3 Tips For Writing Strong Platonic Relationships

Imagine your best friend.

The person that makes you laugh and cry and do crazy things that you wouldn’t do with anyone else. The person who had the most influence on you as a person. The person who impacted your life most, or who you would be totally different without.

And now imagine your life without that friend, imagine stories without platonic relationships—they’d be different, right?

Friends are important, monumental, and life-changing, and that is why it’s so important to be able to write strong platonic relationships. 

They leave your readers with your message and theme and really, truly impact them—sometimes even more than a romantic relationship would.

Platonic relationships are a huge way you can make a mark on your readers, so let’s explore three tips on writing strong platonic relationships that do this with power and impact.

How Platonic Relationships Can Strengthen Your Story When Done Well

But before we get into the three tips on how to write strong friendships, we need to see exactly how strong platonic relationships actually add to and enhance your story.

1. Platonic Relationships Add Depth And Complexity

First off, strong platonic relationships add depth and complexity, to both the characters in the relationship, to other characters, and to the story in general. 

Friendships add an extra layer of emotion to story beats and twists, add emotional impact to what the main character is going through, and can add subplots and twists and turns that grow your story and take it to the next level.

For example, the eventual friendship between Maverick and Rooster in Top Gun: Maverick is an amazing platonic friendship that gives the movie both tension and stakes—and quite a bit of humor—but it also adds emotional impact, plot twists, and a message of both forgiveness and redemption. 

It allows us to see a side of Maverick that we wouldn’t see without his emotional conflict/regret regarding Rooster’s dad’s death and gives us a peak into the emotions Rooster is facing. 

Or take the friendship between Frodo and Sam in LOTR adds a huge element of sacrifice and platonic love to both the books and the movies. Without Sam, Frodo wouldn’t have made it, and the whole ending of the book could be completely different, and Frodo wouldn’t be the person he is with Sam.

In both of those instances, the platonic relationship can both lighten the story and make it more serious, adding a different kind of depth to the story—something that’s more familiar and more relaxed, maybe—than romantic relationships. 

And, they can leave your readers with a monumentally impactful motivation and conviction at the end.

2. Platonic Relationships Enhance Your Main Character

In addition to adding to the story as a whole, platonic relationships can enhance your main character—strengthening their desires and goals and adding extra emotional impact to their fears and lies.

Declan’s friendship with Rev reminds Declan that he’s not totally abandoned and he does have people that are on his side. Rev also challenges Declan to be better, to make better choices, and do the right thing, and if not for Rev, Declan’s arc would look completely different. 

In the same book, the relationship between Juliet and her best friend pushes Juliet along her arc and teaches her to trust people and care about people again as her friend cares about her and is always there for her. But the tension between them also enhances Juliet as a character, showing her fears and her flaws and weaknesses.

In both of those instances, the friendship grows and develops and adds nuance to the main character, rounding them out into a real, relatable person that’s not flat. And characters will have all sorts of platonic relationships that grow and encourage them in all sorts of different ways. 

The real power behind it all is how the relationship affects and grows the main character and transforms them into a three-dimensional person that readers can relate to and learn from, instead of just reading about.

3. Platonic Relationships Strengthen Other Relationships

And finally, platonic relationships can strengthen other relationships, like romantic relationships and other platonic relationships. Because all the people touching your characters will impact them in some way, they will in turn impact the other relationships that they have.

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and Jane’s friendship greatly influenced their relationships with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley. It made Elizabeth prejudiced against Mr. Darcy, wanting to stand up for her sister and the hurt that she experienced. And it made Jane hesitant to approve of Elizabeth’s relationship with Mr. Darcy because she didn’t want her hurt like she was. But it also made her supportive of it because she wanted her sister to be happy. 

Their friendship and care for each other made them take different steps in the other relationships that they wouldn’t have taken if they didn’t care. 

Or look at how Tris and Christina’s friendship in Divergent and Insurgent impacts both of their arcs, as well as impacting Tris’s relationship with Four, and Christina’s relationship with Will. Christina was super supportive, and always there for Tris—and even forgave her after she killed Will, allowing Tris to move past the guilt that killing her best friend’s boyfriend had caused and move forward in her relationship with Four.

And Tris’ relationship with Cristina made Will’s death that much harder because it was her best friend that had killed him, not some bad guy. But eventually, as she forgave her, she was able to grow in her own arc.

Every relationship your character has will impact and strengthen the relationships they have with other characters—whether you have a love triangle or a jealous friend, a roommate, or a frenemy, every relationship your characters have will have an impact on their other relationships. 

And when the platonic relationships are done well they will strengthen and add nuance, complexity, and emotional impact to every character and relationship that they’re in.

Platonic Relationships Can Weaken Your Story When Not Done Well

Anything that can be done well and carried out with strength, can also be not done well and carried out poorly, and platonic relationships are no exception. They can actually weaken your story when not done well. 

In certain instances, platonic relationships can make your story too complex by adding in too many extra, unnecessary characters and taking away from the central focus of the main characters and their arcs and stories.

We all can think of a few books that definitely had way too many characters, or just too many friends for the main character, and the friendships are far less impactful when there are so many of them.

On top of that, they can take away from the ultimate goal of the story and just make the journey and story you’re trying to tell far too complex and confusing.

Imagine if, in The Maze Runner, Thomas had a hundred friends like Newt. Imagine if, in Pride and Prejudice, all of Elizabeth’s sisters were her best friends. It would make the relationships feel fake and contrived, and water them down. 

Similarly, we don’t remember all of Frodo’s friends, we remember Sam.

Imagine if Steve and Bucky’s friendship stole the spotlight from the true point behind Steve and Peggy’s romance in Captain America or if Peter and Tony’s friendship had stolen attention from Tony and Peper’s romance.

Or take The Runaway Prince in which Jaron’s romance with Imogen is slightly overshadowed by his friendships with Tobias and Ronin. 

Too many platonic relationships, or relationships not done well, can weaken characters and their arcs, make readers confused, take away from the point you’re trying to get across, and a whole host of other problems. 

So we have to take the time to craft and hone platonic relationships.

3 Tips For Writing Strong Platonic Relationships

It’s easy to talk about how strong platonic relationships make a story more impactful, and how weak platonic relationships hurt a story, but how do we make sure that we’re writing powerful friendships? 

How do we make our platonic relationships something that will impact and motivate readers and leave a mark on the minds of our audience?

1. Give The Characters Unique Motivations

Your characters can not be boring or flat or motivation-less—they have to have a reason behind everything they do, a reason behind their lives, and a reason they’re in this friendship.

When characters don’t have their own motivations and fires fueling their lives and driving them to take action, friendships can fall flat because they feel too easy or cookie-cutter. 

Often differing motivations can add conflict and tension, which makes a friendship feel real, but what you really don’t want is for readers to not know why your characters are doing what they’re doing. 

For example, look at Declan and Rev from Letters To The Lost. They both have fears and goals and desires and dreams and flaws that all come together to make them sympathetic, and they have motivation. They are taking action to get what they want, they have a reason behind their actions, and readers loved them enough that the author went on to write a sequel about Rev. 

They were well-rounded and had unique motivations that sometimes even created conflict between them, but it made the friendship real.

Sam and Frodo are both very well-developed characters that each know what they want and have a reason behind everything they’re doing. Sometimes, they want different things—Sam wants to fight for his friends and fight for good, and Frodo’s motivation is more focused on becoming the hero by saving everyone and finishing the quest. 

Sam’s motivation is more focused on his family and helping his people thus he is very distrustful of Gollum and sees him as a threat to Frodo as well as the ultimate good of his people. Frodo, on the other hand, is more trusting of Gollum and willing to believe him because he is more ready to believe the best about others and wants to believe that the ring doesn’t really do that to people. 

And yet, despite their slight disagreements, they still choose to stick together and fight for each other and their people. He chooses to continue with him to the end, always believing in the good in Frodo and hoping for victory. 

Frodo chooses to not listen to Gandalf, to trust Gollum, and often makes choices that are swayed by the ring and Sam often has to be that voice of reason, reminding him what his mission and focus is.

This causes strife in their relationship, as well as a host of other things, and makes their friendship very realistic because no two people are ever going to want the exact same thing, no two people are ever going to be perfect and never fight and always want exactly what the other person wants, no two friends are ever going to always agree and make the same choices. And when you make your characters unique and craft them to have individual motivations, it makes them more real, and their relationship more real too. 

Taking the example of Sam and Frodo, one of your character’s motivation could be wanting to fight for his family and love them, while the other character’s motivation could be more focused on helping everyone and in that, being seen as a hero. Those two motivations are similar, but different in so many ways and can hugely impact the story as well as make their relationship stronger, more memorable, and more sympathetic to readers.

Give the characters in your platonic relationships different things to want, or different reasons to want those things, or tie in pieces of their backstory into their motivations that make them clash or possibly make each other’s motivations and desires even painful. 

The unique motivations can even just come down to very small nuances in similar motivations that, with those nuances, make each character individualized and memorable, as well as making their friendship that much more fresh and relatable to readers.

You just have to remember that characters are the cornerstone of your stories. They are the very reason why readers even read in the first place, and each character in a friendship has to have their own unique motivation, or it will feel fake and flat and cookie-cutter.

2. Give The Relationship A Point

Secondly, the friendship has to have a point—a reason and motivation and why. 

It can’t just be in the story for no reason, with no motivation behind it, but rather it must add something to the story and the message. 

Ask yourself why this relationship? Why these characters and why this story? 

Every relationship, whether romantic or platonic, must give something to the story and have a reason to be there, or it just won’t fit. So find out the message you’re trying to convey or the moral you’re trying to tell your audience or the conviction you want them to leave with. 

Analyze the characters and the story and figure out the reason behind the friendship, because if you don’t have a point for putting the relationship in the story, your readers won’t see why they should read about it.

In Pride and Prejudice, the friendship between Jane and Lizzy showed the audience that even through trials and ups and downs and love and heartache, you can still be friends. You can still laugh and whisper to each other and hope for each other’s happiness. It showed that even in the heaviness and tangled-up knots of life, there is lightness and joy. 

Or take the friendship between Maverick and Rooster, which showed that even in sadness and hurt, there can be forgiveness. In anger and loss and death, life can still bloom and there is still hope for forgiveness.

In LOTR, Sam and Frodo’s friendship shows how true friendship is sacrificial and undying and powerful—powerful enough for Frodo to literally carry Sam to the end when he wasn’t able to make it himself. It shows how we must learn to forgive each other and love each other, even in our mistakes and weaknesses, and flaws.

Tolkien wanted to remind readers to be the friend that the people need—to be there for your people and help them when it gets hard and support them and be their strength. That was his message and his why for readers, and because he crafted the characters and the friendship so well, it really impacted his audience and still does today.

Each of those examples had a reason to be in the story—either a lesson to teach or a motivation to convict readers with—and the authors behind those characters had a why for each and every one of them. 

And for your relationships to be strong and healthy and impactful, you have to know why your characters and their friendship are in the story.

3. Give The Friendship Tension

You are going to have a lot of different friends in your life, and your relationship with each of them is going to be… very different. In other words, not all friendships are the same.

Your friendships can’t all be the same either—they need to have nuance. Tension. Fighting. Clashing desires that etch them into readers’ minds. Shadows and backgrounds that make your audience remember them and connect with them.

No one is going to relate to a cookie-cutter friendship that looks like it came out of a manual and is all stiff and fake. You need friendships that are full of little things that set them apart, like how Maverick and Rooster’s relationship is so unique because Rooster believes his dad died because of Maverick. 

Or how we love Han Solo and Chewbacca’s relationship because they’re at each other’s throats one second, and sacrificing everything for each other in the next. We can also look at Luke and Darth Vadar’s relationship because they’re on opposite sides of a war, fighting against each other, and yet still they’re father and son and they care about each other.

Lizzy and Charlotte in Pride and Prejudice likewise have a very nuanced, somewhat tension-filled friendship because Charlotte ends up marrying the man that Lizzy rejected, and kind of hated. And yet still, they remained friends. 

Hiccup and Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon are very unlikely friends because Hiccup’s people are trying to kill Toothless’, and Toothless’ dragon friends are trying to kill Hiccup’s family and destroy his home. And yet they become such fast friends that they bridge the bridge of hatred and are able to show others how to do it as well.

In all of those instances, the friendships are unique, different, and memorable. They had nuance and backstory tied into them that made readers care. They had quirks, like marriage and war, that made them unlike any other friendship. 

And they had tension that made them real.

That’s what your platonic relationships need. They need to be full of your characters and their quirks and their arcs—they need to be unique and important and memorable. That is how you will impact and convict your audience.

Platonic Friendships Are Powerful

They can impact both other characters in the book, and your readers. They can teach characters in the book a lesson, and leave your audience motivated and convicted, and inspired to change.

Platonic relationships are extremely powerful because we all have them—we might not all be in a romantic relationship or have amazing parents or siblings, but we all have some sort of platonic relationship. It’s something we can relate to, and because of that, use to leave our readers with a message and conviction in a non-preachy way.

You can use friendships in your stories to completely and radically shift your readers’ perspectives, or maybe even lives. You can use platonic relationships to inspire your readers to grow and change in their own relationships.

And sometimes it’s easy to talk about or read an article about, but hard to put into practice. That’s why we’ve put together a very useful free resource of applicable questions to ask yourself. 

Just questions, and just answers, and you’ll be able to think through your platonic relationships and hone them to be so much stronger and more powerful.

It’s not going to be easy and it’s going to take practice, but platonic relationships are hugely powerful, and I’m willing to bet that you can put in the work to craft strong friendships that your readers will remember for years to come.