- Developing Chemistry Between Your Characters
Introduction
Good chemistry between characters is important for an immersive and satisfying experience. How often do you go to GoodReads to read the reviews of a book you’re thinking about reading, only to find that a lot of people feel the characters in the story have no chemistry or feel that the relationship developed in an unrealistic way?
Don’t get me wrong, of course we’re talking about a fictional romance. There’s only so much interesting story to tell and in that story, your characters have to fall for each other. Or they don’t have to. But that’s not what I’m trying to get at here.
Just like everything in life, there’s a happy medium. A good balance between realism and fantasy. Love at first site is a good trope! And I don’t just feel that way because my now husband and I told each other “I love you” 20 days after our first date!
Anyway, today we’ll discuss how to create good chemistry between your main characters, no matter what genre!
Establishing Clear Motivation and Desire
Motivation
No matter the genre, your characters have to have some sort of motivation (reason) for doing whatever it is that they do.
For example, why are they around each other? There are tons of reasons you could create for the reason a character might be around another. This is important because, unless your book is specifically about running into each other, coincidence isn’t enough.
What are the circumstances in which your characters are forced to spend time with each other? Is it work? Friends? Marriage? There are plenty of reasons for your characters to need to spend time with each other. Figuring this out is an important first step in developing chemistry between characters.
Desire
Desire. “A strong feeling of wanting…” Is it really a romance if your characters don’t want each other at the end? Whether a slow-burn or erotica, your characters need to like each other at some point. And it needs to be believable.
Channeling your own feelings of love and desire and understanding them for yourself is a key way to put them into your writing. I know not everyone believes in or has been in love before, so here are some ways to get around this:
You may not have felt love for another person before, but you’ve probably loved something. Whether it be your favorite food, possession, or place to go. Channeling and honing that feeling will make it easier for you to put that emotion into words. As an example, imagine your favorite place to be. Imagine you haven’t gotten there yet, but you’re on your way. You’re so close but not there quite yet. How do you feel? Is your heart racing a little bit? You feel warm on the inside and you’re getting a bit antsy. You’ve arrived. You can’t help but smile from ear to ear. A high pitched squeal escapes your throat as you rush into your place. That warmth that you were feeling has increased ten-fold and you let out a long, relaxing breath.
There’s also the easiest suggestion: read! Reading a book in the genre you’re writing in will help you understand the feelings you’re trying to portray. I hope I don’t have to warn you, but I will anyway: This is just a suggestion in understanding emotion. Don’t copy another author’s hard work. Don’t plagiarize!
Utilizing Dialogue
Dialogue plays an important role when building chemistry between characters. Whether they’re bickering, exchanging witty banter, having a meaningful conversation, or even saying nothing at all, your characters need chemistry.
Bickering is the little arguments they get into along the way, witty banter is the smart-ass comments they make to and in response to each other, meaningful conversation is the conversations that they have that reveal their darkest secrets or greatest longings, and comfortable silence is understanding that so much could be said, even when nothing is being spoken.
Enemies to lovers (ETL) is a fun trope to talk about. Two people who don’t get along, entangle themselves in a situation that forces them to get to know each other more, eventually leading to a relationship. Dialogue plays a very important role in any genre, but we’ll talk about this one.
In this example, let’s use an “office workers” ETL, as that’s the easiest one for me to write about, LOL,
MC1 is MC2’s subordinate at work. MC1 hates MC2 because they feel wronged over MC2 getting the promotion they thought they deserved. Forced to work on a project together, they end up spending more and more time together in the office, eventually leading to MC2 and MC1 confessing their love. Sure. But dialogue?
In the beginning, there’s plenty of bickering between the two, some not-so-friendly banter, leading to their boss making them work closely together on a project, in hopes of forcing them to get along. More bickering turns into a full blown argument! “Why do you hate me so much?!” screams MC2, slamming their hands on the table. MC1 ponders this a moment, before admitting their jealousy over MC2’s promotion, leading to a heart-to-heart.
Here, you could show their relationship developing with less arguments, more heart to heart conversations, and a noticeable friendliness between the two. “It worked!” The boss thinks, not realizing that it worked too well and now they’re starting to develop feelings for each other.
This is usually where we turn to our next section, physical chemistry.
Physical Chemistry
Besides dialogue, physical chemistry is important to the development of 2 character’s relationship. We’re not necessarily talking about sex, there’s more to physical chemistry than that. Heart racing, smiling, butterflies in your stomach, a deep blush, etc. Those are physical as well.
Continuing with the example above, let’s get to physical chemistry.
Now that our MCs have started to get along a little bit, maybe some feelings are starting to develop on either side.
But, fraternizing among colleagues is heavily frowned upon, let alone fraternization between a subordinate and their superior. It’s grounds for being let go! So they do their best to not give in to their overwhelming desire for each other. But how do we depict this?
Sitting next to each other while working, MC1 is so close MC2 can almost hear their heart beat. Or is it their own? They can’t tell. They accidentally graze hands while reaching for the same piece of paper, and MC1’s hand blushes a hot, deep red where they touched, they look over at each other and their faces are so close that a kiss almost feeling inevitable, they lean in, hearts racing, chests heaving, but someone comes into the room, forcing them to pull themselves away from each other, the almost physical pain they feel not getting the kiss they so deeply long for.
This is the kind of writing you need to utilize in your own story. This is what gets your reader’s heart racing and unable to put down your book.
Conflicts, Obstacles, and Reunions
There’s usually a breakup or two in romance novels, or at least some sort of obstacle that our characters have to face that causes the some sort of turmoil in the relationship in which our couple either makes or breaks our couple.
Makeups and breakups aren’t just the norm, they’re pretty pertinent to good story and character development. Whether someone needs to change their attitude or otherwise.
Continuing with the aforementioned example, I mentioned casually that an office romance between a subordinate their superior is a big no-no. So here, we’ll use that as our obstacle to overcome.
Let’s say our MCs have started casually dating in secret, maybe a rendezvous or two, keeping it a secret from everyone. But somehow, the boss finds out, whether someone saw them outside of work and told on them, or if the boss themselves saw, either way they find out. This can cause tension, not only at work between the colleagues and subordinate MC, but between the couple as well. One MC might feel the other told someone at work, who then told the boss, putting both of their jobs in jeopardy.
Whether they make it through this obstacle or not is completely up to you, but, for fun’s sake, let’s say they break up. It’s heartbreaking, an utter tragedy, how do we fix it?
There are a few way you can fix this, any are up to you. You could also choose to destroy your readers and they never get back together, floating through life with a holes in their hearts. But that sucks, so I’m not doing that!
To round off this example, we’ll get back together, spoiler! MC1 feels guilty for being the one to break things off and realized that they can’t live without MC2 in their life. Work has become monotonous and depressing, and they decided to quit their job and pursue MC2. They walk into the boss’s office, pour their heart out about their love for MC2 and how this job won’t stop them from pursuing them, and ends it with an “I quit!”
But boss just smirks, and tilts their head to the side as if they’re looking at someone. MC2 turns around to see MC1 in the doorway, holding a resignation letter that’s quickly hidden behind their back and wearing a blush. There’s the love confession and the resolution all in one. Kisses, confessions, happiness… And the boss.
The boss has a few options here, only limited by your imagination, but in this story, they accept MC1’s resignation, offers them “job completed” status which allows for unemployment while looking for a new job, and a great recommendation letter. They wish them luck, pats MC2 on the shoulder and whispers “I’ll pretend I didn’t see that resignation letter.”
The End.
Conclusion
This has probable been one of my more ramble-y articles, so I hope my point came across clearly.
Good dialogue and physical chemistry is important when creating your story. Your characters should be realistic and immersive without also being too predictable and boring. But in the end, creating your story the way you want it read is the most important.
I hope you guys enjoyed the read. Have a great week!
T.L. Ryan 