One of the toughest things to write is a good group of friends.
The friends either come out flat, or they take over the story and leave the main character in the dust.
How do you write a friend group in your story? And how do you show their friendship, without sounding cliche?
My current WIP has a group of friends as the main characters, so I’ve done a lot of research on this. Here are some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way.
1. Write a Smaller Friend Group
The main reason why most fictional friends are worthless is because the author writes too many of them.
There’s just too many characters in the story.
Your novel doesn’t need four friends, or five friends, or more. You don’t need to give your character tons of friends.
Even if all the characters are well-developed, if you start by saying “I want there to be a group of five friends,” your characters will be based on that number.
That means you’ll need to work harder to make each of them important to the story.
So how do you choose the right amount of friends to put in your story?
- Start with the lowest number, one.
- Ask, “Can I put all of the friend group’s action on one character?”
For example, you want to write about a funny friend who’s the comic relief, a smart friend who helps solve the mystery, and a sweet friend who gives everyone emotional support.
Can you combine them all into one person? Maybe the smart friend memorizes jokes to tell the hero, while trying to lift their spirits.
- If you can condense the friend group into one person, great! One friend is much easier to write about than six friends.
- If not, try putting it into two people. Then three.
- The smaller the number, the better. You should almost always try to stick with four friends or less.
Let’s talk about roles next, since that’s a big part of friendship dynamics.
2. Choose the Right Roles
A friendship between multiple people feels very different than a friendship with just one person.
In every friend group I’ve witnessed, different people take on different roles.
For starters, you have the classic Mom Friend, Dad Friend, and the Baby of the group.
You can also add on the Wine Aunt Friend and the Grandpa Friend.
These terms don’t have any sort of scientific meaning. You don’t have to write a friend group where everyone acts like a family.
However, it’s important to think about how your characters interact with each other.
- Mom Friends try to take care of their friends. They are usually more of a perfectionist, and they feel responsible for the group. You can find them cooking, cleaning, or trying to give other friends therapy. They can sometimes be nosy or bossy, but claim they aren’t.
- Dad Friends are really just there for the ride. They don’t know what’s going on half the time, but they’re (usually) happy to be there. They give advice that no one asked for, and they know a lot of bad puns.
- The Group Babies are the ones who are innocent, funny, and charismatic. Everyone wants to protect them, and they enjoy the attention. You can find them in the spotlight of any group. They are also the first ones to start whining when something isn’t going their way.
- Wine Aunt Friends know when something is a bad idea, but they say, “Let’s do it anyway.” They give lots of relationship advice (despite never talking to anyone but their cats) and speak fluent sarcasm. They’re also the first one to cancel plans.
- Grandpa Friends are the more extreme version of dad friends, but they wear lots of sweaters and say things like, “Back when I was your age…” to someone who’s three months younger than them. They could be described as an old soul.
Again, not every character will fit one of these roles. This is just to give you some ideas for your fictional friend group.
Once you have some “family” roles for your characters, establish the PAC roles.
3. Map Out PAC Roles
PAC stands for Parent, Adult, Child.
Credit for the PAC roles goes to James Scott Bell, in his book, “Revising and Self-Editing for Publication.” (Go check out this book, it’s one of my favorite writing books of all time!)
These roles are flexible from one scene to the next, and each character should change positions at least twice.
Basically, the family roles like “Dad friend” and “Grandpa friend” are how your characters act during the whole story. PAC roles are how they act in each chapter or scene.
- Parent= this person wants to take control. They have a plan, they want to tell the other friend what to do, and they believe they know what’s best.
- Adult= this person thinks rationally, but they’d prefer to be left out of it. They don’t want to argue, they just want to do whatever it is they’re doing.
- Child= this person is acting foolish or immature, and wants to get their way.
In every scene, you’ll have a different dynamic, based on the PAC roles.
For example, child vs. child would be a very loud and immature argument. Parent vs. adult is an argument between two people who are mature, but one is bossy and one is indifferent.
How do your characters act around their friends? Do they act like a child around some people, and an adult around others?
4. What Keeps Them Together?
Most friend groups need some sort of “glue” to hold them together.
Sometimes, this might be a mutual friend. (These friend groups are not as strong, because they dissolve without that mutual friend.)
Other times, they could bond over shared interests (like sports), or shared experiences (they have the same classes at school).
What holds these friends together?
The strongest friend “glue” is the shared interests, especially if those interests are outside of school.
Also, plan out some reasons why the friend group would split up.
- Maybe two of the friends split off, and the rest of the group fades away?
- Maybe they get in a big falling out and never speak to each other again?
- Maybe they all move to different states and fade apart over time?
Yes, it’s sad to think about. But if you know how this friend group might end, that gives you insight on the characters, and how they operate within the group.
5. Give Them History (And Don’t Infodump)
One of the best parts about writing a friend group is making up their history.
How did they meet? What do they do for birthdays? What happened the last time they had a food fight?
In another post, I shared a giant list of writing prompts about siblings. You can also use many of these prompts for the friend group.
You can also find some ideas for friendship writing prompts on this website:
https://www.build-creative-writing-ideas.com/free-creative-writing-prompts-5.html
And this Tumblr post:
Once you have a few ideas, now you can start to weave in references and memories.
To write a memory, you have a few tools to choose from:
- Flashbacks
- Remembering memories
- Reference in an argument
- Explain to a new character
Writing flashbacks is a tricky thing, but this article has some good tips and tricks for doing it correctly: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/incorporate-flashbacks-into-a-story/
When your character remembers a memory, keep it brief. You can even keep it less than one sentence.
For example, “Creeping out in the dark reminded me of that time we snuck out and TP’ed Kevin’s house for literally no reason.”
Or, “Ever since that time Summer taught me to ice skate and I almost drowned, I refused to put any kind of skates on my feet. Roller skates included.”
See how we didn’t need a whole flashback scene?
This is also a good way to leave something for your reader’s imagination, and moving forward with the story. We didn’t have to stop and explain these memories.
- You can also have two characters argue about a past memory, or have one character explain it to a brand new character (who might not even care).
Point is, your friend group has a history, with a ton of memories that they will build together. Make sure to reference a memory every other chapter or so.
The more memories you mention, the deeper the friendship will feel.
In Conclusion
To write about a group of friends, just create a few individual, unique characters.
Then orchestrate how they interact with each other, and their roles in the friend group.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time with a new post!
As someone who loves ensemble casts and found families (and is writing about one in her current WIP), this is great!
Thanks for the comment! Glad it was helpful 🙂