I’ve talked about this in the past. There are some facets of friendships that most writers just never delve into. When you’re with someone long enough, you know their habits. I don’t just mean you know their allergies. I mean they know that a day being social tires you out more than a day at work. They know that when you need to rest, it doesn’t mean they want to sleep, but to flop on the couch and eat pizza and make permanent ass impressions on the cushions. You get to know a person and you yourself develop habits you don’t realize, ones you only really exhibit when THAT friend is around.
Maybe when you call that friend, you listen to their hello, already knowing you’ll know what their day has been like by their tone. If it’s been a shitty one, you know it’s going to call for drinks and you know what kind of drinks. When you call your other friends, you don’t even bother listening to their hello. You know you won’t be able to read it the same.
Maybe when you split a cookie, you always take the bigger piece, not because you’re a sugary glutton. You take it because you know your friend guilts themselves way more than you do and you want to spare them by appearing the glutton.
Maybe you both get milkshakes and your friends milkshake sucks. You want to offer yours, but you know your friend will say no, so you pretend to like yours less or theirs more, just to make sure they end up as happy as you.
Maybe your friend is reading a book. They think a line is funny and snicker. You know they want you to ask about it so that they can share it. With other friends, you wouldn’t bother, not because you care less, but because you don’t know whether they get a kick out of reading aloud, if it’s too much pressure.
Maybe you’re stressed. Maybe your day has sucked. Maybe you’ve been slamming doors all the way home, the front door of your workplace, the car door, the front door of the house and when you hit the couch, you’re angry at the world. Then you feel that gentle hand grasp your shoulder once and there’s a “knowing” in that touch. They knew, without the slamming of doors, what huff you were coming in with. You find a comfort in knowing that they’re totally aware of your sucky day and that they know what mindset you’re in and you appreciate even more that they know you need space just as much as you still need them in the room.
Friends are big things, but what they do is all little things. Writers miss these when they’re creating deep friendships. They focus so much on the words, on the hugs between the girls, the beers between the guys and these little subtleties get lost in the middle.
This is why whenever I do see a friendship justified I have to preserve it.
I stopped in a Cleveland Park today. I sat on a bench and with a breeze just barely reminiscent of the nearby sea, I read from my Kindle. I listened to Shiny Toy Guns, Of Monsters and Men, Mumford and Sons and I read aloud. I know it makes me wacky. I know it doesn’t make it any less weird that I did my own voices or that I laughed aloud at hysterically lecherous lines. The only justification I have (and it is the only one my family would need) is that it was a Cal Leandros book and most of the lecherous lines were, of course, Robin.
There’s a moment I wanted to share though. It’s the one that inspired this post. This book (Slashback) has been 50/50 current day and flashbacks. In one particular flash to the past, an eleven year old Cal is rocking back and forth on his stool. Back and forth, back and forth, over and over again as he and his brother Niko are discussing homework and disagreeing on its importance. He continues to rock until eventually he rocks too far. Does he fall? No. Niko’s leg was already there to catch it and haul the chair legs back onto the floor. Cal has done this a million times. Niko has caught him a million times. It’s never discussed. It just goes on, a fact of their lives.
We all have these routines, with family and with friends, that we don’t even realize we follow. Habits we exhibit only for them, things we go out of our way to do to make them happy, sometimes at the expense of ours or even just the mere lessening. Writers should use this. It’s a tool that in a single scene like the one above, paints a picture of a relationship and its depth.
I have another example, though bear with me. It is slightly older. It is from Cassandra Clare’s book Clockwork Princess. It is also not entirely accurate, as I am changing it to make more sense out of context.
Jem receives a letter that is extremely distressing. He stares at it, angry, pained, and all at once, he doesn’t want another moment with it. He throws it into the nearby fire. Will, his friend and might-as-well-be brother, knows how important that letter will be to Jem later. He knows that Jem will hate himself for burning it, for losing it. Will knows this and so he does what he does without thought. He buries both his hands in the fire to get the letter back. Afterwards, hands well-bandaged and the good drugs administered, Will apologizes for causing such a ruckus. Jem says it should be him who should apologize, for he knew Will and should have known that throwing the letter would have but one outcome.
In the past year, as I have reread Robin Thurman’s books, I have endeavored to use more of these types of details. I think they add power, even if most of them slide under readers radars. The people that do notice them, who do what I did and thumb back the page to absorb the paragraph a second time, those are the people who going to go “wow, that’s how to put the depth of a bond on paper.” Others might look at that and say, “it’s a hell of a lucky person who actually has that, that kind of person in their lives.”
I’m lucky. Not only do I read of these moments and write of these moments. I live of these moments with my mom.
