3 Tips for Writing a Friendship Breakup
We often think of broken hearts and breakups as solidly romance genre topics, but the end of close platonic friendships can be just as tragic or explosive. Jealousy, betrayal, neglect, misunderstanding, or simply diverging interests can create distance in even the closest relationships, romantic or not, at any age.
(How to Write Inner Conflict in Fiction.)
Whether you’re writing about a slow, tapering off of a friendship or an earth-shattering throwdown, here are a few tips in setting up your breakup.
1. Establish a believable friendship.
Readers won’t care about friends breaking up if they don’t know why they were friends in the first place. This means showing the strength of the bond that once existed between them, even if you start your story when they’re already on the outs.
In my novel We’re Never Getting Home, the book begins with main character Jana already upset at her supposed best friend Maddy and determined to avoid her at the outdoor music festival they had planned on going to together. To establish a believable friendship between Jana and Maddy without bogging down the first few chapters of the story with history, I wove in short flashbacks, shared playlists, and even a school disciplinary writeup between chapters.
Starting your story in the middle of the friendship breakup requires some strategy to ensure readers have just enough information to get invested while retaining just enough momentum to keep reading. Come up with two or three pivotal moments in your characters’ relationships when their bond is the strongest and affirmatively write out why these moments would be so important to them. You don’t have to include all of these moments or your reasonings in your story, but creating this shared history will help you solidify what your characters mean to each other.
Check out Tracy Badua’s We’re Never Getting Home here:
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2. Craft your dialogue carefully.
Friends at odds speak differently to each other than friends at ease. They may keep things uncharacteristically surface-level and omit certain facts or opinions that might rile the other friend. They may outright lie to avoid revealing something that may rock an already shaky boat.
Like with establishing the friendship, something isn’t unusual unless you show us the usual first: You may have characters that are always cagey or quiet, no matter who they’re with. A departure from whatever that character’s norm is makes a scene all the more hard-hitting—think Jennifer Coolidge’s shy Legally Blonde character Paulette telling off her pet-thieving ex-boyfriend, “I’m taking the dog, dumbass!” So ensure that each of the conversations between the friends not only matches their personality but also how they’d realistically treat each other at that particular stage in your story.
Is one person in the relationship more dominant? Would they speak more in an emotional scene, or would the quieter friend finally have the courage to pipe up? Pair dialogue with action and internality to help readers hear what the characters aren’t saying.
3. Mine all the emotions.
Breaking up with a close friend is as complex as splitting with a romantic partner (and think of all those movies and TV shows dedicated to dramatizing that). When parting ways, people often don’t feel just one thing: There could be anger, but also wanting. They could grieve over the relationship but also be relieved. And, of course, each side of the fractured friendship may have a different take on what’s happening.
The movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a great reminder of all the layers that come with the end of a relationship. Walking through Joel’s memories of his ex-girlfriend Clementine, we see a wild mix of pain and longing as their once joyful relationship crumbles.
In your own story, be realistic about how your characters would react to the end of a meaningful relationship and explore the wide range of emotions that come with it.
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