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.
The following is just a sample of the content available for this relationship. To see it in its entirety (along with 45+ additional relationship entries), check out our Description Thesaurus Collection at One Stop For Writers.
Siblings (Youth)
Description: A sibling relationship is where two individuals are raised in the same family unit. Many factors can shape this relationship, including the age between the two, home life and environment, parenting, personality traits, intelligence and maturity levels, health and physicality, opportunities for growth and other individual formative experiences (good and bad) and more. The sibling relationship also evolves (or devolves) with age and time. In this case, we’re looking at a sibling relationship between younger children.
Relationship Dynamics:
Below are a wide range of dynamics that may accompany this relationship. Use the ideas that suit your story and work best for your characters to bring about and/or resolve the necessary conflict.
Clashing Personality Trait Combinations: Trusting and manipulative, adventurous and timid, inhibited and rebellious, introverted and extroverted, mature and irresponsible
Negative Outcomes of Friction
Arguments and fights
Revealing secrets in anger and losing the other’s trust
Parents who take sides, creating distrust and a sense of inequity between siblings
Ways This Relationship May Lead to Positive Change
Healthy sibling relationships teach children about trust which will help them form bonds moving forward
Children who have a sibling will learn how to get along with others and work through problems
The value of privacy and understanding the difference between self and others will give children the formative knowledge they need to set boundaries
Themes and Symbols That Can Be Explored through This Relationship
A Fall from Grace, Alienation, A Quest for Knowledge, Coming of Age, Crossroads, Family, Freedom, Friendship, Hope, Innocence, Instability, Isolation, Journeys, Love, Obstacles, Passage of Time, Rebellion, Rite of Passage, Sacrifice, Teamwork, Unity
Other Relationship Thesaurus entries can be found here.
Need More Descriptive Help?
The content you’ve just read is a sample of one entry found in our Relationship Thesaurus at One Stop for Writers. To access the complete entry and the other collections in this powerful show-don’t-tell Thesaurus Database (18 unique thesauri and growing!), give our free trial a spin.
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.