Relationships

Ah, every fandom’s favorite subject. The ship. But how do you make a ship believable? How do you make the audience want it?

To start off, there are different types of romantic relationships, and different reasons that Person A and B got together. Sometimes they get together to make themselves feel validated, or to try it out and see if it sticks. There are weak romantic relationships and strong ones. In this post, I will focus mainly on ways to build a ship that your readers will want to invest in.

BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP

#1. Make your readers want it. If you make the relationship seem too easy, too perfect, or too plastic, your readers won’t be interested. Let the relationship take time. Don’t draw it out to where it’s agonizingly slow, but don’t make it happen so fast that the audience doesn’t have time to realize they really, really want it. People tend to want something even more when they feel they can’t have it.

#2. Most of the time, people don’t start dating or hanging out all the time just a day or two after they meet. Good relationships take time. Not every moment is cute and romantic, and the guy or girl isn’t always going to be a pro at reading cues. Let there be some doubt, denial, or caution. I’m not saying that a person can’t be naturally flirtatious right of the bat, because some people are just like that. Just be careful with how fast you make things go down.

#3. Person A and B aren’t always going to be paired together and they won’t be personally involved in all of each other’s problems. It gets a little cliché when they do everything together, and go along with everything their other half says. Don’t force them to be constantly close. Spread them out, show them as real people experiencing real life as individuals, each with their own struggles and views. The good thing is that they always have each other to turn to when things get too rough to handle. (Or sometimes Person A will refrain from telling B about their struggles so as not to stress them out. Stuff like this I like to call known as destructive compassion.)

#4. Conflict is insanely important. If the love is real, not every moment is going to be sunny days, dates, and chocolates. Give them hardships. Maybe they get annoyed at each other over stupid stuff but still fight for each other. Maybe something personAL is going on, or maybe they’re afraid that they’re drifting apart. The point is, in every real relationship, either internal or external conflict will be present to some degree.

Of course, you can switch this around. If you do want to create a weak relationship between two characters, make it seem perfectly romantic on the outside, but on the inside both are doubting and falung away because there’s no real love there. Maybe they were just meant to be friends.

#5. Please don’t pull a knight-in-shining-armor trick. The guy won’t always save the girl, and the girl isn’t incapable of defending herself if she must. There are plenty of scenes in books and movies where the girl is cornered by some vile beast and she grabs a stick to fend it off, but barely manages to beat it over the head. Cue the weak grunts and pleas for help. Then the guy comes in, the heroic music starts up, and he tackles the beast to the dirt. I’m NOT trying to sound like a feminist, but as human beings, women will fight just as hard to survive and defend themselves or their loved ones, even to desperate measures.

I’m not saying you can’t have the guy save the girl. That often does happen. Just don’t make you female characters out to be unrealistically weak.

#6. The girl’s world doesn’t suddenly become centered around her romantic life with a guy when they get together, and vice versa. Something like this happened in Twilight. They’ll still have friends and other people they want to spend time with. Their unromantic relationships won’t be ripped apart by them having a bf/gf, unless there’s a deeper reason (for instance, if one of their friends used to date their current bf/gf, or if the romance is toxic and they become withdrawn because of shame or something like that.) The point is, don’t center everything the couple does around each other.

#7. This is a more flexible point because every plot line is different and you’re free to create your characters however you wish. However… Don’t make Person A and B (or only one of them) unrealistically perfect. When everyone thinks highly of them and everyone has a crush on them, and not one person finds anything about them a little off-putting… that’s unrealistic right there. So many times people try to make their characters attractive instead of realistic and it just doesn’t work.

#8. There’s got to be a story arc! I can’t emphasize this enough. When you’re writing a romance story, there has to be a climax, a problem, and a solid conclusion. I’ve read stories where it’s just chapter after chapter of the couple doing stuff together and going through life WHICH, in itself, is okay, because the rest of the factors have been taken care of. But there really isn’t any plot. It kinda reminds me of a reality TV show. The story has to have an underlying meaning, a hidden (or obvious) problem that is solved in the end. If it’s just incident after cute scene after incident after fight after blah, blah blah, with no end in sight and no foreshadowing of a final result… Well, all the tension the readers were hoping for turns bland. This is extremely prominent in fan-fics.

The point is, every story has an end and a beginning. Something has to grow and change throughout that period of time. How you tell the story is everything.

#9. Don’t. Over. Sexualize. Everything. Don’t overemphasize a person’s physical appearance. I’ve read some books where the author doesn’t know how to describe a person aside from “hot”, “muscled”, or *shudders* “sexy.” There’s no emotion in the character besides an arrogant, unreal physical attraction. At this point any personality the character could have is stripped away and they become a walking hunk of unrealistic attractiveness. Give them human emotions! Let them be more than just a block of styrofoam with the face of a model.

#10. Is there something that Person A wants, but has passively given up on for some reason? Have Person B work as hard as they possibly can to fulfill A’s dream. Better yet, have them do it in secret. Better yet, have them fail over and over and over again, but keep. on. going.

#11. If you want to stir your readers, make the truest, most beautiful relationship seem impossible. If the couple does end up together in the end, it’ll be even more satisfying.

#12. Introduce the love triangle! Person A cares for both B and C, but which does she love romantically and which does she love as a friend? This gets even juicier when Person A doesn’t know the answer herself. (If you really want to crush some hearts, have one of them die.)

#13. A pet peeve of mine is when a fictional couple overuses pet names, constantly calling each other “babe, “baby”, etc. It could just be me, but this gives the relationship a strong jock-ish vibe. I’m not saying pet names are against the rules, but don’t overload on them. The couple know each other’s names!

That’s all for now! If you have anything to add or any questions to ask, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you personally.