story elements

• slice of life (events feel real in the context of day-to-day life, etc.)
• coming of age stories (thinking about the future, putting things in perspective, thinking back to childhood, etc.)
• established relationship (comfortable familiarity, quiet intimacy, knowing each other really well)
• hanging out with friend groups; having a life outside of the main pairing.
• usually mundane events becoming something special
• childhood friends. best friends in general.
• love of all kinds explored (romantic, platonic, familial)
• domesticity (sleepy mornings, cooking for each other, watching crap shows on the tv)
• late nights (going home together, taking the bus/subway home, sleepy goodbyes, running on caffeine)
• friends before anything else (actually talking, actually getting to know each other, actually hanging out)
• appropriately used angst
• narrators finding another aspect to life through the help of new friends? whatever the fleshed-out unproblematic counterpart to a manic pixie dream girl/boy is?

technical things

• easy balance between prose and dialogue
• soliloquy-like introspection
• witty banter in between heavy conversations
• speech patterns for a specific character (character a being more likely to keep using 'like', character b being more likely to keep adding 'you know')