Hi, everyone! I'm super new to this forum, but I've been looking for a writing community for some time and it seems like fun! I'm a novice writer, but I'd like to get some advice on how to handle some things in a story I'm putting together. This is a pretty vague and quick plot summary, but here we go: it's about a pair of twins losing their family and getting sucked into a whole bunch of magic-based problems. One twin supports the other, who's pretty fragile and cowardly, as she pushes away her own feelings. The younger twin, not wanting to be a burden, gets tricked into taking on a magical religious-type duty so that she won't have to, but he doesn't realize what it entails until it's too late. His surviving mother refuses to associate with him any longer, and the older twin protects him again by disowning her own mother in favor of staying with her brother. The two also have a close friend, but this friend also refuses to interact with the brother after what happens... And here lies my issue. The friend's a nice guy, and used to be close friends with the twins, but is now terrified of the younger twin, since the previous person that took that job ended up killing his dad, so he tries to stay away from him at all costs. But, the younger twin is the POV character! Obviously, all he's going to see is the bad side of him. How do I make the friend not seem like a complete jerk with no redeeming qualities? I feel like just having other characters say "oh, he's the best!" kind of violates the 'show, don't tell" rule, and would just feel forced. Also, do you think the fear is enough of a motivation for his actions? Maybe it would be for a child, but as the characters get older, I feel like he'd be more or less expected to get over that. Could it be guilt from treating his friend so wrongly, and not wanting to have to bring the conflict up again by trying to resolve it? He does dislike conflict, but I also feel like the sister would try to force him to, given the next bit: The sister and the friend stay buddies even if he doesn't like her brother, and eventually get together romantically, and I feel like I can't find any way this makes sense. Why would she stay friends with him for hating her brother when she disowned her mom for doing the same thing? What does she see in him? Even if her brother tried to convince her it wasn't a big deal, which is in character for him, I still feel like she wouldn't go for it, since family is so important to her. Does anyone have any ideas how I can make both their friendship and their eventual relationship seem more natural? Their relationship sorta struggles over the years, and much later on the story, she ends up pregnant, and he runs away out of fears of commitment... He just kind of feels like an almost straw-man level jerk. I'm not sure how to rationalize their relationship and his make his motivations seem more realistic (he is antagonistic, but I want it to seem possible that the sister would be close to him in the first place, to make it a betrayal instead of something that has the readers smacking their foreheads over how she could not see that coming). So, TL;DR: I have a character who doesn't like the POV character, but likes his sister. The sister stays friends with him for reasons I can't seem to figure out even though he's scared of her twin brother. Then the character ends up dumping her and I can't seem to get it to feel like it's not an extremely obvious story beat. That's about it! Gosh, this is a long post... Any advice on how to tweak the plot or add motivations would be very much appreciated! Thanks so much for your time!
I'm not clear on how he treated him "wrongly". Is the fear of the younger twin completely and totally unjustified? Utterly groundless?
The friend is scared of the younger twin because of what happened to the last person who held the position (he lost his mind due to being unable to handle the power of the magic, and proceeded to kill several people as a result of that -- one of which was the friend's father), since he assumes the younger twin will end up the same way. However, the younger twin doesn't really show any signs of that happening. Does that seem like a good enough reason for fear on the friend's part? I'm honestly not sure.
The POV character could walk in on him being nice to someone, the other twin, or at a party/gathering she sees him and he's acting friendly to everyone else
Okay! That's good -- thanks for your input! That's a good idea! I might also try some split perspective chapters to drive it home, too, if I can find a way to include them without making it seem jarring. Thanks!
