How can Banter and chemistry be handle?

[matt0044]

In my fic in progress, my protagonist interacts with her Pokemon and I show them to be like a family who stick by each other even if they can drive each other crazy sometimes (like the Straw Hat Pirates from One Piece).

I'm not sure how to really handle the interactions between them and I worry if they'd be annoying or come off wrong. I'd like to ask others here how to handle banter and chemistry so I can understand the bare basics.

 

[CrystaI]

To portrait family-like relationship that is not real family by literal context, it might be better to comprehend in your brain as a very very VERY closed friend relationship, so closed that is like one's brother or sister. Yeah, another better understanding may be an adopted child that is not blood-related to a character, but that character treat it as like his/her own brother or sister.

One thing specific about such family-like interaction is that both characters in the context (in your case it will be the protagonist and Pokemon of your fic) are actually mentally open to each other. They know each other so well that not only what the other likes and hate, but also each other's habits and even the sleeping and wake-up time. So when one person make the other mad for something, he/she was angry at the incident, but not really the other character. Once the incident is gone, they will turn the happy face to each other again immediately. Such relationship is really impossible between characters that didn't follow each other for a very long time, nor followed the other for a long time but the heart is not open to the other one.

If you don't have a brother or sister or some other family members that is of the similar ages to you yet having close relationship with you, or maybe a very close friend of you that you can talk anything and everything with, it will just difficult for you to portrait family-like relationship, because you need some basic emotional understanding of it, not just theories. If my explanation is not good enough for you to understand, it might better for you do go watch some Family movies and/or dramas for better emotional understands.

 

[matt0044]

Well, I do have a little sister who drives me up the wall whenever she goes through her fits of goofiness...

 

[AetherX]

Well, I do have a little sister who drives me up the wall whenever she goes through her fits of goofiness...

Then that's a great thing to draw inspiration from.

Personally, I like to keep a list of exactly what each character thinks of each other summed up in a few words. From there it's pretty simple to find out which characters really bounce off one another in entertaining ways. One of my favorite chapters of Unpredictable to write was one where I broke away from the main character, sending his goofy and ambitious best friend off to catch a Gyarados with the help of badass vigilante girl with a dark past. Teasing and sarcastic jabs abound. As said above, try to draw inspiration from real life relationships (or other fictional relationships even).