How do I write an essay about friends?

I often use friends as characters in my novels. Some are still living - in which case I need to be cautious about how I handle the character and what I make them say and do. Some of of my characters are based on people who are not longer living - people I knew in the past. They might have been “good friends” or they might just have been acquintances but they have personalities that would make a reable charactter in a story.

As other commentators have said, the character needs to have appealing characteristics, to be interesting to the reader. Not always because they are good and nice people; the world is made up of people who can be good but also people who are bad. Sometimes a piece of writing - essay, poem, article - can be about the nature of friendship - how it starts, grows and developes and how it changes you - if you are the narrator. Each experience of friendship brings something to our lives and in some way changes us - for the better or for the worse. That is why we have friends. That is what makes us human. Sometimes a friendship can be with a family member because friendship is what makes a relationship special, whether with a relative or with someone who is not related to us by blood.

If you are writing your piece for someone else - publishing it for readers - you have to ensure that your character, real or purely fictionable is credible. That does not mean you always have to play safe and write only about people who are everyday and run-of-the-mill. Sometimes it is the exceptional person or character who captures the imagination. Readers want to follow the story about someone they feel they could know; someone who is like someone they have known. Friends do not always do only what we want them to do; at times they do the unexpected and that makes them interesting.