: Re: How do you make two characters fall in love? I'm writing a high school romance story. My story centers around two characters falling in love, but I can't find a way to make their romance

@Kevin153

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I heard some very good advice in this area (can't remember where it came from, sorry). Ask yourself; what quality does each lover possess that fulfills the deepest need in the other? Those qualities are what make it feel inevitable to readers that these two people would fall in love.

There are a million and one variations that can be played, and they all depend on the personalities of your characters.

You mentioned that your female character is wealthy and popular. What does she lack? He should embody these traits.

Maybe she is popular because of her wealth, because of her family, because she is beautiful. Maybe she wants someone who can love her without her wealth or without her family or her looks. Maybe when they meet he doesn't know who she is, or she has just been in an accident and looks hideous or something like that. (Imagine her stumbling into a wasp's nest and getting stung all over. He saves her, probably getting stung himself in the process. He always thought she was stuck-up and unattainable, she thought he was a coward because everyone called him one. They get thrown together and figure out neither was what they thought)

Maybe she feels like her life has been predetermined, or that she doesn't have any choice about where she is going. She wants someone who won't control her, maybe someone who doesn't feel threatened when she makes her own choices.

Maybe she comes from a broken home and she needs someone who she knows she can count on. Maybe she is surrounded by greed and dishonesty and he's honest and content with what he's got. Maybe she's surrounded by cowards and he's a brave man. Maybe her life is threatened and he steps in to save her. And so on.

Now, what does he need? He's poor and bullied. His pride has probably been stomped all over so he needs someone who isn't judgmental and who sees the diamond beneath the rough, as it were. He needs someone who will stand up for him, but not in a way that unmans him.

He needs someone who is vulnerable because it's very hard to fall for someone without vulnerability. For a person who feels powerless, having the power to save someone else can be a powerful aphrodisiac :)

Maybe he has unpleasant relatives who treat him like trash because they are poor. Having the woman who loves him be socially superior, wealthier, and a far better person, could make for some really satisfying scenes as she sends them scurrying off with tails between proverbial legs.

Anyway, once you decide what qualities will bring them together, you can decide what events occur to show each of them how this person who they may have disliked at first was not actually who they thought. At that point, readers should feel that their growing love is inevitable because they anticipate how the two will complete each other.

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