The Green Ember: How to Use Similarities to Make Your Relationships Stronger

In today’s stories, authors seem intent on including unique characters. Especially when writing relationships, story-tellers everywhere seem to be afraid of repeating even one simple character trait or core desire. Everyone has to be polar opposites from each other. And, it’s fairly easy to understand where this fear is coming from. 

As writers, we need to make sure our readers are engaged, that they feel seen, and that the characters (and their various relationships) feel genuine. If every single person in your story had the same motives, personality, or appearance, it would understandably bore our readers. However, it’s possible to go far off the other end of the spectrum as well and make every character drastically different from each other. 

So how can we strike a balance between the two? What are the strengths of having similarities between our characters? And how can we tell which similarities will help make our cast more cohesive and believable, and which ones will make them seem like identical cut-outs?

Here to answer these questions is the high fantasy series The Green Ember.

The Green Ember

This book series follows the story of personified rabbits that are living under the tyrannical rule of the prey lords but planning a rebellion from their refuge in Cloud Mountain. The protagonist, a rabbit named Heather, decides to help the resistance by training to become a nurse. While she lives at Cloud Mountain, she befriends another nurse named Emma. Emma is a kind, occasionally witty doe who was orphaned during the war. She serves the resistance as a loving ally and an even better healer. 

Together, the two friends help heal many sick and injured rabbits. Even as both characters go through many changes throughout the story, they remain as friends and allies while still being unique. Even as they are betrayed, beaten, and kidnapped throughout the four main books in this series, they remain to be different people with common interests and skills. 

Heather And Emma

Heather and Emma are unique from each other, but also have common interests: Nursing and helping the cause. One is an outward aspect, and the other is a deeper, inward one. You can give your characters any number of similarities, but I’ve broken them down into these two main groups below: 

Outward Similarities 

Although Emma is considerably better at healing people since she has been in the practice for longer, both characters are talented and make many medical advancements throughout their story. However, despite sharing and bonding over this skill, nursing means something different in each of their lives. 

Emma wishes to remain as a simple nurse, but when a new position of authority is thrust upon her, her desires have to be put aside for the good of others. She wants to help by healing, but is forced to help in a different way than she’s comfortable with. Meanwhile, for Heather, nursing is just one more thing on her list of talents she uses to fight the evil prey lords. In the beginning, she constantly wishes she could do more for the cause than simply heal the injured and she engages in every revolutionary activity she can. However, despite their different motivations for being a nurse, this common ground gives them the opportunity to meet and become friends.

Outward similarities are things like hobbies, jobs, or even shared acquaintances. They can even be the external goal that your character is trying to accomplish. These characteristics are defined by the fact that they don’t affect your characters’ core desire or fear. Although giving your characters these outward similarities isn’t always necessary, it’s perfectly fine to write a story without them, they can certainly be helpful in giving your characters an opportunity to meet and bond over time. Not only does nursing give Emma and Heather the chance to meet, but it also ties them together and makes their friendship stronger than it would have been without. Even though they have different reasons for being a nurse, they were able to form a bond over that experience. 

Look around at your own life. Most of your close friends probably share something in common with you, whether it be a goal, a profession, or a hobby. Giving your cast of characters a few outward things in common will not only make their bond stronger, but it will also add an extra layer of realism. No one will question their relationship if it stems from a shared experience. Because Emma and Heather are both nurses, they are able to maintain their relationship and come across as realistic to the audience. 

Inward Similarities

Although outward similarities aren’t always necessary to your story, inward similarities definitely are. Inward similarities often give two characters the same core desire or fear. It provides a personal reason for them to each be in the story. Emma and Heather share an outward similarity (nursing), but they also have an inward one: to help the revolution and defeat the evil prey lords that plague their land.

Imagine a scenario where a group of individuals is tasked to go on a quest. Often no two characters will look alike, they each have a unique talent, and they’re all complete strangers. However, they are given a common desire. An inward motivation. Would that be enough to unite them? Would their shared journey be enough to make them tolerate each other, if not create a lasting bond in their lives? 

The answer is yes. Even just this one inward similarity is enough to spark a lasting friendship, as seen between Gimli and Legolas as they strive to defeat the evil Sauron in Lord of The Rings or Luke and Han Solo in Star Wars as they challenge Darth Vader. Even in a romance such as Tangled, where Rapunzel and Eugene have zero outward similarities, they form a bond over their shared insecurities and desire to prove themselves. All of these characters would have never interacted on their own, yet since the writer gave them some common ground, they were able to form a relationship.

It’s easy to get into the mindset that each character has to be completely different, or else they’ll seem repetitive or like cookie-cutter-cutouts. However, it’s best to give them plenty of similarities, both outward and inward. Not only will this make your story more realistic, but it will also give them some solid, common ground to build a relationship off of and a reason for going on their journey together. It’s those relationships that form the very heart of many of these stories, and it’s their strength (rooted in their similarities) that will carry your story to the end.

Let us know:

What similarities have you noticed strengthen character relationships? What similarities do your characters share?