Enemies to lovers has always been one of the most compelling tropes in any romance-focused story. There have been countless numbers of movies, books, games, and TV shows that have taken the idea of two people who hate each other but end up loving each other and ran with it. When you’re writing a romance story, you tend to find that enemies to lovers is much more engaging than other romance tropes because of how creative you need to be in order to ensure that your two enemies actually end up falling in love. Seeing as this is one of my more favorite tropes, here’s how you can write a good, compelling, exciting, and interesting enemies to lovers story!
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What is Enemies to Lovers?
First, let’s talk about what enemies to lovers even is! The idea of enemies to lovers refers to when two characters start out a story as, well, enemies. These two characters hate each other for one reason or another. If we were to place this trope in, say, a fantasy story, we may find that the main character is a princess and the enemy is an assassin. Maybe the main character is a knight and the enemy is a knight for another kingdom. Something of that sort.
Eventually, the two characters will need to somehow actually fall in love. By the end of the story, they need to be together. But, how exactly could that happen if they hate each other? Well, you need to craft your story around making these two characters, over time, become madly in love.
What Do You Need Before You Start Writing?
When it comes to writing a good enemies to lovers story, you need a few specific elements to help you out:
Start with Well-Written, Complex Characters
Since this is a romance trope, if your characters aren’t interesting, you’ve pretty much ruined the entire story for your readers. You need to ensure that your characters are well-written and complex. Unfortunately, one of the biggest mistakes romance writers sometimes fall victim to is making one of the characters shallow. And by this, I mean this character simply exists for the sake of the other character.
For instance, this character basically has no personality of their own. They just follow the main character and oogle at the main character and practically worship the main character. This isn’t a person–this is a caricature. There’s no compelling reason behind why a reader would actually like to read about this character.
A believable, deep character has a background, motivations, interests, fears, traumas, etc… The characters need to actually feel and read as though they were real people. They cannot be perfect either–another issue romance tends to fall into. The male love interest sometimes is written in a way that is just simply unrealistic, too perfect, or annoying. Be careful of this. You’re writing romance, but you need to keep it real in a way.
You want to go into things like strengths, weaknesses, flaws, personality traits, backstory, and more. Think of your two characters as essentially being real people that exist in the world around you. If you were to tell a friend about this person, what would you say?
Figure Out Your Setting
When you’re writing an enemies to lovers story, you want to make sure that your setting is actually really good too. On top of interesting characters, your setting will play a big role in the formulation of your story. If you’re writing a romance story set in a fantasy world, you need to work on your setting so that the enemies to lovers is believable.
The setting is essentially the areas and locations where your story is going to be taking place. This could be broad and narrow all the same. You can have your story take place in one spot the entire time or take place across a number of locations. At the end of the day, your setting’s choice matters to the overall tone, mood, atmosphere, and vibe of your story. If you want more advice on choosing the right setting for your story, you should check out this post.
The setting will most likely play a role in why the characters are enemies, as you could have two warring sides or something similar to that. You don’t necessarily need to do this, as you can have characters exist within the same setting but they are enemies for an alternate reason.
You can really get that down with world-building, which is something I focus a lot on in my blog posts. If you need help with your world-building, go check out my ultimate starter’s guide to world-building and then feel free to read around for the specific things you need!
Why are They Enemies?
Before you really dive into the story, you have to actually think about why the characters are even enemies in the first place. You need to think about the factors that go into this and what works and doesn’t work. For example, in a WIP of mine, two characters are enemies because one is an assassin that was tasked with taking out the other. I recently read Heartless Hunter and in that book, the main characters are a witch and a witch hunter, which is obviously a really big reason why they would be enemies.
You also want to think about the reason that you’re choosing and for it to make sense. If the characters are high school students, then chances are the way the enemies idea is structured is certainly not going to be the same as most romantasy stories. So, you should think about your genre and what works/doesn’t work for that respective genre.
You also want to think about the tone of your story. If your book is meant to be dark on purpose, then you’re most likely going to find that the reason the characters are enemies is going to be dark as well. You just need to think about this stuff before you go into the writing process.
How to Write Your Enemies to Lovers Story!
1. Give the Readers the “Why”
When you want to show your readers that your characters are enemies, you should never just outright tell the readers why the characters are enemies. You will hear this said a lot in creative writing, but show, don’t tell. What this means is that you want the reader to come to the conclusion that these characters are enemies without you specifically and directly just telling them that they are enemies.
So, for instance, convey through character interactions, dialogue, and world-building why the two characters hate each other. Don’t tell me that “Joe hates Stacy.” No, show me why Joe would hate Stacy. Maybe she’s the princess and he’s a rogue bandit. Maybe she’s a fae and he’s a fae-hunter. Whatever it is, actually show me these two characters hating each other without just telling me that they do.
2. Build Tension
When you write romance, one thing you need to consider is the idea of romantic tension. Start planting a few of the seeds of why the characters might start noticing each other. For instance, maybe your princess notices that the dark prince from this other kingdom has really nice hair. Maybe your assassin keeps noticing how the lady-knight he’s sent to kill actually has a killer smile.
You have to start subtle though. Start like how a normal human would think. There’s not going to be anything crazy at this point, as your two characters are still technically supposed to be enemies.
You also have to push them to interact in some instances, or at least have them cross paths in some way. Obviously though, their encounters will not be very friendly or very nice, so you’ll need to take this into consideration.
3. Force Proximity
The turning point in a romance story for the writer to really begin delving into the romance part of the story is when the two characters are forced to be around each other. This can be for any reason, so long as it aligns with the rest of your story. For example, the princess’ carriage is sabotaged and the assassin happens to be nearby and saves her. This is something that would bring the two characters face-to-face and together for potentially a while.
Whatever the reason may be, it needs to be something that has longevity, as the two characters must now spend more time with each other in order to eventually fall in love.
4. Build the Romance
As the characters interact, they need to start trusting each other. Eventually, they must become loyal to each other or even potentially reliant on one another.
The way to build their romance is to showcase how they start to value each other and the safety of the other person. For the most part, this is done through things like putting them in potentially dangerous situations or having one character help mitigate a conflict with the other. Something of this nature can help to build more of the romance bridges that you’re looking to build.
5. Provide Obstacles to the Romance
One of the best ways to build more of the romance up is to curate obstacles for the characters to face. These obstacles will test their dedication to their growing feelings. Typically, enemies to lovers presents in a slow-burn, so you don’t need to get the characters together early on–realistically speaking, you shouldn’t because they were technically enemies at the beginning. Besides, a slow-burn is so much more fun than insta-love. The payoff is significantly better for the reader because the declaration of love will be super satisfying.
The obstacles should serve the story and align with the plot while either bringing them together or pulling them apart for a period of time. What I would recommend against is the age-old “miscommunication” trope in romance stories. This conflict is typically very shallow and also very annoying to readers. Try to avoid it and think outside the box. Present a conflict that would entice readers to keep reading. If you do want to use the miscommunication trope, at least do it in a way that makes sense or is realistic to the characters.
6. Declaration of Love
At this point, your characters have gone through everything together. By the end, they’re just so madly in love with the other person that it only makes sense that they get together.
Your readers are now excited because the romance has worked out, you’ve built a great story, and the characters are truly in love with one another.
Enjoy writing this scene. You’ve earned it. Make it as sweet or as dramatic or as awesome as you need it to be. This is the end-goal of the story, after all. If you’re writing a fantasy series, then you can take the entire series to get to this point. It’s entirely up to you when this occurs, but I always say that it should occur later rather than sooner.
Conclusions
So, that’s how you write a good enemies to lovers story! This trope tends to be a very popular one because it typically involves two opposites coming together under bizarre or even impossible circumstances. But this sort of romance tends to feel much more rewarding for the reader to invest emotion into. That’s why so many people love it.
If you need help with other writing-related things, then check out my other guides for help! Also, check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga. Books 1 and 2 are currently available over on Amazon! Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can get updates on my latest WIPs, book releases, posts and more.