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There’s a wonderful, subtle, very short conversation about friendship toward the end of the cult-classic film Tombstone.

Doc is dying. He needs to be resting. But he’s fighting alongside Wyatt in a seemingly no-win battle. He explains why.

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Johnson: Doc, you ought to be in bed. What the hell you doin’ this for anyway?
Doc: Wyatt Earp is my friend.
Johnson: Hell, I got lots of friends.
Doc: I don’t.

Have you bought COMMUNITY DAY

Across literature and film, there are countless “loyal friend” characters. Too often, though, we’re just asked to accept the loyalty, as though it needs no explanation.

But demonstrating loyalty—in literature and in real life—typically comes at a cost. You lie or steal or sacrifice. But why does the loyal character give that loyalty? Why pay that price?

What I like about this Tombstone scene is that it explains the nature of the Doc-Wyatt friendship and gives us a key piece of information about Doc’s character. Throughout the film, Wyatt puts up with Doc’s drinking, womanizing, and picking fights. Doc seems selfish and undisciplined.

Here, at the end, we realize that Doc actually knows that he causes problems. He knows himself to be hard to like. But for whatever reason, Wyatt has long put up with Doc. Wyatt, it turns out, is Doc’s only real friend. Doc is loyal to Wyatt because Wyatt is the only one who accepts Doc and all his flaws.

The brief explanation of Doc’s loyalty helps us understand Doc.

I like this idea. A character can tell the reader about himself/herself by revealing why s/he is showing loyalty to someone else.

So I stole this idea to develop two of my characters: Nelly and Pith. This happens in Chapter 20.

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In the middle third of COMMUNITY DAY, we learn of Kim’s mental breakdown about 15 years earlier. The stresses of being abandoned by her husband and raising a difficult child alone become too much for her. She begins acting erratically, including making bizarre presentations at the weekly meeting of the county commission.

Early in the novel, Kim and Pith get into an argument. The impression is that Pith doesn’t like her at all. He’s certainly fed up with her haughtiness. The reader might think that Pith is judgmental or unforgiving.

But when we learn about Kim’s earlier mental-health struggles, we also learn that Pith came to her aid. He didn’t want praise. He never asked for anything in return.

Pith also quietly lent a hand during these tough times. He mowed Kim’s lawn, took out the trash, changed lightbulbs and wound clocks around her house, cajoled case officers from the collection agency. He helped so discreetly that Kim never found out about it. As is Pith’s way, he never wanted any credit. “Just doin’ unto others, my man,” he once told Barb’s husband. “Golden Rulin’ ain’t deservin’ of no extra attention.”

We learn something important about Pith. He feels obligated to help others. He doesn’t expect thanks for his good deeds. He does right because that’s what he’s supposed to do.

Nelly also comes to Kim’s aid. But for different reasons. They are similar. They’ve struggled with the same things. Nelly understands Kim and therefore has sympathy for Kim. I was able to tell the reader something about Nelly by showing the reader why Nelly was being loyal to Kim.

Nelly had befriended Kim years earlier. As professional women in a traditional community, they’d bonded over personal and work challenges. Both ended up with no-account husbands. […] Nelly was quick to the scene when things went off the rails for Kim. In the online archives of the state courts, I found a copy of Kim’s divorce and subsequent bankruptcy filing. […] Nelly helped with Kim’s legal issues, lent her money, and donated a shoulder to cry on. Nelly, it turned out—as someone once told me—could be loyal, tender, and conscientious. When she could focus on someone else, Nelly’s anxieties seemed to vanish.

And in this last sentence, I reveal something else. Nelly’s overwhelming nervousness dissipates when she focuses on the needs of someone else. This foreshadows Nelly’s rebirth at the end of the novel when she heals by understanding and caring for Len. This is the heart of the novel.

I’ve thought about making use of this technique in the prequel. There will be an unusual, hard-to-understand relationship between a disgraced priest and the female lead. For the first half of the novel, we’d see the priest’s loyalty to this woman and her ambivalent reaction to that loyalty.

When we finally learn why he’s so devoted to her, it will reveal a great deal about her hidden flaws, his regrets, and his sense of duty.