This isn’t about romance alone (though it often is). It’s about belonging. About safety. About seeing and being seen. When a character finds that safe space in someone else, we as readers feel it. We crave it. And we remember it. Let’s explore how to write characters who find home—not in a house or city—but in another soul.

Welcome to this week’s Tony Tips Tuesdays, where we dive into one of the most powerful and often overlooked elements in storytelling: internal conflict. As writers, we often chase the big plot twists, the enemy confrontations, and the external stakes. But the truth is, what makes a story resonate—what makes a character stay with us long after we’ve turned the last page—is what they battle within.