Disclaimer: this - and that should go without saying - is only
my very personal preference others might give you vastly different answers.
So, I'm writing this post, because a guy friend of mine asked me how to write a love story that would feel organic to me. This got me thinking and I came up with the following:
- If you don't want to go through the trouble of writing a love story, just start out with them already together - works like a charm.
- If you do want to write a love story you have basically two options (of course there are more, but these two are the easiest to realize):
- "I (the protagonist) know from the beginning that I love that person but don't know what to do with that."
- "I grow to care about this person more and more and what do you mean I'm in love?"
Both have their merits and I like them equally. You'll have to evaluate which works better with your chosen characters.
- It's always good if the love birds in question start out as good friends.
- If that's not possible (because they just met for example or start off on oposite sides of the conflict), at least make it clear that there's mutual respect and affection.
- Relationships are full of awkwardness and starting them even more so, the great majority of people are not smooth, but painfully emberrassed the more they care about another person (but also don't make it too awkward... as a general rule of thumb if it seems like a bad American romantic comedy you've gone too far).
- Communication is key. Of course depending if you take route 1 or 2 that communication might not always be helpful for the development of their relationship, but I personally always like when people talk about their feelings for each other or negotiate their relationship.
- If you're writing from the protagonist's perspective, make sure to subtly distinguish how they see their love interest (no matter if you chose route 1 or 2) from how they see the other characters. The reader should ideally be able to tell that the characters in question are falling in love much before they kiss.
DON'Ts (aka love tropes I dislike or absolutely dispise):
- Please stay away of the 'love at first sight that's unsupported by anything happening in the story' or what I'd like to call the 'I've seen you once, interacted with you for 10 seconds, don't even know your name, but I'd die for you'- phenomenon, because that's not how human connection works at all.
- Please also stay away from the 'characters treat each other like crap but it's really because they love each other' trope. (Somewhat related: women don't pretend to hate guys they are secretly in love with, please keep that in mind.)
- The jealous ex-partner trope. If you ask me it's nearly never necessary to include a jealous ex-partner in your story (now an ex-partner that is supportive and a good friend that I like).
- Love triangles. I can't tell you how much love triangles suck. In my opinion you can never win when writing a love triangle. 98% of the time it's going to be in some way irritating at best and wholly detracting from the story at worst.
- Reminder! Not every character needs to be paired up with someone and not every story needs a love subplot.
- Reminder the second! Take care that you don't overly focus on the love story (unless of course you are writing a romance that is explicitly centered about these two characters getting together). Try to still devote some time to the character's platonic relationships. Friends and family continue to be important even when your character found their one true love.
DOs (love tropes I like):
- The 'you are so wonderful I'm not worthy so I don't say anything' combined with 'what do you mean? Of course you're worthy and I love you!'.
- Friends and family as (either highly inefficient or very competent) matchmakers (and the characters getting together not 'because' but 'in spite of' their meddling). This is one for more humorous stories.
- 'We just nearly died and the new relevation that life is fleeting leads us to confess our love!'
- Reciprocal healing of broken characters. Sometimes a significant other is just what your character needs to start healing. I just love it when characters that are both to some degree broken help each other heal (doesn't have to be romantic either).
- If you've briefly considered a love triangle, why don't you do a 'healthy polyamory' instead! There are too little healthy polyamories in media.
- The monster and the angel. Aka one character thinks of themselves as a terrible monster and the other as a brilliant angel, but the 'angel' character sees the good in the 'monster' character. (This one is a tricky one, because while I enjoy it a lot, it's very easy to fall into stereotypes when writing, so be careful!)
- Characters being in 'puppy love' aka openly affectionate and loving (and others starting to be fed up with it).
I generally tend to avoid movies, novels and shows that focus too heavily on love stories (and a lot of love stories have minor to major issues in my eyes) so I don't really have any examples of well done love stories to give out. If you can think of anything that had a love story that you enjoyed, please tell me and I can make a list.
I hope this helped at least one person out there. And remember: I'm not an authority on any of this. I'm just a person who consumes a lot of media and has therefore built up a personal preference.
Satori over and out
