Send Your Characters to Therapy
Bailey offers a little writing advice for those stuck on character dynamics.
One of the strangest parts of writing fiction is that your characters can feel vivid and alive in your head, but then something about the way they interact on the page still feels off. You know their goals. You know their backstories. You’ve probably written paragraphs (perhaps even pages) about their motivations. And still there’s that little narrative itch you can’t scratch.
A writer in the Bi+ Book Gang recently asked a version of this question: How do you figure out character dynamics when you have several important characters, including some who are mostly off-stage but whose presence still shapes the story?
They had already done the sensible things. They had looked at each character individually and identified their starting goals. That’s good craft. But sometimes the problem isn’t what a character wants alone. Sometimes the problem is how those wants collide with the rest of the narrative, themselves, and the cast.
This is where my favorite exercise comes in.
Send them to therapy together.
Yes, I’m serious.
The “Character Therapy Session” Exercise
Take two or more characters who are creating tension in your story and imagine them sitting in a room together. Maybe it’s a literal therapy office. Maybe it’s a neutral space. The important part is that they’re there to talk about their feelings. If you want to pretend you’re the therapist, that’s cool but not essential.
Now make them use “I feel” statements about how they experience the other person.
For example:
“I feel like you never trusted me to make my own choices.”
“I feel abandoned every time you disappear without explaining why.”
“I feel like I’m constantly competing with someone who isn’t even here anymore.”
This exercise does a few things for us.
First, it forces you to articulate the emotional stakes between characters in plain language. Writers often know these dynamics intuitively but haven’t yet translated them into something concrete for the reader. Therapy-style dialogue makes those feelings explicit.
Second, it reveals misalignment.
One character might say: “I was trying to protect you.”
The other responds: “It didn’t feel like protection. It felt like control.”
That gap between intention and impact is often the real engine of a story. Beep-beep, baby.
Why This Works
Most stories are built on emotional misunderstandings and incompatible needs and/or desires. But when we’re drafting, we sometimes focus more on plot mechanics than emotional mechanics.
A character therapy session forces you to step back and ask:
What does each character think the relationship is?
What do they believe the other person owes them?
What are they afraid to say out loud?
Why are they afraid to say it?
Once those things are on the table, the dynamics start to solidify. You might realize that two characters aren’t actually in conflict about the thing you thought they were. Instead, they’re fighting about something deeper like loyalty or autonomy.
Or you might discover that one character is reacting to a wound the other character doesn’t even know exists. And that? That’s good material.
Bringing Off-Stage Characters Into the Room
This exercise becomes especially useful when dealing with characters who are mostly off-stage but still shape the story.
Sometimes a character who isn’t present is actually the gravitational center of the narrative. Everyone else is reacting to them, remembering them, or trying to live up to (or escape from) their influence (e.g., Steven Universe). In a therapy exercise, you can still give that off-stage character a voice.
Maybe someone says: “I feel like you’re still living your life according to what your mother would have wanted.”
Or: “I feel like I’m competing with a ghost.”
Suddenly the off-stage character becomes visible. Not through exposition, but through the emotional impact they have on the people still in the room. That’s usually more powerful anyway.
Ask the Therapist Questions
Another trick: let the therapist speak. You don’t have to turn this into a full scripted scene. Sometimes the most helpful part is having a neutral voice ask uncomfortable questions.
For example:
“What do you need from them that you’re not getting?”
“When did you first start feeling this way?”
“What are you afraid will happen if you say that out loud?”
Your characters’ answers can reveal the emotional structure of the story. You might discover that a relationship you thought was antagonistic is actually built on grief. Or that a rivalry is really about wanting recognition from someone who refuses to give it.
You Don’t Have to Use the Dialogue
The important thing about this exercise is that none of it has to appear in the final manuscript. In fact, it probably shouldn’t.
Think of it as diagnostic work. You’re clarifying the emotional architecture behind the scenes so that the actual scenes feel more coherent.
Once you know what each character feels, you can decide how much of that shows up directly and how much is expressed through action, subtext, or silence.
But if you ever feel like a dynamic isn’t landing, chances are the emotional logic between characters hasn’t been fully articulated yet.
Remember, kids: Therapy helps.
Exercise Variants
If you want to play with this idea, here are a few ways to expand it:
Write multiple sessions. Let the characters meet more than once. People rarely resolve things in a single conversation.
Switch who is present. Maybe Character A talks to the therapist alone first. Then Character B joins. The contrast can be revealing.
Let them lie. Characters don’t have to be emotionally honest. It’s often interesting when they say one thing but clearly mean another.
Add the off-stage character later. If someone’s influence is haunting the narrative, imagine what would happen if they suddenly walked into the room.
When Something Still Feels “Off”
Writers often notice emotional problems in their stories before they can explain them.
That uneasy feeling that something isn’t sitting right is usually your intuition telling you that the character dynamics aren’t fully aligned yet. Instead of trying to force the plot forward, pause and look at the relationships.
What does each character think the other person owes them?
What do they want that they can’t quite ask for?
What are they afraid of losing?
Put them in a room. Let them talk. And if necessary, let the therapist say the thing everyone else is avoiding. Sometimes the fastest way out of a narrative corner is to make your characters explain their feelings to each other.
You might be surprised by what they reveal.
What do you think? Are you sending your characters to therapy?
Happy writing,
Bailey