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But as of late, especially in YA novels, it seems that love
triangles have become somewhat of a prerequisite—a cliché, even. Many novels
follow the girl has male best friend/meets new boy/but best friend has loved
her all along/oh but the new boy is so hot/but the best friend/but new hot
guy!- plot, and hey, I’m certainly not complaining about it—as I said before,
love triangles can certainly be one of the guilty pleasures we like to read,
but it makes me start to wonder…are they becoming overdone?
I’d like to clarify that I’m well aware there are many YA
novels that avoided the love triangle completely—Divergent by Veronica Roth and Across the Universe by Beth Revis are two examples I can think of off the top of
my head—but the more I see the best friend/new guy love triangle, the more I’ve
started to realize that it has indeed started to become a cliché.
The problem with love triangles, my friends, is that they’re
becoming predictable.
I’m not saying that this means we shouldn’t write any more
love triangles, or that love triangles are bad
in any way. What I am saying is if
you do decide to write a love triangle into your story, you might want to ask
yourself how your love triangle is any different from the others already out
there. I challenge you not to rely on your first plotting love triangle
instinct—I challenge you to push beyond the best friend/hot new guy cliché. Ask
yourself what the purpose of your love triangle is—what are you trying to show
your readers?
A strength, I think, of love triangles is it shows something
we don’t often like to talk about—that love is messy. Love isn’t this neat
little thing we can put into a box and tie off with a ribbon—love is confusing
and exhausting and it has a mind of its own and sometimes love is wonderful but
sometimes love is cruel. Love triangles show us all that—they show us that we
don’t always know as much about love as we originally planned, that love can
create a wonderful relationship, yes, but sometimes love hurts because it
doesn’t always strike both ways. Sometimes, (and in the case of love
triangles—always) there will be someone left out.
To me, that’s the purpose of love triangles, but until we
break out of the formulaic relationships that many novels have fallen victim
to, that message—that purpose—gets lost in the mix. Rather than a story about
love, it can quickly become another generic boy-meets-girl-meets-boy scenario,
and although they’re fun to read, they don’t always hit home.
I like love triangles, and when done correctly I think they
can add a powerful dimension to our stories. But don’t let your characters
become part of another formula—show us their relationship means something more.
45 comments:
Great points to consider, Ava! I'm working on that in my WIP, trying to make sure the complications of love don't present as cliche and love triangle wanna be fodder. Great post as always! :D
Thanks, Donald! The right balance can be hard to achieve, but there are few things more enjoyable to read than a pitch-perfect romance subplot. :D
My favorite love triangle ever is the one between Richard, Lois, and Clark in the Superman Returns movie. The screenwriter and James Marsden both took the time to make Richard a three-dimensional person with many of the same noble and heroic qualities that attracted Lois to Clark/Supes. They made it complicated and messy, always something that I appreciate.
You know, I completely forgot about that movie until you mentioned it, but come to think of it, Richard was definitely pretty hefty competition for Clark in the Returns movie. Nice pick! :)
I would honestly rather have my characters splitting up or going through a rough time than having them being happy ever after. It's more than seeing the characters happy, it's about giving them what they should have, or what they deserve, whether it's good or bad. Classic love triangles being overdone bore me, so I cannot let myself do the same thing. Maybe that's a good thing when it comes to writing, to a certain extent.
Interesting thoughts! I think being realistic and reflecting the reality of real-life relationships can be much more powerful than assuming it'll all be happily ever after.
To me, the most powerful love triangles always represent a choice about who the MC is, not who the guy is.
I think when done right a love triangle is a great way to produce tension. If it's just in there for no good reason, then eh, I could without them.
I really like that! Certainly applies to the love triangle in The Hunger Games. I wonder what other love triangles I can think of that reflect that...
Few things are worth the time if they're there just for the sake of being there, and I certainly agree that that applies to love triangles as well.
The most common problem I have with love triangles is that some authors seem to want to play the "eternal, undying love" angle and the "doubt and uncertainty because that other guy's sooper hot" angle simultaneously. It can't be both, dammit.
So true. Some love triangles work wonderfully well...but others, in my opinion, miss the point of relationships entirely.
I personally love a good love-triangle story, especially when it adds to the conflict and keeps the main character from getting what he/she wants. Having a love-triangle just for the sake of having a love-triangle is a little dull. But like Susan said: "To me, the most powerful love triangles always represent a choice about who the MC is." So then it stands to ask, how would choosing one over the other truly affect the hero/heroine?
I th
I really like what Susan said, too. A love triangle that reflects something in the MC not only makes the choice that the protagonist eventually makes memorable, but gives it a much deeper meaning.
Love ladders--can't say I've heard that term before, but I think I understand what you mean. Those situations can be pretty interesting.
And when the best friend is one corner of a love triangle, it's a little unrealistic. Especially if they['re pre-school friends.
On one hand I kind of understand the best friend corner, but it's tricky to get right (and make believable).
I'd like to see love triangles from another characters POV. Maybe not from the person receiving, but one of the competitors. Or perhaps from some one mostly uninvolved (a la The Great Gatsby). Or maybe even exploring even more complex scenarios. What if a guy was in love with girl who was in love with another girl but not opposed to the advances of guys? What about a "Crazy Stupid Love" situation where one spouse is clearly still in love with the other but there are things preventing reciprocation?
It just seems to me like there are such limitless facets to explore with love triangles that I don't understand the intrigue and obsession of the standard best friend/new guy love story. Maybe they are too messy for YA literature? But most other literature seems to suffer from the same problem so I don't know.
I remember reading this post when it first went up.
Thinking about it, love triangles, or even romance in general, are THE cliche of YA at the moment, since it's something that can be done in all genres. Often, they don't contribute much to the story as a whole. And sometimes, even if it's the main point, it just doesn't click.
I need to remember this for future reference.
I'm honestly not entirely sure what caused the explosion of best friend/new guy love triangles. I suppose they're easy to imagine and the scenarios can vary greatly while still falling under the bf/ng category, but as you very rightly pointed out, there are so many other love triangle options that aren't nearly as well explored.
Hmmm. Personally, I like the romance subplots that are in most of the novels I read (and I read a lot of YA), but as I was talking about in this post, we have to be careful not to throw in a love triangle for the sake of there being a love triangle.
Actually, something I liked about Veronica Roth's Divergent series is that there isn't a love triangle--the romance aspect is a very realistic view of the difficulties and nuances of a relationship that go on between two people. There doesn't need to be a third party for a relationship to be complicated.
I agree with you on Divergent. In the first book, there's that entire problem of it being a student-teacher relationship that isn't out of the question, yet it's questionable.
The relationship is a bit all over the place in the 2nd book, though.
I occasionally got frustrated with the relationship in Insurgent, however I thought it was a pretty realistic depiction, especially considered how stubborn certain characters (*cough* Tris *cough*) are.
Tris in Book Two indeed took a certain turn. Sort of like Katniss. Both characters suffer lots of trauma, changing them as people for the worse.
Although some people don't like their protagonists to have such traits (ie. sociopathy, consistent recklessness), it's interesting seeing a character suffering from them.
And if Tris is lucky, we as readers will root for her once she shakes off the fugue.
I can definitely see the similarities between Katniss's transition from Catching Fire to Mockingjay and Tris's transition from Divergent to Insurgent. Both were saddening (and in my opinion, especially in Tris's case, slightly infuriating) changes that caused a lot of suffering for the characters.
I find love triangles irritating sometimes (albeit there are exceptions). I think the main reason is that I can often guess who the main character will end up with - usually the 'bad boy' or loner type character, although this isn't always the case. Also, I agree that the best friend and new guy triangle is getting pretty old, and I'd like to see more male protagonist love triangles, though assumptions about him being a 'player' may mean these are avoided.
Shortly after writing this post I actually read a book with a male protagonist love triangle--in that case it worked because there were legitimate reasons for his dilemma and it wasn't a matter of who was hotter or betraying one or the other or anything like that, so the player thing was avoided. However, who he was going to end up with was pretty predictable, so there's that. Love triangles are hard to pull off convincingly (especially because they've become so cliche), but they can work if done correctly and with a real reason behind it.
Great post! I actually wrote a bit about this earlier this week (http://nickieanderson.blogspot.com/2012/07/best-romances-in-literature.html)
Sometimes love stories can absolutely cheese me off, and love triangles tend to be the worst offenders (in my opinion). Like you said, the current love triangle cliche is boy next door/best friend type pitted against dreamy McDreamboat new guy. Love can run so much deeper than that, and I think it's our responsibility as writers to show love in all of it's many forms. Does the MC have to be romantically in love with her boy best friend? Not necessarily. They could simply love each other as honest and true friends.
Hmm. More love story things for me to think about as I work on my WIP! :)
There are so many possibilities for romance plots and subplots than the best friend/new hot guy love triangle. It makes me happy when I see variations in novels, because it just goes to show that relationships are deeper than choosing between two hot guys. :)
Howdy! Were you somehow able to complete all the settings of your website by yourself or you asked for some help?
Here I go commenting on old posts again (shame on me). I wrote a love triangle into my WIP by accident. I had a girl meet a boy, and then the girl goes on an adventure, and there was another boy there. Now there are two boys -sigh- but fortunately they're not the core of the plot. Sort of. Okay they are. But the romance is not the core of the plot. Sort of. I'm doomed -___-
Firstly, no need to apologize for commenting on old posts--in fact, I welcome it. Thanks for taking the time to not only dig through my archives, but comment on them as well. :)
Second, as I said in the post, I don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with love triangles--they can work and they've proved to be an interesting added element to work with. You just have to be careful not to let them fall into the same love triangle cliche while you're using it. :)
The NaNo I am currently ripping to shreds with red ink (Go, December!) has a love triangle. I decided on a different take on it, and decided on choosing a guy for POV, instead of the normal girl POV with two guys. This is the first time I've ever tried writing a love story, much less a novel. Crossing my fingers!
I love when people flip tropes on their heads. I've only ever read one male POV love triangle, and it wasn't a fair one because I knew from the beginning who was going to win. But! It was interesting to read and while I think I was a teensie bit harder on the protag, I think it has potential to break out of the typical love triangle box as long as it doesn't follow the same formula otherwise.
I wish you all the best with your novel and edits! Sounds like exciting stuff. :)
This has been an interesting and helpful read! For my NaNo novel I've got stuck in a cliche love triangle (and I'm not a big fan of them) but I didn't want to just write it out but you've challenged my thoughts and maybe I can make this work
(Also, this post is old but it's the best I've found so far on the internet)
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Hi Fiona!
So glad to hear you found the post helpful! I think love triangles can be interesting if done correctly (for example, since writing this post, I read an excellent love square that I totally adored), but it's easy to fall into the cliché. That being said, if you're aware of the clichés, I think it becomes easier to avoid them and try a more creative spin, or make it work in some other way.
Good luck with your NaNo novel! :)
We must read very different books. In the fiction I consume (in various forms...), the love triangle is more of a staple that the Chosen One trope. In just about any shoujo manga you care to name (and in most shounen too) there will be:
a) a second love interest for the main character
b) a rival love interest for the main love interest
or c) both.
It happens in other fiction too, to varying degrees. If you're counting any situation where one character has more than one love interest at the same time: Percy Jackson and the Olympians had Annabeth/Percy/Rachel and Percy/Annabeth/Luke; the sequel series had Frank/Hazel/Leo, Piper/Jason/Reyna, Annabeth/Percy/Nico, Leo/Calypso/Percy, plus others I've forgotten; Harry Potter has Ron/Hermione/Krum and Harry/Ginny/Dean (as minor as that one is...); Anne of Green Gables has Gilbert/Anne/Roy, plus the many, many others from various sideplots; the new Doctor Who has Rose/Doctor/Martha in the third season and Rory/Amy/Doctor in the fifth; Once Upon a Time has Hook/Emma/Neal, Mary Margaret/David/Kathrine, and Hook/Milah/Rumple; Danny Phantom had Sam/Danny/Paulina, Sam/Danny/Valerie, Danny/Sam/Elliot, Phantom/Paulina/Fenton, and Jack/Maddie/Vlad; the list goes on and on and on.
There's a list of examples on this page much, much, much longer than any list I could hope to compile:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoveTriangle
If you want a story with multiple love interests and don't mind a dose of Japanese pop culture, I highly recommend Nisekoi. It's a little plotless, but it's silly and all of the characters are well developed and, at 120 chapters in, I still can't tell who is going to win.
In fanfiction, too, if you take any one ship and the closest friend/love interest of the opposite sex (or even the same sex, sometimes) of one of the members, at least half of the fics are bound to contain, if not an outright love triangle, then at least some jealousy that can go either way.
My point is that love triangles come in a huge, well-explored spectrum, and the new guy/best friend angle only happens sometimes. It's not a shame to have a love triangle, and, like any other plot device, can be done well or terribly, depending on how skillfully you handle it.
Triangles I actually haven't seen done enough: a boy and a girl vying for the same person's (romantic) affection and/or triangles that end in both sides winning (polyamorously).
Disclaimer: I totally understand that you weren't dissing love triangles in general, you just seemed a little underinformed on the subject (no offense!). :P
(Well that was one monster of a comment.)
So I actually agree with you on some points.
Firstly, I don't read manga or fanfiction (not that I have anything against either! They're just not my cup of tea), so I definitely wasn't commenting on those (and in the post, I even specifically said I was mostly talking about YA, so that cuts out...a lot of your examples). I am totally 150% aware that there are great love triangles out there that don't fit into the cliché I was seeing a lot of almost three years ago (that's when this post was written).
As for your points, I agree that there are loads of love triangles that work really well, and I also agree that it can be done well or not so much depending on how the writer handles it (I even say as much in the post).
All of that said, I think within YA specifically (I don't read enough MG to comment on that, and tackling TV tropes is a whole 'nother post—and not really what I was talking about here), the love triangle between a female protagonist, a hot new guy and her hot best friend was a trope that was used a lot. It's something I've seen less of over the past couple years since writing this post (The Grisha trilogy, for example, has one of my favorite love squares ever, and the Shatter Me series has a really interesting take on the friend/new guy love triangle), but at least when I wrote the post, it was relatively common. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing (after all, I even said in the post that it can sometimes work!), but it was definitely bordering on overdone/cliché.
Basically, all I was saying was to be careful if you decide to write a love triangle, not to fall into the same pattern without giving it plenty of thought and making sure you're using the love triangle to its best potential. I personally think love triangles are fun and can be really effective, but like most things with writing, pulling it off successfully requires a lot of thought.
I'm actually attempting to write a novel right now that has a love triangle with a male protagonist.
After reading your post, my love triangle actually does fit a cliché. You've got the childhood friend who he already has a crush on and then you've got the new girl.
That said, the new girl is actually a bit of a villain. She killed the protagonists father and works for the antagonist, whose goal is to open up a portal that will kill millions of people. Funny thing is, the new girl is actually going to win.
Hopefully that makes it interesting enough to make up for the cliché.
It's kind of hard for me to guess whether or not it'll work based off a few sentences, so I think your best resource will be CP feedback when you get to that stage. Being aware of the clichés, however, can hopefully help you know what to avoid or what to work around to try to make it fresh and new. Good luck!
I have a love triangle in one of my stories, though it's a bit different from those previously mentioned as it's the main character and her sister both have a crush on their childhood friend, though the main charrie refuses to go after the guy out of respect to her sister. In the end, though, neither of them get the guy, as our main character eventually gets over her crush and the sister... goes kind of crazy, and instead the dude settles down with the sisters' far more optimistic and cheerful cousin.
Honestly, though, I'd really like to see a love triangle where the main character is bisexual and has feelings for her two best friends who are different genders, but it's kind of complicated to choose between them as the two friends have feelings for each other. I think that would be an interesting dynamic.
YESSSSSSS. I want to see a bisexual love triangle, too. I've heard that Malinda Lo wrote one in ADAPTATION (I think?) but I haven't read it yet. But I agree and I'd love to see that too!
Super old post I know, but just wanted to comment that I recently read the infernal devices and found the love triangle in that trilogy to be absolutely brilliant. Don't want to spoil anything by describing it, but I love love loved those books.
That's good to know! I haven't picked up the Infernal Devices books...but that's definitely good to know. :)
(Also, feel free to comment on a post regardless of how it is. I will still answer.)
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