a huge secret they’re hiding from the world or a lie they’ve been telling themselves for years, even better!

To get you started, I’ve suggested some categories with questions that might be relevant for your character. Feel free to add to it to create your own database of questions.

RELATIONSHIPS

• Who is the most important person to you in the family? Why?
• If there are rifts in your family, who are they with and why? 
• Who is your best friend? What is your relationship like? 
• Have you ever had a falling out with your best friend? What happened? How did it change the relationship?
• Are you friends with any of your exes? Why or why not?
• Do you date a certain “type”? Do you see in your relationships?
• If your exes were asked for their views on you, what would they say?
• How do you deal with confrontation? Have you always been like this?
• If someone met you for the first time, how would they describe you? Do you agree? If not, why not?

INNER-SELF

• Do care what people think of you? Why or why not?
• If you had one wish, what would it be?
• When you meet someone, what is the first thing you notice about them? Second?
• When you meet someone, are first impressions everything or are you open to changing your mind? Why or why not?
• What are the secrets about yourself that nobody knows?
• What do you do at home by yourself?}
• What makes you emotional? 
• Do you hide your emotions or allow the world to see them? Why? 
• What is your biggest regret in life? 
• What are you most afraid of?
• If you found $50 in a supermarket carpark and no one saw you, what would you do?

LIFESTYLE

• Are you obsessed with anything? What is it and why? 
• What’s your definition of a perfect vacation?
• Is your house messy or clean? Do you care?
• If you could have your dream job and/or life what would it be and why?
• If you aren’t doing your dream job or leading the life you want, why not?
• Where do you see yourself in one year? Five years? Twenty years? 
• What kind of learner are you? 

HISTORY

• If you could change something in your past, what is it and why? 
• Do you believe examining past experiences is a great way to grow as an individual? Why or why not?
• How do you feel looking back on your first romantic relationship? What about your last one?
• Do you look forward or back? Why or why not?
• What habits or traits have you always possessed? Do you want to change it? Why or why not?

By asking the right questions, you’ll be able to dig deep into your character’s mind and heart you’ll have an array of wonderful, memorable characters your readers will love (or love to hate, depending on what genre you’re writing!). 

What questions do you ask your characters when you need to delve deep?

Human beings are social creatures. We’re made to be with others, meaning, our lives are built on a series of interwoven relationships. Deep or superficial, good or bad, these relationships are incredibly important. They contribute to our feelings about ourselves, influence our decisions and actions, and teach us how to get along with others. As such, they’re formative, and even the most introverted among us can’t live without them. 

The same is true for our characters. For us to know them, we need to know the relationships that are important to them, and why. 

But when it comes to storytelling, relationships can accomplish so much more. They offer support in the form of allies that the protagonist will need in order to achieve their goal. People within the protagonist’s relationships act as mirrors and foils, providing reflective opportunities that can lead to the internal change that is key to character arc. And every relationship, good and bad, can shore up story structure in the form of natural conflict that can be infused into each scene.

Because of the many ways relationships can be used to enhance a well-told story, Angela and I have decided to make this our next thesaurus topic. We’ll explore a variety of relationships, such as Soulmates, Co-Workers, Rivals, Exes, and Parent and Child, along with the aspects of those relationships that could be tailored to fit a story. Here are a few of the features each entry will cover:

Healthy and Unhealthy Dynamics. Some of your character’s relationships will be good and some will be bad. Others, like the people involved, are a mixed bag. We’ll be brainstorming all the variations to give you ideas on which one might be best for your character and story.

Clashing Personality Traits. Even the most loving and supportive relationships should have some tension. But authors often make the mistake of making the “good” ones too good. And without that tension, they fall flat. A natural way to spice up a boring relationship is to give the players opposing traits, and voilà: instant conflict.

Conflicting Desires. Another way to add sparks is to give the people in the relationship opposing goals and desires. Alice and her parents may have a healthy and positive relationship, but if she wants to go away to a prestigious university while her parents want her to stay nearby (and attend the local state school), sparks are going to fly. Whether you’re looking at a supportive or toxic relationship for your character, conflicting needs and wants not only add conflict but can make your character question their own desires, seeding doubt and insecurity.

Positive Influences and Change. Characters undergoing a change arc will need to be pushed in the right direction. This influence often comes from the people around them: friends, rivals, family members, the doorman in the character’s building—literally any relationship can be used to solicit the change needed to get your protagonist where they need to go. We’ll delve into the various ways each relationship can help in this area.

Themes That Can Be Enhanced. Central story ideas are important for setting your story apart and adding depth, but writing them can be tricky. Relationships can naturally tie into certain themes and provide a subtle vehicle for exploring those ideas. So whether you’ve got a theme in mind or one naturally emerges as you write and you need to flesh it out, we’ll be looking at different relationships and highlighting the themes that can be emphasized with each.

Whatever genre you write, relationships will figure largely into your story. And they should be as complex, compelling, and layered as they are in real life. Our hope is that this thesaurus will encourage you to fine-tune and develop your character’s relationships until they do exactly what you need them to do in your story.

The first entry will be coming your way next Saturday, so stay tuned!

Conflict is very often the magic sauce for generating tension and turning a ho-hum story into one that rivets readers. As such, every scene should contain a struggle of some kind. Maybe it’s an internal tug-of-war having to do with difficult decisions, morals, or temptations. Or it possibly could come from an external source—other characters, unfortunate circumstances, or the force of nature itself.

It’s our hope that this thesaurus will help you come up with meaningful and fitting conflict options for your stories. Think about what your character wants and how best to block them, then choose a source of conflict that will ramp up the tension in each scene.

Conflict: The Death of a Pet

Category: Failures and mistakes, relationship friction, duty and responsibilities, losing an advantage, loss of control

Examples: Pets provide so much encouragement, love, and comfort that their loss can be a huge blow—especially when it’s unexpected or brings with it an element of guilt. Tack this debilitating event onto the end of a string of minor conflicts, and it can be the proverbial final straw that pushes a character over the edge.

Minor Complications:
Needing to do something with all the pet products in the house because looking at them causes too much pain
Having to make final arrangements (if the pet is going to be cremated, preserved through taxidermy, etc.)
Having to explain the death after the fact (when the vet’s office calls months later with a reminder about a scheduled appointment, to neighbors who ask about its absence, etc.)
Seeing pets that look similar to one’s own, and being reminded of him or her
Having to get used to new routines that don’t involve the pet (going for walks alone, riding in the car alone, sleeping by oneself, etc.)

Potentially Disastrous Results:
Adopting a new pet and realizing that one wasn’t ready
A well-meaning loved one buying a replacement pet for the character before they’re ready to start again
Being unable to adopt another pet because the character was partly to blame for the death of the first one
Family members needing opposing things in order to heal—i.e., one person needing to get a new pet and the other being unable to do so)
The pet dying on or near the anniversary of another loss (the loss of a parent, a miscarriage, the finalization of a divorce, etc.)
The pet dying in the same way as an important loved one
The pet dying in a gruesome or violent way, and the character being unable to move past it
One’s children struggling with the pet’s passing
Losing a support pet and not being able to function without it
Being unfairly blamed by a grieving family member for the pet’s death
The pet’s death being part of a crime, and the character having to keep revisiting the details in a criminal investigation
Remaining pets pining away for their friend

Possible Internal Struggles (Inner Conflict):
Blaming oneself (legitimately or not) for the death
Wanting another pet but being afraid of losing it and having to experience grief again
Being unable to forgive a family member for the part they played (even accidentally) in the pet’s death

People Who Could Be Negatively Affected: Family members

Resulting Emotions: Anger, anguish, bitterness, denial, depressed, despair, devastation, disbelief, discouraged, dread, grief, guilt, loneliness, longing, nostalgia, overwhelmed, remorse, sadness, shock

Personality Flaws that May Make the Situation Worse: Irrational, martyr, melodramatic, needy, nervous

Positive Outcomes: 
Remembering the good times
The character recognizing the good they did in taking in an animal needing a home
Deciding to contribute a monetary gift to an animal charity in the pet’s memory
Adopting another pet in need of a loving family
The character realizing that the love and companionship they experienced is worth the risk of loss

If you’re interested in other conflict options, you can find them here.

Need More Descriptive Help?

While this conflict thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (15 unique thesauri and growing) is available at our main site, One Stop for Writers. 

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough, and then give our Free Trial a spin.

Writers are master excuse-makers.

Whenever we don’t get the writing done, we have a library of excuses ready to use.

I was too tired.
I was in a bad mood.
I didn’t feel well.
I had a hard day.
I didn’t feel creative.
I thought I’d have time later.

My personal favorites are “I didn’t have time,” and “My brain was fried.” You probably have a few you regularly use too.

Excuses are dangerous, though. They prevent us from achieving our writing goals. They can also make us think that it’s not our fault when we don’t meet our daily writing quotas.

Something else happened, we say to ourselves, or someone else got in our way. It was out of our control!

But of course, nothing could be further from the truth. We are in complete control of our schedules and our choices.

How can we shake ourselves loose from all this excuse-making and boost writing productivity? Here are three methods that might work for you.

1. Keep Track of All Your “Why I Didn’t Write” Excuses

Usually, our excuses come and go and we never think of them again. This allows them to stay hidden from our consciousness, where they are rarely recognized as the devious monsters they are.

Bring your excuses out in the open by keeping track of them. One way to do that is to create a chart, table, or Excel document on which you record your daily writing progress. On those days when you write, mark down the time you spent writing, the words you completed, or both. On the days you don’t write, record your excuse.

This can be a very powerful tool. When you review your progress document each week, you’re going to feel a positive hit for every day that contains writing time and/or words, but you’re also going to “feel the shame” for every day you allowed an excuse to get in the way.

Some excuses, of course, are legitimate. If you had to take a family member to the doctor or get emergency help for a broken water heater, you’re not going to feel bad about that. But if you look back and see you didn’t write because you binge-watched a favorite TV show, for example, or decided you were uninspired, you’re going to come face-to-face with your own failure to follow through.

“There is just something about being forced to write it down,” author Leigh Stein told NBC News, “being forced to look at what [excuse] it is that you’re using that I think helped me as a corrective.”

2. Stop Using the Word “But” Before Your Excuse

Excuses often begin with the word “but.”

For example:

• I wanted to write, but I was too tired.
• I was going to write, but my brain was dead.
• I had planned to write, but I had to fix dinner.

The word “but” allows us to let ourselves off the hook way too easily. It makes it feel like it’s okay to neglect what’s important to us—our writing.

Try taking this word away. When you do that, the above three examples become:

• I wanted to write.
• I was going to write.
• I had planned to write.

All of a sudden you can see your true desire under the excuses. You wanted to write, but you allowed your excuse to draw you away from that desire.

From now on, decide you will no longer use the word “but” when it comes to your writing schedule. When you find yourself about to say, “I wanted to write, but…” just stop. Sit with the first part of that sentence for a minute: “I wanted to write.” It may inspire you to write immediately, after which you’ll probably feel much better.

3. Use Your “Why I Didn’t Write” Excuses as Clues

Most of the time, when you don’t write, it’s not because you’re tired, too busy, or uninspired.

There’s something else going on. The excuse is a cover-up.

To boost your writing productivity, you need to put on your detective hat. What is the real reason why you’re not writing?

To unearth some clues, focus in on fear. By far the most popular reason writers don’t write, fear frequently gets in the way, so pull out your journal and answer these questions:

• If I write, I’m afraid I will…
• If I get my writing done, then I’m afraid…
• Every time I think of writing, I’m afraid of…

See what you find from your answers to these questions, then track yourself for the next two weeks. Every time you’re tempted to avoid your writing time, stop and ask yourself: “What am I afraid of?”

Most of the time, this will help you get to the bottom of your excuses, so you can move past them.

Would you like to get more writing done and boost your writing career? Get Colleen’s FREE worksheet, “7 Easy Ways to Become a More Productive Writer” here!

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SOURCE: Compton, Julie. “How Tracking Her Excuses Motivated This Writer to Pen a Novel.” NBC News. Last modified December 5, 2019.