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Romance tropes, explained
Nine of them, what each one means, why it works when it works, and how it goes wrong. The shapes a romance can take - pick the one you keep coming back to.
- Enemies to loversTwo people on opposite sides of something real, who fall for each other without either of them getting to be wrong about why they were fighting.
- Forced proximityCircumstance puts two people in the same small space and takes away the exit, so the thing they have been avoiding has nowhere left to go.
- Slow burnA romance that makes you wait, on purpose, and makes the waiting the best part of the book.
- Fake datingTwo people agree to pretend, for reasons that suit them both, and find that the pretending is doing something neither of them planned.
- Grumpy / sunshineOne of them is difficult and one of them is not, and the difficult one turns out to be difficult with everybody except her.
- Second chanceTwo people who already had this once, and lost it, and have to decide whether the version of them that failed is the version they still are.
- Friends to loversTwo people who already know each other completely, risking the one relationship they cannot afford to lose.
- ForbiddenTwo adults who want each other and have a real reason not to — a rule, a role, a loyalty — and something to lose if they stop caring about it.
- Marriage of convenienceTwo people marry for reasons that have nothing to do with love, and then have to live in the arrangement they made.