Writing Romance: Creating Chemistry
A good ship is like a relationship, it’s built on fundamental building blocks, and by understanding these blocks, we as writers can construct relationships that feel real and dynamic. There are four primary components to a ship: Propinquity, Compatibility, Progression, and Longevity.
Propinquity measures familiarity. How comfortable they are together, how long they’ve known each other, how well they know each other. Characters with a high propinquity spend a lot of time together, see each other often, exist within the same social circles, are unable to avoid each other, and may have known each other for many years. This is why many popular ships are teammates, friends, and coworkers, as these are people they interact with often. In a period drama, a well-to-do lady might fall for the roguish ne’er-do-well noble who runs in the same social circle as her, or she might fall for the stable boy who tends to her family’s horses. In either case, it is a man she is quite familiar with, and has a hard time avoiding interactions with.
Compatibility measures how well a pair can get along. However Compatibility is hard to measure in one grand concept without breaking it down into its components.
Commonality measures how alike two lovers are. Two Idiots/One Braincell is a ship dynamic built on both lovers being similar. Ships with Belligerent Sexual Tension involve pairing two likewise stubborn and argumentative people, using their similarities to create tension between them.
Cooperation measures how well peace between them can be maintained. Opposites Attract ships heavily rely on the couple trusting and working well together to make up for their lack of commonality and clashing interests.
Progression is more of a literary tool than something that can be applied to real life relationships. It boils down to the simple question: are they better for knowing each other? A good ship should play an important role in each other's character development. An intelligent cynic who dismisses love as a fairy tale needs a hopeless romantic idiot to prove that love's not so impossible, while giving them an endearing idiot for them to take care of and scold for being so foolish and reckless.
Longevity measures whether they can maintain a long lasting bond or if their relationship is a ticking clock. Do they have compatible life goals and desires? Do their desires align with one another or does one's happiness cost the other their own fulfillment? While not all couples or people desire long-term relationships, the desire with many ships is reaching that happily ever after. As such, a good couple needs to be able to last that long.
Let's go over some ships as an example.
Klance from Voltron: Legendary Defender has high propinquity. They're teammates and friends, plus they're old classmates with a preexisting relationship. Their commonality is low but not non-existent. They're both from Earth, they're both pilots, both of them look up to Shiro, and they are both competitive. Their cooperation is much higher, as they're able to go from bickering to working together rather quickly. Some of their most romantically coded scenes have Keith and Lance helping each other’s progress in their character arcs. While we know little of their ultimate life goals, knowing that Keith stayed on with the Blade of Marmora and Lance wanted to be a pilot, it stands to reason that they could have maintained a long distance relationship until they both felt ready to settle down.
Kiribaku from My Hero Acadmeia are classmates and live next to each other in the dorms, giving them a high propinquity. Bakugou also trusts and respects Kirishima more than most people. Kirishima is the only person who can save Bakugou without bruising his ego in the process. In terms of compatibility, they rank high in both commonality and cooperation. They work well together and share enough similarities to be on the same level about most subjects. Their progression is incredible, as Kirishima has helped Bakugou to become nicer and more cooperative with his classmates, while Bakugou’s brash pep talks gave Kirishima the push he needed to reach a new level as a hero. Finally, their longevity is rather solid. They’re going into the same profession, they get along well enough that they could easily live together, and they’re not annoying or fighting each other constantly that would make a long-lasting marriage fall apart.
Aang and Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender are friends and teammates. They spend every day together for almost an entire year and face many enemies together, so the trust and friendship between them is high despite knowing each other for less than a year by the series’ end. They’re highly compatible, sharing belief in love, destiny, hope, spirits, fortunes, and other such things. They’re also very cooperative, as they rarely ever bicker with each other and work well as a team. That being said, they don’t actively play a part in each other’s character progression. Katara’s character arc is mostly about coming into her own as a waterbender and as the show went on, grieving the loss of her mother. But aside from sneakily teaching Katara what he learned at night, Aang doesn’t have a direct hand in this character arc. Zuko does, since he helps her track down the man who killed her mother. Meanwhile, Aang’s arc is to stop running away from his responsibilities and forge his own path as the avatar. While Katara offers a shoulder to lean on, she does not play as active of a role in Aang’s character arc as Guru Patik, Zuko, Toph, and his past lives. She could be a nag telling Aang to practice or take things seriously, but her role in Aang’s arc is more passive and supportive than direct. However, Longevity is a proven fact, since they got married and had children in Legend of Korra, and the siblings never mention their parents fighting to the best of my memory.
Ted and Robin from How I Met Your Mother are friends and enjoy each other’s company, which speaks well for their propinquity. They’re a fairly even blend of similar and opposite in commonality, but their cooperation is good enough to make up for any strong personality differences. They fit the archetype of the cynical love forsaken woman and the hopeless romantic idiot man, and could potentially make that work. But the biggest hurdle is that they don’t clear Longevity. Robin is happy with her bachelorette lifestyle. She’s focused on her career, and she doesn’t have a problem with moving away to chase her dreams. This is even part of what destroys her marriage in the finale. She just couldn’t be held down in one place. Life is an adventure, and Robin wasn’t content to stay in one place for the rest of her life. Ted meanwhile wanted the exact opposite. To set down roots and build a life together. To raise kids and have many years of wedded bliss. Their longevity life goals just don’t work. One of them would have been miserable to make the other happy.
Hopefully, this will help you with creating your own romances and ships in your own stories. As we saw with Kataang, a couple does not need all four things to be a successful ship. Meanwhile, Ted and Robin prove that Longevity is often the leg a ship stands on. Without it, a ship cannot sail without falling apart in the harbor. No amount of chemistry and compatibility can compensate for having clashing life goals.
