Do you write loyal, trusted, helpful friends or cheating, conniving, dastardly two-faced friends? Choose wisely and your protagonist succeeds or bleeds accordingly.
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” Aristotle.
Oh, the lucky person who finds such a confidant in real life. In fiction, friendships create a backdrop for perfect and imperfect relationships outside of the main character struggling against the antagonist. How your protagonist reacts and supports their friends provides insight to your readers, so when I write, I develop BFF’s with intent.
I’ve published the first three books in a romantic suspense series, Love Thrives in Emma Springs. In The Hitman’s Mistake my heroine, Miranda, relies on her best friend, Corrin, in order to vanish. The second book, Torn by Vengeance, is Corrin’s story and the two friends work together to thwart her stalker. A third female friend is introduced in Vengeance, and voila, the main character in the next story, The Targeted Pawn, gained an audience.
The male heroes in my books remain front and center, but creating engaging female secondary characters pays off. After reading Hitman, my dental hygienist insisted she needed to read Corrin’s story. Oops. I shelved the two other books I’d written for the series, slapped my forehead, and honored her request. In another series I’ve started, Book 1 features the popular friends-to-lovers troupe. Shared childhood memories create a window into their adult emotions.
Common interests, past history, and awkward encounters invite logical ties. I’m personally not a fan of backstabbing woman in fiction, so I carefully balance personality conflicts and disagreements between friends while maintaining underlying love and support for one another. I prefer to portray my villains as trusting the wrong friend and paying the consequences. An excerpt from Torn by Vengeance highlighting the power of friendship is below. Happy trails, Sally
The airplane swooped down from the angry sky, bounced twice on the runway, and taxied to the terminal.
A wave of jitters hit. Miranda would be shocked to see her in Montana. The last time they’d talked, they’d planned to meet in Seattle, prior to her testimony.
“Spontaneous and Corrin Patten never grace the same sentence,” her BFF frequently joked. Well, today she’d refute Miranda’s statement. She shoved legal files into her bag on the floor and checked outside. Beyond the tarmac-and-boondocks version of an airport, Montana stretched in a wide expanse of snow-dusted, midday tranquility. Cows stood in a field off to one side, ignoring the buzz of the planes.
All those years ago, buzzing, waspish tongues in Ebony Cove hadn’t affected her either, until she’d lost her childlike naiveté on that horrible afternoon.
Suppressed images of those falsely smiling lips whispering insults dotted her memory again like the cow pies dotting the nearby pasture. Queasiness rolled through her stomach. She wasn’t the ragtag kid anymore, wondering if she’d scrape together dinner for her siblings—wondering if the neighbor’s steers would trample her as she collected fallen, unwanted apples from the orchard where they grazed.
If her sister-of-the-soul, Miranda, hadn’t frantically called, she’d never have flown here to offer moral support and informal legal coaching.
The Hitman’s Mistake:
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DM795GP
Torn by Vengeance:
Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P1D33K1
The Targeted Pawn
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085F2Q85M
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Loved your post on friends added to a story.
Thank you. I’ve been out of touch for a bit, so sorry for the delayed response.