Special thanks to Manda Benson for today’s guest post. Visit Manda at http://tangentrine.com.

Have you ever read a romance novel where the relationship felt more like an extended one-night stand, and the characters seemed to have nothing in common asides from initial physical attraction? How about a science-fiction book in which two people trapped in an escape pod struggle to fix their transmitter and send a mayday signal before the air runs out, but there’s no conflict or co-operation between them? Or how about an epic fantasy where a warrior, a wizard, a princess, and an elf all go on an adventure together, and they don’t argue, but they don’t exactly get on well either – in fact they don’t connect at all?

Novels are all about characters. There’s a lot of advice on various methods you can use to develop personalities and temperaments for your characters, but what’s just as important is how your characters interact with each other. No man is an island, and characters can’t exist in a vacuum. In this article, I’m going to describe the different kinds of relationships your characters might have, be they harmonious, antagonistic, or simply dysfunctional, and I’m going to show you how you can use relationship dynamics to set up character plot arcs that will engage your readers.

Harmonious Relationships

Mentoring relationships are based on mentor-pupil-type interactions. The mentor is more experienced, and almost always older, than the pupil. The mentor wants to help the pupil to learn and be the best that he or she can be, and the pupil respects the mentor and enjoys learning, and looks up to the mentor as a rolemodel whom s/he would like to become. Mentoring relationships can be very formal or more relaxed, sometimes with a rapport that can make the junior member seem jocular and even disrespectful to the senior one to an outsider. Examples where Mentoring relationships are common include good bosses and their employees, and relationships between children and adults within a family.

Whereas Mentoring relationships are intellectually nurturing and can be compared to the traditional paternal relationship, Nurturing relationships are emotionally and often physically nurturing, and are often thought of as traditionally maternal. Unlike Mentoring relationships, the age of the people involved in unimportant, and someone can be Nurturing towards another person who is older or younger than themselves. Nurturing relationships are peculiar in that they have no equivalent antagonistic relationship, and strong relationships of this sort are probably the closest thing we have to unconditional love. Nurturing relationships often exist between children and parents (or close relatives/carers in the absence of parents), and to an extent all romantic relationships are slightly Nurturing on both sides. Vulnerable people with low self-esteem benefit a lot from being junior in a Nurturing relationship, where they feel reassured and accepted.

Comrades share a similar outlook and often have been through past experiences together. They see each other as being equal, either because they are similar, or because they are different in ways that are complementary.

Antagonistic Relationships

Rivals are the anti version of Comrades. Rivals mutually dislike each other, usually because of a shared history where both have done something to offend the other. Like Comrades, Rivals usually consider each other as equal. A variation is Vendetta, where one person detests another because of something they have done, while the other did this by accident, out of necessity, or without realising the consequences it would have, and wishes instead to be friends.

Bully and Usurper can exist together or separately. They are the complementary opposite equivalents of the mentor-pupil Mentoring relationship. In the case of Bully, the senior person perceives the junior person to be a threat, possibly to them personally or to their reputation, and rather than helping them, abuses them. In the case of Usurper, the junior person is jealous of the senior one, and plots to undermine or overthrow them in order to take their place.

Dysfunctional Relationships

These people are in a relationship that isn’t working. It might be because they’ve only just met and found themselves forced into roles, or it might be that it’s deteriorated from a harmonious, or improved from an antagonistic, relationship. Dysfunctional relationships are frequently transitory: progressing to antagonistic or harmonious.

Dysfunctional relationships often occur when people expect to fill incompatible roles in a relationship. A child might need a Nurturing relationship with a parent, but the parent instead may act more in the capacity of a Comrade-type relationship. The adult then feels that the child is clingy and demanding, and the child feels insecure. Someone experiencing unrequited love may act ‘motheringly’ towards the disinterested party, causing them to feel creeped out. A Paternal relationship may not work because the senior person feels a failure who can’t offer anything, or explains things in a way the junior can’t understand. Two people who have nothing in common may try to be Comrades, but find themselves having to watch what they say constantly so as not to offend the other.

Changing interpersonal relationships in fiction

Using subplots that involve changing relationships is a great way to make your characters more engaging for your readers. Where there are a lot of other plot elements at work it’s often sufficient to have characters progress from having no relationship into a stronger version of any of the relationships described above, but you can also use relationships to create twists and turns in the plot. I’m going to return to the examples I gave at the start to show how.

* Man meets woman. Woman is wary of man because she has heard bad rumours about him. To add to this, man immediately does something very foolish that lowers woman’s opinion of him. Woman belittles and insults man, becoming a Bully. Man does something courageous and honourable, and probably romantic as well. Woman starts to see that the rumours about man are incorrect, but she still thinks he’s a fool and beneath her. Their relationship has become dysfunctional Mentoring. Man does more courageous things, and sacrifices something of himself to be with woman. Woman comes to realise that man is not inferior to her, just that his strengths are different. She accepts him as an equal, they become Comrades, and consummate their Comradeship.

* Two Rivals become trapped in an escape pod (you can come up with your own backstory about how they became rivals and ended up in the pod). They argue vehemently and blame each other for the situation, then one of them attempts to stab the other with a knife, but pokes a hole in the escape pod instead, and the air starts escaping. They both panic but, working together, they manage to seal the hole. After this, they feel slightly differently about each other. The one with the knife apologises, and the one she tried to stab apologises for provoking her. They’ve ceased being Rivals and have begun a dysfunctional Comrades relationship. Talking to one another, they work out how to repair a transmitter and send a Mayday signal. By the end of the story, they have become Comrades, through sharing the experience in the escape pod together.

* A warrior, a princess, a wizard, and an elf go on an epic adventure together. Over time, the warrior and the wizard have a laugh together and come to appreciate one anothers’ usefulness, even though they don’t understand one anothers’ arts. They are Comrades. The warrior and the princess develop a rapport, and he begins to teach her swordfighting. They have developed a Mentoring relationship. Meanwhile, the wizard, who is rather an insecure, self-conscious person, is inspired by the princess’s confidence, and she in turn is sympathetic and reassuring to him. Theirs has become a Nurturing relationship. The elf… he’s just a snot-nosed creep whom no-one likes… but maybe the reason for that will become clear at the end…

Manda Benson is a writer from the West Midlands of England. She has published short stories and articles in magazines and anthologies and has a science-fiction-romance novel, Dark Tempest, forthcoming from Lyrical Press this February.

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