This is K.M. Wyland and you were listening to the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoy this week's episode, How to Make Every Relationship in Your Story Unique.

One of the easiest ways to write an amazing protagonist

is to create an amazing supporting cast.

This isn't just because great supporting characters

will add color, drama, and nuance to a story in their own right.

It's also because every supporting character in your story has the ability to bring out new

dimensions and complexities within your exploration of your protagonist.

The primary way this is done is simply through the relationship dynamics between your protagonist and other characters.

Mary Carolyn Davies famous wedding poem suggests,

I love you not only for what you are but for what I am when I am with you.

Arguability of the notion's simplicity aside this does offer a perspective on how a person

tends to be at least slightly different in every different relationship.

Different people bring out different facets of our personalities.

And this should hold you for our protagonists as well. I was pondering this recently after

experiencing a random memory of the Andy Griffith show. My family watched this classic sitcom over and over and over again

when I was young, so I kind of tend to see the world through a Mayberry tinted haze. Anyway, not to digress, but my random musing was about how hapless deputy Barney Fife's

every relationship in this show served to bring out a different dynamic within his personality,

always to comedic effect.

His relatively stable friendship with his boss Andy

showed him as a mostly respectful subordinate. But whenever he'd deputize the even

more hapless gomer, he'd turn into a mini tyrant. More conscious characters like Andy

...