Friday Fiction Feed - Enter the Bestie

Last week we discussed the childhood bully. Now, it is time to discuss the childhood best friend.

Oddly enough, my childhood best friend became best friends with the bully and sort of dumped me. (I'm telling you, elementary school was bad.) I ran into my best friend again, though, in middle school, and then we happened to live in the same dorm in college. We're friends on Facebook. She showed my freshman year roommate photos of us playing in her yard back in kindergarten. I haven't seen her since, but she would always come back after a while--and maybe she will again.

So repeating last week's exercise--where is your protagonist's childhood best friend? They can spice things up. Maybe they are the enemy, a la Elphaba and Glinda. Maybe they're nothing. But try to dive into you character's past for a little while longer. Whatever happened to their childhood best friend?

Friday Fiction Feed - Enter the Bully

We all know them. Sometimes, we were them. The childhood bully. The person who managed to make some days of second grade feel like...a bad place. I remember my bully; she once tried to feed me a mud pie with goldfish in it, claiming it was soup. I was smart enough to say no (yay!), and she promptly made fun of me.

Ah, elementary school. I so don't miss it.

Anyway, I ran into my bully a few years later, and she apologized for everything. She actually turned out to be a kind girl. Just because somebody WAS a bully doesn't mean that they can't change. I mean, sure, plenty don't. But some do.

Introduce your protagonist's childhood bully. Have they changed? Are they now the love interest? The antagonist? A complete background character? Add a few fragments from your protagonists early childhood. It is always interesting to see where these people end up.