F is for Friendships in Middle Grade Novels

Between the ages of 9 and 14, kids are starting to explore relationships with people outside their families. They're thinking about how to be a good friend, who is not a real friend, and which friends they want to hang with. Someone might be your best friend for one day, and then not the next.  

How can you use friends to develop your middle grade story?

Create conflict. Tension between friends increases conflict. For example, in Leslie Margolis’ novel, Girl's Best Friend, dog-walker Maggie Brooklyn gets stuck working with her ex-best friend to solve a mystery. Talk about conflict! Other ways to create tension? Being too busy for friends, wanting friends when you don't have them, jealousy of a good friend...there are so many. Brainstorm for your own unique friend-related conflict.

Sidekick or support. Friends don’t always mean conflict. They can help solve a mystery or provide support on an adventure (think about Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books). Supporting friends make the main character seem more well-rounded, emotional or empathetic. They can also add humor or depth as part of a subplot. What if the sidekick always messes up? Or bails out the main character?

Provide information. A friend's different point of view can be a way for the author to add things that can't be shown through the main character. Conversations between a character and a good friend are one way to add in some backstory without creating an info dump. Something a friend has noticed might be an important clue. Just be sure not to rely on the friend too much or too often; the main character should take centre stage.

More tips on using friends in your story:

Beware of cliches. In books where the main character is a boy, one of the good friends is often a girl, to the point where it’s almost becoming a formula. I think this is much less common in real life than in the world of books, because authors want the book to appeal to girls as well as boys. Watch out for stereotypes like the Hermione effect (smart girl sidekick).  

Friends aren’t always people. Middle graders have strong feelings for pets, other living creatures and even inanimate objects, so you can be create in the friendships you choose to include in your novel. For example, Bobbie Pyron’s A Dog’s Way Home focuses on the relationship between a girl and her dog. In Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve, the main character has a unique relationship with a plant.

Friends change with the situation. In real life, kid’s friendships may be related to the activities they do. They may have one group of friends at school, but a different group of friends on their soccer team or at dance class.

Be realistic. According to at least one reader I talked to, it’s annoying when a character in a book has only one friend. In real life, kids interact with many different peers in different ways. Capturing the flavour of that complexity in your story, even in a simple way, might add to the story believability.

Do you have any tips or suggestions for using friendships to strengthen a story? Have you read any good books where a friendship was essential to the story?

Links

*As usual, if you have any links to other posts or resources on this subject, I'd be happy to add them to the list for our reference.

At Plot to Punctuation, there’s a great post on using a sidekick character in your writing. 

For more material and insights on friendships between girls, a blog by psychologist Irene Levine, author of Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend, explores friendships between women of all ages, including teens and preteens. A couple of nteresting articles:

Preteen worries: My family, my friends and me

Friendship by the book: An interview with Alexa Young, author of Frenemies

At Fuel Your Writing, freelancer Kolina gives some tips on how to use your own friends to improve your novels.