Everyone has a love/hate relationship with romantic comedies. You either enjoy watching the main character find someone, fall in love and then watch as the universe tries to tear them apart but they always end up together. Or you hate watching the same cliché scenario and prefer to watch people get murdered in brutal combat. Regardless, romcoms have defined a decade and audience response continues to this day.
To the naked eye, every romantic movie appears to be the same. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, life gets in their way and they either find their way back together or die (I'm looking at Titanic). Of course there are movies where the characters don't end up together and it's mostly a learning experience for the viewers as it portrays messages such as letting go of the past, right person/wrong time, deception and the universe having other plans. For the large part, they are designed as feel-good movies and are distractions from life. Most romcoms are adaptions from books. For example, Clueless (1995) is an adaption of Jane Austen's book, Emma. Jane Austen herself has written many romance books and many have been taken to the big screen. But both movies and books share one struggle: Unoriginality.
Everyone shares a danger of creating something that is unoriginal. But for people to keep relating to stories of love, the characters have to be placed into different scenarios. Enter: Tropes. A trope is a situation that can be found in literature and film that can create the surroundings for the plot or move the action forward.
Before we discuss the tropes that you're probably thinking about (enemies to lovers, childhood best friends, etc), we have to discuss what kind of romance sub-genre we are talking about here. The type of tropes discovered in books are heavily influenced by the romance sub-genre. For example, Bella and Edward's love story (Twilight) wouldn't be found in a Contemporary Rom-Com.
Sub-genres can be:
Rom-Com, Young Adult, Contemporary, Fantasy, Historical, Paranormal, Mystery or Western.
Sub-Genres are not limited to just these but they are the most popular and nearly every film or book can have one or multiple of these sub-genres.
Now we've discussed sub-genres, tropes find their place within it. The first one we are discussing is:
Love Triangle:
This trope can be one of the most frustrating things to read. Everyone has had the experience of rooting for one over the other and the main character doesn't choose the one you chose and you want to scream. Love triangles are one of the most popular tropes in film and literature and date back decades. They can be found in Greek Mythology, Ancient History and Medieval Legends. William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, among other famous authors, have all written love triangles in their stories, some studied at schools.
A love triangle itself can really move a plot along quicker and the writer has many different paths it can take their characters.
For example: Person A can confess their feelings first, Person A and B can be brothers, loving Person A has consequences, Person A and B represent opposite emotions, betrayal can be portrayed in one of them or both, Person A can't let go of the past, the main characters switches between the two (cheating), Person A can be a childhood friend but Person B is someone new. There are many different ways to take your main character into new directions.
Love Triangles show a deeper meaning such as showing the two love interest as two symbols:
In many cases, Person A is kind, sweet and a gentleman (if the main character is a woman) but a bit dull. Person B is exciting, amusing, charming and intriguing but a playboy that breaks your heart on more than one occasion. Logically, you would choose Person A but there's something about Person B that draws you to him. (Bridget Jones Diary)
In other cases, they can be from different places. You came from a small town and act more free there and you moved to the city and are now work-focused. Your two love interests represent the small town and big city and the versions of yourself. (Sweet Home Alabama).
Love triangles can be a sub-plot as well.
A new person can enter the main characters life, even though we all know who their soulmate it, to stir drama. Most sequels to movies show a new person entering the characters life, endangering their relationship with the previous love interest or a previous character from the first movie plays a larger role (To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, Twilight Saga: New Moon).
Another sub-plot is Person B isn't really a contender. The main character doesn't have any deep feelings for them that would make them risk everything. Instead he's someone her parents approve of but he's not her soulmate and is more of an obstacle than a love interest. (Titanic).
Love Triangle examples:
In film: Twilight, Bridget Jones Diary, Something Borrowed, The Hunger Games, One Tree Hill, The Vampire Diaries, Dawsons Creek, Riverdale, etc
In books: Maze Runner, The Selection, Red Queen, Inheritance Games, Shatter Me, To All The Boys I've Loved Before, The Summer I Turned Pretty, etc
I will be analysing more story tropes and posting them on here. Feel free to comment any recommendations with love triangles!
Thank you and keep reading!
Keep writing Najwa !
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