Almost three years ago, Sophia wrote an article on showing a character’s internal conflict without having them burst into song. While some of our most powerful forms of storytelling include heart-felt declarations through intense choruses, the reality is that we as writers don’t have that ability, and even if we did, most of our characters are not musical leads. The majority of characters are simply much more reserved.
But that doesn’t mean their relationships are any less important to those characters.
So how can we communicate that to our readers? How do we show how deeply they care about each other, even if they don’t use a single word to communicate that out loud?
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse shows us just that kind of relationship.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse
Miles Morales was your average Brooklyn teenager until he was bitten by a radioactive spider and thrust into a world of superheroes, villains, and a conflict over the fate of the space-time continuum. The villain King Pin has set up a supercollider that can access multiple dimensions, but it’s highly unpredictable. Every time he powers it on, he risks turning New York into a black hole, or bringing spider-people from multiple dimensions into this one — which is exactly what happens.
One of those people is Gwen Stacy, who has been her universe’s version of Spider-Man for two years. Miles meets her and is immediately impressed. She manages to handle everything thrown at her with a calm confidence that he distinctly lacks, and she’s everything he wants to be one day. The only problem is that she doesn’t do “friends” anymore. Last time she tried, her best friend Peter Parker was killed, and now she considers them distractions that can only get her hurt. Unlike Miles, she has a focused mission and she refuses to be deterred.
As she, Miles, and the other spider-people battle King Pin in an attempt to save their universes, it’s clear that she and Miles grow closer, despite her insistence that she’s done with friends for good. By the end of the movie, when she’s headed home to her own universe, where she won’t be able to see him again, he tentatively extends his arm, asking if they could be friends.
She smiles, grasps his hand, and nods. “Friends.”
How To Show Your Characters’ Bond
There is a lot of development that happens between these characters in just the two days that they spend together. And Gwen Stacy is far from being an open book. For most of the movie, she hides her real thoughts and feelings behind an invulnerable facade, and aside from a few moments of genuine emotion, she seems largely impenetrable. Yet despite it all, the writers managed to show just how much Miles meant to her and vice versa, so that by the end of the movie it made perfect sense for her to call him her friend.
There are three main ways the writers did this, which you can use for any relationship with more closed-off or quiet characters.
1. Use Actions
For characters who are sparse with words, one of the best tools you have in your toolbox is their actions. It’s through their choices that they reveal their true thoughts and intentions. No matter what your characters say, their decisions will always speak louder than their words. So use that to your advantage.
When Gwen knows Miles is on the edge of a hard conversation, she lingers when she doesn’t have to to hear how it goes afterwards. Despite not saying anything, that choice shows just how much she cares about Miles and his journey. Later in the movie, when she nearly falls into the supercollider, Miles risks everything to leap after her and pull her out of it just in time. Their deep care for each other is shown in their intentional actions, even though in both cases not a word was spoken. Your character’s actions are incredibly revealing of who they are, and so by setting them up intentionally, you can reveal much more about them than a conversation would have. And you can do it regardless of how open they typically are.
2. Use Jokes
For avoidant characters like Gwen, jokes are another tool to show their true intentions. Jokes can often be played off as lighthearted and lacking real depth, but for more closed-off characters, they often also reveal the character’s perspective, especially if the joke is recurring.
When Gwen and Miles first meet, he’s late to class and cracks a joke about time being relative.
“Maybe I’m not late,” he quips. “Maybe you guys are just early?”
Only Gwen breaks the tension by laughing. It’s that first spark of connection that starts their friendship. And Miles brings it up again at the end of the movie, when she finally acknowledges he might have been flirting with her.
“You know I’m too old for you, right?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Time is relative,” he reminds her.
Even though both of these lines are played off as jokes, they show how intentional both of these characters have been with their words, and how much thought they’ve been putting into their relationship.
3. Use Words
When all else fails, use words to show how much your characters mean to each other. While this might seem like a cop-out, since characters of few words don’t communicate much to begin with, it actually is an important strength that is crucial to acknowledge for more withdrawn characters. Because they use fewer words, the words they do choose are far more powerful than they would be otherwise. Your talkative over-sharer might seem to paint a fuller picture of themselves by using a larger word count, but in reality quieter characters say a lot about themselves with the words they choose, or the ones they don’t.
Gwen doesn’t share much. She doesn’t open up almost at all, so when she grasps Miles’s hand and smiles, “Friends,” at the end of the movie, we understand how much that means. Other characters would have to go to much greater lengths to express their feelings for each other, but because we understand Gwen’s comments in the context of her full character, her words are much more meaningful.
If you’re planning to write a relationship between two characters who aren’t often emotional and keep most of their thoughts to themselves, don’t be intimidated by how guarded they are. Instead, use that quality to your advantage by setting up intentional choices, jokes, and dialogue that shows their true feelings. It is those elements that reveal their true character in the end, and you can ultimately leverage them to be much more powerful in characters who, on their surface, seem much more open.
Let us know:
What other relationships have you seen between more closed-off characters? How did the writers show their bond?
Hi! My name is Mara, and I’m a Christian artist, violinist, and blogger. I remember the day that I decided that I would learn something new about what makes a good story from every book I picked up — whether it was good, bad, or a mixture of both. I use this blog as a way of sharing some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned, and highlight which books, cartoons, and movies have taught me the most about writing an awesome story.