The Key to Writing Criminally Good Relationships | Video Essay

what do both parties oh yeah this video is sponsored by incogni by the way what do both parties get out of this relationship that's the first question you should be asking as a basic rule person a has to meet some need the person B has and person B has to meet some need that person a has but what if they just love each other incorrect dig deeper I'm not saying the relationship has to be transactional it just has to have some justifications holding it together person B why are you with person a well they give

me the support and comfort I need to pursue my goals person a why are you with person B well they bring a lot of excitement and adventure to my life and help me come out of my shell sometimes that seems like a pretty healthy pairing let's see what it would look like with an unhealthy one person B why depend on them for emotional validation because I'm so insecure okay person a how about you like having someone in control it makes me feel powerful yikes obviously I'm pretending that these people have complete subconscious awareness their answers

realistically would probably be much more self-deceptive and Kobe BC would have doing right no matter how healthy or unhealthy the relationship is both parties must still have a reason to be there whether it's conscious or subconscious emotional or practical mix and match one person could have an emotional need and the other person could have a financial need like Connor and his girlfriend in succession are there exceptions in real life probably but you all know how I feel about that I'm not going to be the guy who goes I'm actually humans are too complex to describe

and we should just understand that we'll never understand because that guy is useless a total non-contributor even if he's right especially to a Storyteller imperfect tools are better than no tools so a note on that before I begin I'm a screenwriter I'm not here to talk about romantic prose that isn't my game but what I'm about to say probably applies to screenwriters the least as a writing coach I get a lot of novelists and comic artists who are obsessed with making their relationships Charming so they'll have pages and pages of banter and flirting but when

I ask why are these two people attracted to one another they they go oh well she's the bubbly one and he's the serious one and that's not enough I'm sorry those personality Dynamics are fine they're usually really entertaining but they have to be rooted in underlying wants and needs otherwise you'll never be able to identify the best ways to challenge these characters and build a plot around them you'll be stuck in personality land with your Vibes and your charm and the only audience you'll ever retain will be chronically online people who project their own emotional

fantasies onto these otherwise shallow apparitions maybe you even come from that world and this is the only way you've ever thought about fictional relationships but don't worry as a completely sane person I'm here to help to immerse myself in the romance of sphere I have commandeered a vessel and sailed out onto the high seas with nothing but my wistful thoughts and this bottle of red wine the first topic I want to dive into is the phenomenon of the near perfect fairy tale James Cameron romance is there a place for that in storytelling I say yes

with some qualifications could you write a story about two people who are each completely self-sufficient and just get an extra little kick out of their mutual attraction yeah but therein lies the big question and the question I have to reconcile with my method if we're defining the perfect partner as someone who is completely self-actualized and self-sufficient and meets all their emotional needs that leaves no needs to be filled by another person so our relationships between healthy characters destined to be shallow doesn't sound right but on the other hand if both of them have all of

their needs met then what is there for a writer to grab onto well I've seen a couple solutions to this the James Cameron solution is to make one character pure and perfect and give the other character a giant gaping hole that needs to be filled and by recognizing that hole and being proactive and filling it the incomplete character earns the love of the complete character so while Jack and Avatar won natiri are billed as co-protagonists the truth is that they are mostly static supporting characters their role is to be the solution character the ideal that

the problem character the protagonist has to strive toward they say I'm going to stand right here and if you can meet me at my level then we can be together and so does that mean that the solution character doesn't get anything from the problem character well not necessarily I think it's the effort itself that wins the solution character over meaning their need was to feel affirmed and worked for 4 and changed for and the problem character met this need in a general sense I think this is the best way to think about relationships where one

person does all the changing it's not even entirely unrealistic sometimes people will meet at different levels of health and one inspires the other to do better and become more whole that's method one for handling exceptionally healthy characters method two is you make them both extremely healthy but the point is all the work they had to do to get there this works really well for supporting characters like Mom how do you have such a great relationship with Dad well it wasn't it's the mom well it wasn't always great my little sweet potato I had to learn

this and he had to learn that and we met in the middle and so you can use a healthy relationship as an example of what it looks like when problems are surmounted overall though I definitely prefer to write relationships in which both parties have very deep deficiencies because either they learn from each other and absorb each other's best traits or they become codependent not learning from each other but instead of using each other to make up for the areas in which they lack again you can mix and match maybe one person is genuinely learning from

the relationship but the other person is becoming Reliant for instance your relationship with the internet enter the sponsor of today's video incogni in 2023 travel entertainment shopping basically all aspects of Life require you to use the internet the digital world has become so integrated into our economy that we rely on in a very real sense but for every online task we leave a little crumb of personal data and some Goofy Goobers call data Brokers run around collect acting our crumbs and then selling them to marketers tech companies and worse the good news is you have

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wouldn't this apply to friendships too like my roommates and I all have very different qualities that balance each other out and I like to think that through them I've become an overall better person but I don't want my roommates to kiss me on the mouth because I'm not attracted to men and even if I were I wouldn't be attracted to those men they're disgusting so are we really going to say that the only difference between a platonic relationship and a romantic relationship is that little cherry on top that is attraction is a relationship structurally speaking

about the same as a friendship I mean I'm sure the Real Life Psychology is way different but just for story purposes I'm struggling to figure out what sets them apart which is not to diminish the importance of sexual attraction life didn't evolve through organisms meeting each other's mental health needs it's just like wow people who gain value from each other's presence and also want a bone might be our best working definition of Love here let's switch gears and talk about unhealthy relationships personally I have found that a great tool for tackling those is attachment Theory

now attachment Theory involves a spectrum on one end of the spectrum you got anxious attachment this is basically where you have no sense of inner security so you're obsessively looking for signs that another person has feelings for you and when you're receiving those signs it is euphoric but when you're not receiving these signs you become clingy and overbearing just vomiting your heart up for this person because you think you're in love with them on the other side of the spectrum is avoidance attachment this is basically where a person is subconsciously terrified of intimacy terrified of

letting anyone into their inner world so when they feel that they're getting too close with someone they disengage they pull away they get that ick feeling as a defense mechanism right in the middle of the spectrum is secure attachment this is where you are emotionally self-sufficient and you have those boundaries with yourself but also you're capable of emotional vulnerability and you're able to independently discern whether now is a good time for it as per attachment Theory everybody falls somewhere on this spectrum a few Unfortunate Souls actually alternate between extremes your orientation on the spectrum is

believed to be a result of Early Childhood experiences with your caregiver if your caregiver ever punished you for expressing emotional vulnerability then you probably developed avoidant patterning as a coping mechanism but if your caregiver ignored your emotional needs and forced you to make a scene to get their attention then you probably developed anxious patterning okay just gonna cut in here one caveat about attachment wounding is that it technically happens when you're a baby as in goo goo gaga so depending on the kind of story you're telling you might have to fudge timelines trauma before the

onset of episodic memory doesn't mesh super well with origin story monologues up to you just thought I'd throw that in characters aren't people this is not a personality typing system let me get that out of the way this is a spectrum of Health you want to be right here in the middle that is the healthiest version of you as far as relationships are concerned and by working on yourself and healing your attachment wounding you can get there that's the basic gist of attachment Theory Heidi prieb is probably the single most helpful Creator on the entire

platform of YouTube she was my introduction to this stuff she goes way more into depth about it please go check out her Channel anyways attachment Theory works very very well as a writing tool for the following reason anxiously attach people and avoidantly attach people tend to attract each other because anxiously attached people are still looking for that stable caregiver to take care of their needs and who better than the ultra secure avoidant the person who seems to have no weaknesses because they've made a career of hiding them and the avoidance end up dating the anxious

people by default because the anxious people are the only ones aggressive and persistent enough to break through the avoidance excessively thick walls securely attach people see those walls and they go oh I guess this person isn't into me they appear to be shutting me out but to anxious people getting shut out is a turn on so these two often find themselves in a doomed back and forth with anxious people their hearts on their sleeves Chase facing after avoidance and avoidance getting grossed out and rejecting them the first time I talked about this I used Finn

from Adventure Time Finn in the earlier seasons is super anxiously attached but I digress the important thing to remember about avoiding people is that they're not necessarily introverts showing no insecurity could look like a wild extroverted partier who never cries so this isn't about opposites attracting with regard to temperament this is about people who are emotionally insecure chasing people who they think look emotionally invulnerable doesn't seem to matter what this is a late addition but I had to add it because Ken is such a perfect example of this stuff in practice Ryan Gosling's first self-aware

literally me character exemplifies one really important component of anxious attachment which is the over identification with the Itachi or to put it in Heidi terms when the line between your identity and their identity gets very blurry and you start to lose your sense of self in pursuit of this person like oh haha what do I care about I care about what you care about Barbie unless you're not attracted to that in which case we're totally different just to validate me please my sense of self-worth depends on your approval and so characters dealing with this have

to grow out of their attachment and find their own sense of self outside of the relationship well either that or they cling to their delusional performance to The Bitter End there's also a weirdly specific Trend that I've noticed in my Consulting work and if I didn't address it here I probably wouldn't at all it's when you got two super lonely introverted characters who are each other's only form of companionship and they have no one else and they're just twin souls and they're perfect for each other these clients usually send a JPEG with their writing and

before I even open it I know it's going to look something like this you know the OC Community I used to think that was just a fan fiction term but now I think it means just people who write to give their drawings something to do anyways this Trope bugs me because it never actually examines the loneliness itself these two people are always super codependent but that codependence is never broken down and examined for what it is instead it's played as true love or whatever if your own personal loneliness is the main thing keeping you in

a relationship I hate to break it to you but that's not super healthy and to treat it as healthy on the page is to basically neglect the pathological depth it would realistically have not to mention the fact that the two parties involved have basically the same reason for being in the relationship which means there's not a whole lot of potential energy for conflict you gotta ask yourself what would my characters fight about how are their values different what would actually drive a wedge between them and then let that thing happen in your story I can't

believe I'm about to point out a positive example from The Walking Dead But ignoring the abhorrent and congruence of that show on a macro level there actually is one the character is Abraham and Rosita are a couple when we meet them and they're together because it's the apocalypse and they're all the other has but once they get introduced to a broader Community Abraham realizes that he didn't actually love her for her she was just the only option she was his partner by default in his new community he meets Sasha whom we're told he actually has

a more substantive connection with so he goes to be with her but of course Rosita actually did love Abraham on a more personal level so this is really horrible for her that fundamental difference drives the drama of the subplot if your characters have zero fundamental differences maybe you should change them especially if they're the two main characters and the story is resting on their attachment Let Them Fight sorry about the noise I'm being chased by Pirates attachment theory is just one of the many threads you could weave into your fictional relationship but what does your

relationship contribute to your story you might be tempted to say oh well the relationship is the story that shit's not gonna fly on this channel you know how we do it here characters orbiting a theme let's talk about Arcane lull in a manner that almost satisfies your craving for a full analysis video from me but not quite because I'm too hyper focused to just talk about a piece of media like in general you know the characters Vai and Caitlyn are a great example of theme and relationship coming together listen to this dialogue homie I know

you have your reservations about me this only works if we can trust each other it doesn't work it never has you top Setters always find a way to screw us are they talking about their relationship or the relationship between their two social classes well it's very explicitly both that's the point these conversations transition seamlessly from being about the viability of their partnership to being about whether Topsiders and design people can find common ground it wasn't enough top sides and bottom oil and water that's all there is What About Us oil and water wasn't meant to

be two are acting as stand-ins for their communities how about Jason Mel's relationship what's really happening here Jace who starts as an idealistic do-gooder is letting himself slip into corruption so as a symbol of this change you have him fall for Mel who's more on the corrupt end of the spectrum and these two dance along this particular thematic axis their relationship ebbing and flowing depending on how close they are Origins wise Mel comes from an extreme on this spectrum her warlike self-serving culture and Jace comes from the opposite extreme he owes his life to an

altruistic Wizard and these two starting from their Origins kind of meet in the middle again as a symbol especially at the beginning of a relationship before there's any attachment it can be helpful to think of these pairings as symbols if I want to show that a character is becoming seduced by a particular way of thinking I can literally have them be seduced by a person who thinks that way so to wrap up the video I want to return to this moment oh well she's the bubbly one and he's the serious one and I want to

apply everything I've talked about to give this relationship some actual weight starting off with attachment Styles I'm going to give this serious guy a more anxious disposition he's not deep into insecurity like I want to leave room for other things but he falls about a third of the way in and then bubbly girl is a little more avoidant no pain only party so now we know that there's a part of him that sees her as a glowing ray of light who's going to take care of him I think their relationship would have started with her

grabbing him at a party and dancing with him but then afterwards when the party died down he came up to her and he looked her in the eyes in his serious guy way and he asked her out okay I guess I'll give this guy a chance he seems to be actually trying he's asking me questions we get along maybe she keeps him around because he represents a groundedness she lacks she's sort of this type 7 Good Vibes only kind of person but he's actually able to sit her down and have the hard conversations and she's

secure enough to understand that this is beneficial on the flip side serious dude needs someone to help him let things go it doesn't have to be all deep conversations all the time bubbly girl really helps him let go of that and it's a very freeing feeling so they have a balanced Dynamic that retains all the trophy from earlier but the difference is that now there's an actual framework beneath it and we can use that framework to challenge them in conscious and subconscious ways what happens when party Dude shows up and he tells bubbly girl hey

shoddy why are you hanging around this Moby loser let's just forget about our problems and party I'm party dude that's gonna be kind of tempting for her especially if she and her mans are in a rough patch she knows that she needs someone to pull her back to Earth but she doesn't like it and party dude is offering a break from all that a regression party dude slots very nicely into this story and stirs the pot in just the right way maybe after party Dude shows up serious guy decides that he has to become more

extroverted to win bubbly girl back so he tries and fails to imitate party dude's energy which spirals into a whole plot about these three a plot that dives into themes of of authenticity and escapism with all three characters dancing around the same thematic axis party dude was born out of the framework I created for this relationship if all I had to go off was she's the bubbly one and he's the serious one I would have never had the insight to create him much less weave him into the relationship in the way that I did my

brain would have still been like she likes him because he's serious and he likes her because she's bubbly think about all the opportunities you're missing out on by not taking a deeper look at the relationships you write asking why and weeding out the stupid answers is going to get you much further than trying to capture a nebulous feeling of Chemistry Between Your characters oftentimes the chemistry you're trying to emulate is just the outer coding of something far more meaningful that's it that's the video once again sponsored by incogni click the link in my description to

take back your personal information now well the Pirates had a faster boat than me I'm not sure why they wanted mine but long story short all of the booty has been plundered I'm not really in the mood to talk about it I just wanted to round this video out by saying thank you to my patrons for the uninitiated my patreon community is hooked up to a Discord it's a great way to connect with me as well as like-minded writer folk you'll also get access to any upcoming videos I got in the can as well as

some exclusive videos like my video essay class so if you have the means and you feel like supporting me that would be the way to do it link is in the description otherwise take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time I'm going to start swimming now [Music]