How to Write Hate-To-Love Romance
Photo by Rodnae Productions.
Hey writerly friends!
Today, we’re talking about my absolute favorite type of romance and that is hate-to-Love romance. This is the kind of romance that buds in Becca Fitzpatrick’s romantic thriller, Hush, Hush. It’s the kind of romance where the story starts out with the couple-to-be hating each other before they come to realize they actually love each other. These types of stories start out with disgust, resentment, and hatred and end with the characters realizing they’re in fact, perfect for each other.
As you might imagine, a lot of character development has to happen between the beginning and the ending of hate-to-love romances for this change of heart to seem believable to the reader. Is it tricky to write? Yeah. But is it totally worth it? Yeaaaah!
Looking back on my own writing, I’ve noticed I use this trope a loooot and I really enjoy reading it too. I’ve also noticed a ton of other people really enjoy this trope as well and unsurprisingly, a few great examples of hate-to-love romances are Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. There are of course tons more of examples, but for the sake of this blog post, we’re going to discuss these two classics.
Although it rarely happens in real life, hate-to-love romance is a pleasure to read and a pleasure to write because it makes your story a thousand times more dynamic and interesting due to the big change of heart and the extensive character development that must take place to pull this kind of romance off. When done well, these kinds of stories are incredibly addictive and are hard for readers to put down.
So with my experience of writing and nerding out about hate-to-love romance, today I am going to show you how to craft a realistic-feeling and brilliant story arc that will take your characters from enemies to more-than-friends.
Step 1: Establish the reason for all the hate
First off, we have to establish why our MC’s hate each other. Whether they’ve hated each other for a long time, or they’re only just now meeting for the first time and aren’t exactly hitting it off, no one hates without a reason. Hate is the flip opposite of love and as such can be an equally strong feeling, therefore we need the reason behind it to be just as strong. What “hate” boils down to in this context is a negative judgement one character makes about another based on their misbelief or perspective.
So, what negative judgments do your character make about each other?
Matthew Macfadyen as Mr.Darcy and Kiera Knightley as Elizabeth Benet in Pride and Prejudice (2005).
Let take Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for example, where Elizabeth first meets Mr. Darcy and is immediately put off by his palpable pride and arrogance, not to mention his miserable expression and on the other hand, we have Mr. Darcy who can describes the laughing, and lighthearted Lizzie as “barely tolerable” and is repelled by her family and their lack of propriety. It’s definitely not a smooth start to one of the greatest love stories of all time.
Bad impressions are usually the root of all dislike. When we don’t know someone, we try decide whether or not we should trust them and when they display any sign of being unlikable in our eyes, our brains, and hearts are quick to judge.
Writing exercise: The First Meeting
If you’ve never written the first meeting of you MC’s into their backstory (even if it doesn’t show up in the actual story) I highly, highly recommend doing so. Write out the scene, feel the tension, and get to know the reason for their disliking each other like the back of your hand. I’m serious. Write out the scene start-to-finish and fully understand what their reason for hating each other is and trust me, once you do you will have a much easier time writing about them and their mutual dislike of one another.
Step 2: Who hates who?
Relationships, even ones hewn from hate are usually a lot more than just “we hate each other.” As you can imagine from the first step, there is so much more tension and conflict boiling under the surface. What if it’s much deeper than that—what if the bad feeling isn’t exactly mutual? What if person A hates person B but person B is in love with person A? That makes for a much more tense, more conflicting love story, especially if they end up together after all. Talk about drama! The plot thickens, my writerly friends, the plot thickens!
Although this is still hate-to-love romance, this kind of imbalance throws a monkey wrench into an otherwise simply romantic relationship and is one of my absolute favorite tropes to write because you can throw in all kinds of twists and turns that will throw off the reader while they’re concerned with the almost tangible tension of the main characters.
Megan Follows as Anne Shirley and Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables (1985).
Let’s take Anne of Green Gables, for example. The two main characters, Anne and Gilbert get too pretty bad first impressions of each other when he teases her on her first day of school and she breaks a writing slate over his head. Yeah, not a good first impression, guys. Not good at all. However, what Anne doesn’t realize is that Gilbert actually likes her, despite his boyish teasing and their competitive relationship that follows that first encounter. He likes her fiery spirit and determination to better him and the reader quickly becomes swept up in their relationship because they want to know what kind of change of heart will happen to these two dynamic and opposing characters. But you know what they say about opposites attracting, right ? What happens when they both change their minds about each other? Then, my friends, we have a wonderfully romantic mess on our hands.
Step 3: The Middle-Ground of Friendship
Thirdly, DO NOT forget the halfway point between love and hate, friendship. Nothing will make your hate-to-love romance seem unrealistic more so than leaving out this key story arc. You must, must, must have this to make a flawless and believable transition between your characters hating and loving each other. A change of heart never comes suddenly. It’s not an overnight thing; it happens over time. I like to think of it like the alphabet; between A and Z there are twenty-four other letters that act as steppingstones for the characters to bridge the gap and experience the change of heart needed for any good hate-to-love romance. Use these other letters, these other moments that take place in the middle-ground to make the hate-to-love transition believable to your readers. This time is great for building your character’s friendship or forcing them to make do with “we don’t know what this is and we’re getting along, but it’s weird.”
Step 4: Let the Change of Heart Go Unnoticed
This makes for an extremely effective hate-to-love transition, especially when the character’s themselves are unaware of it, even if the reader can tell what is going on.
For example, at the end of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth asks Mr. Darcy when he started to fall in love with her and he replies:
“I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
Ugh, can I just??
See, even Mr. Darcy didn’t know the exact moment he’d fallen in love with Elizabeth.
Step 5: Let Your Characters Resist Love
Chances are your characters have been hating each other for a long time, whether in the backstory or over the course of your own novel, and anything new, unfamiliar, or different will likely scare them. They’ve been hating each other for all this time and now, romance and love are uncharted waters for these people. Chances are that when they first feel love after hating each other so long, they’re not going to admit they were wrong right away and start loving each other—no, they’ll probably experience some friction. They’ll likely be thinking, “Eww, is this what emotions are like? Get it off of me!” or something to that effect.
This adverse effect to the change in heart that occurs in hate-to-love romance is what makes this trope so enjoyable and often comical. The psychological side of it is that we often resist any type of change, especially changes in heart from enemies to friends and more. When our hard-won beliefs are challenged, our first instinct is to dig our heels in even deeper and resist the new emotions. What happens to the characters in these critical turning points is they are experiencing three key emotions that we absolutely must dive into and that’s a) vulnerability, b) fear, and c) desire for comfort. The characters, just like us, are afraid to step out of their comfort zone and into uncharted waters. They’re afraid to try new things, feel new emotions, and welcome change of any kind, and the character should display these feelings of resistance in your hate-to-love story as well.
Of course, their attempts to stay on the warpath are futile and both you and your reader knows this. However, you have to at least let them try. Give them some time to wallow in these misguided, resisting emotions and allow them to grow from it. If your characters caved to the first shred of affection they felt from their nemesis, then your readers won’t be please, I can tell you that much.
Megan Follows as Anne Shirley and Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables (1985).
Let’s go back to Anne of Green Gables, shall we? It takes Anne a lot of time and introspection to realize she does indeed have feelings for Gilbert. She has to swallow the hard pills of her pride and stubbornness and come to grips with the fact that she was wrong all this time—not an easy realization for anyone.
Of course, your characters’ hate-to-love story will be unique to them—but how they handle the transition and how it shapes them and effects them as the story progresses—that’s what the story is truly about.
That’s it for my 5 Tips for Creating Irresistible Hate-to-Love Romance. What do you think of these tips? Do you enjoy reading or writing hate-to-love, or both? What are some of your favorite hate-to-love novels or films? Let me know in the comments below!