Writing Relationships

1. Loners aren’t always your friend 
   
   There are a lot of fictional loners out there. And there are also a lot of characters who are almost alone. Books centering on romantic relationships tend to focus on the romance. But in my experience, most people have a lot of relationships. Unless you’re specifically writing about someone because they are lonely and friendless, remember that they probably have friends, likely several. If they’re not an orphan, they have or had parents, and those relationships might have been important to them. They probably have colleagues. Romantic relationships almost never happen in isolation from all these other relationships (if they do it’s a red flag!) and they don’t happen in isolation from other romantic-adjacent relationships, either: exes, erotic friendships, experiments, mistakes. Situating characters within full lives makes them richer and their other relationships more believable.  
    
2. Don’t let a plot device trump motivation 
   
   If there is a huge amount of pressure to tell someone something — you lost your job; you’re contemplating divorce; you just found out you’re adopted — my theory is that most people will come out and say it. The trope of “I just couldn’t tell you” is overused in fiction (you see it constantly in children’s television, for example), and I rarely buy it. It can also lead to convoluted plots (man leaves the house every day pretending to go to work…) which can be funny, but which I also often don’t buy. It can create internal conflict but, arguably, that isn’t as interesting as real conflict. Having said all that, key pieces of information do remain hidden from characters in my novel OPEN SEASON, and it’s an effective hook to make the reader wonder when all will be revealed. I worked hard to make the deception plausible, and the pay-off worth it.  
    
3. Dialogue is revealing 
   
   You can tell so much about a relationship by how characters talk to each other. People talk differently to their old friend or their boss, to a magnetic stranger or a young workmate. Dialogue is a brilliant way to elucidate a character by showing, not telling. How often does one character use another’s name? Do they tease each other? How formal is their language? People in long term friendships or partnerships should be able to have funny, complex, serious, interesting, silly chats. If they never do, the relationship doesn’t ring true. 
    

Cassie Werber is a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and podcaster. She loves books about the complexities and subtleties of human interaction. OPEN SEASON, published in April 2024, follows two couples as they begin to explore the world of open relationships. According to Katie Bishop, author of THE GIRLS OF SUMMER: “The writing seduces and sings, and the characters are devastatingly real. An astonishing debut.” Cassie’s second novel will be published by Trapeze in 2026. 

Cassie worked at The Wall Street Journal and as senior reporter at Quartz. Now a freelance journalist, she has written for titles including the Guardian, Vogue and The Economist. Her screenplays ANMER and REWILD have both been shortlisted for 4Screenwriting. She co-founded theatre company ChoppedLogic, and co-wrote and performed in Paramour; wrote and directed The Runaround, and wrote and directed Double Negative, which reached the third round of Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate award and was Time Out Critics’ Choice. Cassie was home-schooled in Suffolk, studied English at Clare College, Cambridge, theatre at Central School of Speech and Drama and journalism at City University, which also took her to Denmark and Amsterdam.