forum How do you characters actually meet each other?

Started January 23, 2022 by @Jolyn

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This is something I've been lowkey struggling with for a hot minute. I have some ideas here and there but I'm still not sure so I wanna know what your guys ideas are or even how your characters meet each other!

My characters meet each other when one pretends to be a prince to kidnap the other
Then, she meets other kids that have also been "kidnapped"

my characters meet in small portions (there's 7 total in the main party). The characters are grouped in 2-2-3, and the first groups of 2 meet each other while committing the same crime of questionable legality. The 3 group has one character that has a history with one of the 2 groups, and that's how they're introduced.

So pretty much each character starts in a pair and either already has a history with another or they meet under circumstances that make them close fast (in this case, a high-stakes action scene).

My characters meet as the story progresses so that I can give each character or a couple of them time to develop
A few of their development are in line with other characters so it also makes it easier!

Naomi and CJ served together; specifically, he was a corpsman attached to her unit.

Brandee got paired up with Naomi, who had since been honorably discharged for raging PTSD, to do some supernatural troubleshooting.

Kieron was doing event security at a museum gala where Naomi and Brandee were investigating, when all hell broke loose. He saw Naomi seemingly cornered by a demon, tried to rescue her, and ended up being the one needing rescuing himself.

CJ, whose enlistment was up and who was now a licensed paramedic, had been approached by the same people for whom Naomi and Brandee were working while doing Clipboard gigs, and gotten pulled into the whole business as a result. He was with the team sent to patch up injured people at the museum gala…thus reconnecting with Naomi, with whom he'd lost touch, and meeting Brandee and Kieron.

Oh geez, I have a ton of characters, so let's go!

Simon, Sarah, and Lucas grew up together in New Jersey, but Lucas got separated from the group when they got into college. Jack, Marie-Kate, and Peter grew up together in Philly, but Peter moved to Jersey and met Simon. Simon, Sarah, Marie-Kate, Jack, and Peter then started the League.
Later League additions include Chloe, who had just started dating Sarah; Lucas, who reconnected with Simon over their shared superpower; Dean, who ran into Simon during a superheroing gig and started dating them; CJ, who broke into the base purely to join the team; Henry & Asia, CJ's boyfriend and best friend respectively; and Adam & Noah, CJ's cousins.

Madeline and Xavier were strip club besties and put the Legion together. Madeline was friends with Payton from freshman year of college, she was currently friends with James, and she'd just started dating Logan. Xavier was good friends with Samantha.
Later Legion additions include Julianna, who Madeline had met accidentally at a coffee shop and overshared her way into a villain team; Ava, who Madeline was also friends with in college and had dated Xavier before escaping with Julianna who is her best friend; Jason, Payton's boyfriend; Faith & Becky, close friends of Ava; and Malcolm & Marcus, Madeline's cousins.

Really what I suggest is having a definite meeting point for your most prominent characters and kinda spider-webbing in everyone else by having them have a relationship with one of the primary members instead of all of them.

A lot of the times the way my characters meet are really important to the plot. But here's a couple of the most interesting ones (I swear they all make sense in context).

Dallas meets Andor at a bus stop at 1:30 am.
Dallas meets Ara in the emergency room.
Kit meets Eva in prison.
Caleb meets Kit in the same prison after they break out of it together.
Kit meets Crispin in a train station, after Crispin threatens to stab him if he doesn't stop following him.
Crispin meets Matthew for the first time after breaking into his bedroom at 12am.
Gerard meets Adelia after she saves him from drowning in a river.

Blaze and Riyah grew up together. As their parents were best friends, they hung out loads as kids and continued their friendship into their teenage years.
They met Qili and Ceryn after their ship crashed into Qili's planet (and Qili and Ceryn meet after Ceryn's ship crashes into Qili's planet. Everyone pretty much just meets via pure bad engineering.)

(I haven't shared any of these characters' pages because I haven't finished them yet, but I probably will in the near future)

My characters Celeste and Mari meet at school in 5th grade after Celeste transfers to Mari's school. Mari instantly thought Celeste's hair (dyed pink) was really cool and decided that Celeste was going to be her best friend from that day on. They're pretty much complete opposites, though.

Benjamin and Delilah meet when Delilah is moved into Mr.Castro's Group Home For Troubled Teens, where Ben was already living for a few months prior to their meeting.
Raven then moved in a year after her, that's how she meets them.
Dylan, the youngest member of the household moved in two months after Raven and was automatically accepted as the younger brother they all wanted to teach life lessons too.

Marco and Jonathan meet distinctively after the bombing of the news building they were working in, when Marco hears Jonathan screaming for help from where he is trapped under some heavy metal type debris. They then connect when Jonathan is admitted to a room in the hospital, where Marco refuses to leave his side, until he is fit to leave.