FUNDAMENTALS OF CHARACTER CREATION: THE TWO-BODY PROBLEM
Please find Part I of our character relationship system series here.
When a protagonist character system has a single meaningful relationship, I call this the Two-Body Problem.
For me, a Two-Body system is the absolute minimum if you want your protagonist character to reach the reader. Without at least one solid relationship, your protagonist will never really land, will never transcend the page-reality barrier, will never escape the event horizon that is the Zero-Body Problem.
But remember: for a protagonist character to have a relationship with another person they must of course have a relationship with themselves. If you’re writing a protagonist character who does not reflect, have a past, express doubt, chances are even if you pull together a solid relationship for said protagonist you’ll be edging towards the Zero-Body Problem. (This is something that I did not stress enough in the earlier essay — if your protagonist character isn’t a real character, no matter how strong the relationships are, you’re going to suffer the Zero Body Problem.)
Yes, Two-Body Character systems will do the work but they are not, in my opinion, ideal. As in physics, Two-Body Character Systems are too predictable to fully capture human complexity. As anyone who has ever been on a date knows, seeing how a person is with you is not the same as seeing how the person is with you and with another person in their life. We ourselves know that who we are with our families or our friends, in isolation, does not provide the same depth of (character) field as who are with our friends and our families, in aggregate. In the gaps, overlaps, and disconnects, much is revealed.
Two-Body Character Systems work best for