This real-life exercise in method acting eventually becomes more real than either of them had expected and they fall in love. Tell us about your book, and we'll give you a writing playlistįor one reason or another, two people must pretend to be in a relationship. (Bonus points to Suzanne Collins for incorporating the Fake Relationship when Katniss and Peeta pretend to be married).
Either way, three’s a crowd in this romance trope, and someone, if not everyone, is going to end up getting hurt.Įxample: In The Hunger Games, Peeta and Gale both love Katniss. Or maybe Diane loves Jim, and Jim loves Charlie, and Charlie loves Diane.
Maybe the first iconic instance of 'Trapped in an Elevator' (image: Columbia Pictures) 2) The ‘Love Triangle’Ĭharlie and Jim love Diane. They hang a sheet between the two beds to create privacy, but the night remains intimate nevertheless. (Bonus points if the place where they're staying has only one bed which they begrudgingly agree to share!)Įxample: In the 1934 romantic comedy film, It Happened One Night (you probably know it from this hitchhiking scene), Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are forced to share a hotel room with twin beds (which was just as scandalous as sharing the same bed back in the day). They have to rely one on another to get through the experience, come to appreciate one another, and eventually fall in love. The point is two people who likely barely know each other (or aren’t very fond of one another) are forced together in a relatively enclosed space. This trope has a number of popular variations: the “have to spend a night in a cabin,” the “stuck in a car in a blizzard,” the “trapped overnight in the office,” etc. You can start with this list!Ĭlick to tweet! 11 of the most popular romance tropes 1) The ‘Trapped in an Elevator’ It will help you get an idea of what romance readers already like, and will help you write stories that feel refreshing and new. So if you’re an aspiring romance writer, do yourself a favor by getting acquainted with the popular romance tropes out there. At their core, tropes are really just things that are familiar. “Trope” is often seen as a dirty word, because it feels interchangeable with the word “cliché.” And while authors shouldn’t simply duplicate story formulas that have proven popular, incorporating tropes can provide a signal to readers about what kind of book they’re dealing with.
Tropes are plot devices, characters, images, or themes that are incorporated so frequently in a genre that they’re seen as conventional. And while a Happily Ever After is really a non-optional feature of the genre, authors can choose to incorporate romance tropes to provide readers with instantly recognizable markers that help them immediately relate to the love story at hand. “And they lived happily ever after.” This line alone should give you an idea that this article is talking about the romance genre.