Welcome, welcome to the inevitable talk about love. What is a February blog post without at least one entry focused on the hot, steamy, and romantic? Today we're gonna take a look at love story tropes and if they are good, bad, easy, hard, and everything in-between. Is enemies to lovers really over done? Can forbidden romance not be cringy? What can a good love triangle look like? Well today that's what we're gonna get into!
So let's start with the enemies to lovers. What is this trope, is it overused, and how can it be done correctly? The trope follows two lovers who initially despise, or at least believe they hate, each other. Often unrealistic this trope tends to frequently fall into bad, and even socially harmful boxes of romanticizing toxic and abusive relationships for the idea that one can "tame" the other or that women can "fix him". This trope regularly goes hand and hand with the "fix the bad boy" trope as well. One of the biggest problems with this trope is its widespread and highly romanticized with a lot of stories not understanding or not caring that it can be influential to young and impressionable readers. So how can you do the story in a healthy way? This could be a discussion all by itself, but for the most part, keep the reasoning for the hate to something realistic. Perhaps a misunderstanding, a prejudice, or other options of a similar song and dance to give both a flaw to grow away from. And the way they grow from that hate should also be reasonable and realistic as well. The point of the trope is to give them a chance to grow to love each other. Realistically no one is going to want to love someone who had a hand in killing their friend or loved one, kidnapping them, or routinely pointing sharp stabby things at them with the intention of harm. However, they might be able to overlook the love interest being a vampire even though vampires themselves have done those things. Or the love interest being a witch even though every witch they've ever met is evil. Assuming that those love interests don't actually follow those stereo types and the journey is to find the person over the misunderstanding.
Next is forbidden romance. This sort of romance follows the idea that whomever they are in love with is off limits. Often times this trop follows the across enemy lines branch, such with the tragedy Romeo and Julliet. Is the trope cringy? No, honestly it is one of my favorite tropes. But can it get that way? Absolutely, this trope tends to feel off-putting when the reasonings for the "forbiddance" doesn't makes sense. Things like "You can't love him because your best friend doesn't approve" or "We can't be together because you're a vampire and I'm a vampire hunter but throughout the series nothing is going to back up the claim that vampire hunters hate vampires", when this trope has no weight, it feels off. The stakes of what social reasoning keeps these two apart dictates how serious and how invested the reader is in the story. Just because characters say there is a consequence to their little late-night rendezvous doesn't mean we the reader feel it if we're never shown even an iota of what weight that "consequence" has. On the flip side, stories that go too hard into the consequences and social weight can feel unrealistic. There is no reason the world should end just because two teenagers fell in love and one happens to be a fairy and the other one a human, without any other nuance. This trope should have high stakes, but, just not too high.
Finally let's talk love triangle. This incredibly toxic trope tends to follow one person who just can't help but string two or more individuals along because they just can't choose. While indecision is understandable when choosing between the bad boy, the pretty boy, the childhood friend, and so on (all incredibly hot, attractive men, with plenty of other women knocking on their doors but oh they have eyes only for the main character) it can get unrealistic fast; if it wasn't already. This trope tends to fall into the pitfall of "suspense of disbelief", we the reader must believe that all these individuals are fawning over one person and ignoring all other chances they may have at happiness elsewhere. All while knowing they may not be "the one". So, what can a good love triangle look like? Firstly timeframe, no gobs of attractive people are going to hold out for years for one person, so keeping the story timeframe short can help with this. Indecision for a few weeks or months during a sort of courting phase is a great way to help with that. Keep the indecision understandable and give each member of the triangle a chance to prove why they should be "the one" and produce a proper amount of conflict within the main center point character regarding this. As well, make sure that there is tension, maybe even a refusal to take part in this love triangle-ness by one or more members of the band. Finally, it needs an END, a choice has to be made, and made somewhat soon. If this love triangle goes on for seventeen books the suspense of disbelief that's been asked of the reader gets harder and harder to suspend.
That's it for today, I hope this was informative. I have a deep love for all of these tropes, and even implement them myself in a number of my WIP and published works. They can be engaging, suspenseful, and exciting reads; even the cringy ones. The main focus when writing a trope is a mix of realism and magic, real or emotional.
Have a wonderful evening, and I hope to see you next week!
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