Map What Happens Between People
A relationship chart becomes useful when it records pressure, not just labels. “Friends,” “siblings,” and “rivals” name a connection but do not tell you what either person will do next. Add asymmetric wants, changing trust, and an unresolved event to create scenes.
The Relationship Card
Create one card for every important connection:
- Character A wants: what A hopes to receive, change, or protect.
- Character B wants: a goal that may align, conflict, or remain hidden.
- Public relationship: how outsiders describe them.
- Private truth: what only one or both understand.
- Trust: low, conditional, stable, or damaged—and why.
- Leverage: a promise, secret, debt, authority, need, or shared resource.
- Unresolved event: something neither has fully addressed.
- Next pressure: the decision that can bring them into a scene now.
Example: Former Partners
A wants: proof that leaving was the right decision. B wants: help with one final case. In public they are respectful former colleagues. In private, A believes B concealed the real reason their unit collapsed. Trust is damaged, but B still has the only key to A’s sealed records. Their next scene begins when both receive the same anonymous evidence.
Example: Protective Siblings
A wants: B to accept protection. B wants: to prove that protection has become control. Their family sees them as inseparable. Privately, B has already joined the expedition A forbade. Trust is stable but strained by unequal information. The next pressure arrives when A is assigned to inspect B’s team.
Use Directional Arrows
Relationships are rarely symmetrical. On a visual chart, write a verb on each arrow: trusts, envies, protects, suspects, depends on, avoids, owes, imitates. A may trust B while B merely needs A. That difference is often the engine of the scene.
Add a Change Track
Keep three short notes under every important connection:
- Before: the state at the beginning of the arc.
- Now: what the latest scene changed.
- Possible next state: two outcomes, not one predetermined destination.
This prevents the chart from becoming a static family tree. Update only after a meaningful choice, discovery, sacrifice, or boundary.
Blank Relationship Template
A → B: [active verb] because [evidence].
B → A: [different active verb] because [evidence].
Shared history: [one event that still matters].
Unequal knowledge: [what one knows or wrongly believes].
Pressure: [what makes the relationship difficult now].
Next scene: [a situation requiring both to choose].
Keep Space for Other Writers
When a relationship belongs to another player, agree on shared history and boundaries together. Do not write their feelings, secrets, or future choices for them. A good chart records the collaboration; it does not replace it.
