Don’t you just love love? Romance is an integral part of some of the greatest stories. From The Odyssey, to The Great Gatsby, and more current stories like The Fault in Our Stars, love motivates the characters. Odysseus travels for ten years to return home to his wife. Jay Gatsby throws his lavish parties in hopes that his lost love will come back to him. And Hazel and Augustus fall for each other despite battling life-threatening illnesses. These stories stay with us because these couples are fleshed out.
They feel real.
Too often writers forget to build their love story around the actual couple. They don’t make sure the two characters have any foundation for a real future together. Or they could write the relationship for the sake of the plot and make it feel unrealistic. But all these mistakes are avoidable.
So in honor of Valentine’s Day, we’ll be talking about the three things you need to turn your characters’ relationship into the next great love story.
1). Have Them Be Friendly First
We’ll start with the obvious. In order to have a relationship, the two people actually have to like each other. It doesn’t matter if they’re childhood friends or if they just met, there needs to be positive interactions between the lovebirds to justify a future relationship. Otherwise, it’ll feel out of the blue or forced.
Let’s shift from couples in literature to those on TV. Specifically the two major couples in Friends: Ross and Rachel, then later Monica and Chandler. All four were friends long before they got together. While one of these was a long awaited love and the other more of a surprise, both were widely adored by viewers. It could partly be credited to the popular friends-to-lovers trope, but it’s most likely that when people saw two characters that got along well end up falling in love, they accepted it. Why wouldn’t they get together? It made sense.
Some writers go in the other direction and make the characters hate each before their inevitable relationship. While that trope is equally popular, it’s harder to pull off. It’s not believable that two people can go from absolutely hating each other to head over heels in love if there’s no time in between. Because how can they live happily ever after if they were just hurling insults five minutes ago?
Whatever route you take, have the characters be friendly with each other first. Then when it’s time for them to fall in love, the readers will understand and accept it.
2). Emotional Attraction, Not Just Physical Attraction
Attraction is key in every relationship. The characters need to be drawn toward each other. They need that push to make the leap into a relationship. But writers forget that emotional attraction is just as important as physical attraction.
Visiting Friends again, Rachel doesn’t fall for Ross because of his looks. If she cared more about appearance than personality, she would’ve stayed with Paolo. Rachel inevitably chose Ross because he was kind and thoughtful. She loved who he was at his core, not just because of how he looked.
Love is not skin deep. Your characters’ looks will fade as they age. So if you want to make sure they grow old together, have them be attracted to their partner’s soul above all else.
3). Trust, Support, and Respect
These three things go hand in hand. You need all to have a successful relationship. Lose one, and you lose them all. As well as your characters’ relationship and the readers’ support of it.
If you were to read about a couple that tears each other down, mocks their significant other, and never trusts them, would you embrace that? Absolutely not. And neither would any sensible reader.
The reason why Monica and Chandler are arguably the best couple in Friends is because they have these traits. They respect each other despite their quirks. They put their complete trust in their partner. And when Monica accepts a great new job in New York instead of moving to Tulsa with her husband, Chandler supports her, even when that means he has to fly back and forth. Because their relationship has these qualities, the audience became invested in their love story and wanted to see what happened next.
As idealistic as it is, your fictional couple cannot survive on love alone. It needs support, trust, and respect to have a future. If readers see this, they’ll root for the lovebirds and hope they get their happily ever after.
Crafting a great and memorable couple is a massive undertaking for every writer, especially when they specialize in romance.
But if you use these three tips when your creating your relationship, your love story will be sure to capture the hearts of all your readers.
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