: Re: How do you write boy & girl protagonists without turning them into a love story? I've played with the idea of a multi-book fantasy story for years, where a female and male protagonists' lives

@Kristi637

Vote Up Vote Down

Close male-female relationships that aren't romantic are challenging even in real life, let alone fiction, but they do exist. Assuming the pair isn't related, neither of them is gay or otherwise attached, and they're relatively the same age, your readers will begin to long to see them together, just like their friends in real life would be likely to do. One way of dealing with it would be to have them take a stab at romance early, and have it not work out for some reason. That's often how close platonic heterosocial relationships actually form. A beloved subplot from Star Trek: The Next Generation was Captain Picard's close relationship with chief medical officer Dr. Crusher. The backstory was that Picard had once been in love with her, but had suppressed those feelings out of his loyalty to Crusher's (now deceased) husband.

Another realistic possibility is for one person to be interested in the other, but the feelings not be requited. Along those lines, you can also develop outside romances (or romantic interests) for one or both characters. Allan Gurganus' Plays Well With Others is an interesting variation, in which the most important relationship of the book is between a gay man and his female best friend, but this reality is disguised/complicated by the fact that they both share an unrequited crush on a beautiful bisexual friend.

One final possibility, if you're primarily interested in their professional relationship, is that both of them are "married to their work" --that is, their relationship with each other relates primarily to their work together and only occasionally extends beyond that. It's quite common for people to have close friendships that only exist 9 to 5 (that is to say, in the context of the workplace). Remains of the Day features a close Platonic male-female friendship that exists between coworkers. However, there's a strong suggestion that there does exist suppressed sexual tension between them, and that their rejection of romance is a significant missed opportunity.

(0)

Login to post a comment!