For me, characters and their relationships with each other are the lifeblood of a good story. My whole book series started because I loved my two roleplaying characters so much, I couldn’t let go of them when I left the gaming world. Their original back stories live on today, but the world around them, and the circumstances of their lives, changed completely from my gaming days. But it didn’t really matter, because the characters–the most important part–lived on. Without people to move a plot, all you really have is a setting.

Today I’m sharing an interesting post I found from Adam at Write Thoughts on using relationships in your stories. As always, click the source link to view the entire post. Enjoy!

“No man is an island, whole unto itself.” People are always part of a network of relationships, a community. For most it’s a web of familiar faces, with individual relationships growing or fading, much like the tides of the ocean. Characters can even engage relationships without interacting with the other person, through memory and imagination. Similarly, some characters may personify an animal, object, or force of nature. A character struggling to endure a storm may come to regard that storm as a rival, with a will and personality of its own.

In storytelling relationships can be used to accomplish three goals: to create tension, reveal information, and help explore ideas. Most relationships do all three…

Source: Using Relationships 105-03