SPOILER ALERT: Hunger Games, Pride and Prejudice Katniss, Peeta, and Gale. Bella, Edward, and Jacob. Gwenivere, Lancelot, and Arthur. Aragorn, Eowyn, and Arwen. Need drama in your romance? Toss in a love triangle and you’re good to go, right? WRONG. That isn’t to say you must avoid Love Triangles like the plague, all romances are Love Triangles, but when writing a truly great couple that others ship to the moon and back, tossing in an obvious distraction to the real love story, especially when it isn’t vital to the rest of the plot, isn’t going to fly. I mean, by the end of Mockingjay we ALL knew Katniss was going to end up with Peeta, right? Gale just kind of took a seat in the background and all the tension dissipated. ALL of it. You want to keep your readers on their toes up until the discerning moment? You’re going to have to do better than have your protagonist choose between Good Guy A and Good Guy B. Having them choose between Good Guy and Bad Guy can be worse because everyone knows right off who she’s going to end up with (otherwise they feel jipped), and there becomes no point to having a Love Triangle in the first place. “But didn’t you just say all romances are Love Triangles?” Yes, yes I did. Your protagonist is always going to have to choose. No choices, no story. No consequences of those choices, no tension. No tension = bland story. But your character doesn’t always have to choose between two people. Maybe they have to choose between the love of their lives and saving the world. Maybe they have to choose between keeping their facade of strength and showing this one person how vulnerable they really are. Maybe they have to choose whether they or their spouse lives past a crisis. Each of these situations tests your character to the very end because no one, not even your character, knows how it’s going to end. Compare the above examples to Pride and Prejudice. Arguably one of the greatest romances ever written. There was definitely a Love Triangle between Elizabeth, Darcy, and Wickham. But the tension didn’t end when Lizzy chose Darcy because 1) he’d already proposed and she’d turned him down and 2) Wickham wasn’t done with the Bennet family. Wickham wasn’t a distraction from the plot, but a driving force that made Jane Austen’s story so loveable and timeless. If you’re going to make your protagonist choose between two Good Guys, I’d ask yourself “How often does this other guy make an appearance?”, “Does he move the plot forward or is he distracting everyone?”, “Are my readers focusing more on who’s Team Who or on the story I’m trying to tell?”. If you’re going to go the Good Guy vs Bad Guy route, ask, “Does the Bad Guy have motives other than getting the girl?”, “What makes the Bad Guy bad?”, “What other modes of tension can I add to this relationship that has nothing to do with the Bad Guy?”. Trust your instincts. Go against the flow. Don’t slap a cookie-cutter fix-all Love Triangle on your Legend. Forge it. Care for it. Own it. What about you? What are some Love Triangles you’ve come across that have or have not worked? Why do you think they failed or succeeded?
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