Love Stories

For Valentine’s day, I thought I’d write down a few thoughts on one of the hardest things in fiction–writing effective love stories.

This is one of those things that’s so much easier to do in a screenplay. Of course Trinity falls in love with Neo–have you seen him? He looks just like Keanu Reeves! In fiction, though, you can’t just say “two pretty people met and fell for each other, and it was super hot.” In a book or a short story you actually have to show it happening. You need to give your reader actual reasons why the two people involved enjoy each others’ company–and why they want to take time out of their busy schedule of slaying dragons and surviving alien invasions to be together. I’ve put together some basic tips here that should help you avoid some of the common pitfalls of romance stories, especially as they’re deployed in genre fiction.

You may not actually need a love story. A lot of stories don’t. If your characters don’t get along, or if it feels like you’re just shoehorning in a romance subplot… try not doing that. Let the characters be happier as friends. Not every two people who meet in a book are destined to be together. If the love story is taking up too much room in your plot or if just feels forced, let them go their separate ways.

Opposites repel. If your characters have diametrically opposed goals–say, one is a hero and one is a villain–or if their personalities actively clash, why would they even want to date? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but when your characters are constantly squabbling, they’ll often come across more as obnoxious than lovable. Instead, try giving your characters something to bond over. You’ll be surprised how when two characters actually respect and like each other, feelings can just naturally blossom. It makes them want to spend more time together, and have more scenes together. Speaking of which!

Put your characters in the same room. Nothing feels more artificial than a love interest who is always away on quests or only shows up in the character’s life when it’s least convenient. This is the fictional equivalent of the significant other who lives in Canada or goes to a different high school so we can’t ever meet them. The lover who can’t be tied down may be a romantic archetype, but it always feels like a device, not a character. You want your two characters spending LOTS of time together. We need long dialogue scenes between them, and to have them go on adventures together to increase their bond. The more of them we see enjoying each other’s company, the more we’ll believe it when they have that first, awkward, tentative, beautiful kiss.

Give love time to grow. Yeah, this is important. Like any kind of plot or subplot, the love story happens over time. It has its ups and downs, its reversals and its misunderstandings. Having two characters meet in scene one and be making out in scene two only works if scene three is them realizing what a terrible mistake they just made (and scene four is them wondering if it really was a mistake after all, and scene five is…). This is a plot, which means it needs to develop. Which means you need to devote a lot of time to it. Don’t have enough room in your story for that? See tip number one, above.

A lover should never be a prize. Just because you broke up the drug cartel doesn’t mean you get the boy. Saving a woman from zombies doesn’t mean she owes you anything. This is an old, old trope from a bad time and it deserves to die. Both characters in a love story have their own feelings and their own value. They don’t exist just as motivation for the protagonist, and they don’t just fall into bed every time something dramatic happens. In fact, it’s a good general rule–never have a love scene immediately after something traumatic or violent happens. That’s just super creepy.

Love is a two-way sacrifice. Love means both parties giving up something of themselves to be with the loved one. Both of them. A character who drops their entire life just to go chasing after a pretty other isn’t a character, they’re an appendage. If your aspiring wizard stops practicing magic because he met a pretty woman at the library, he’s a dud. If a woman quits her job so she can move to Alaska to marry the salmon fisherman, her story is over. Your characters both need to make choices to be together, or their love feels like a plot detail rather than a story in itself.