: Re: How to prevent "they're falling in love" trope I have two characters, the male being sort of a jerk, but lightening up later in the story, and the female is...very hateful. But a person who

@Sent2472441

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Embrace it instead, and make the reader suffer for having even thought of it

What you have there is a reader's commitment to a goal. They expect two characters to get together from page 1, and in the first few pages you should perhaps give them some hints that it may occur. Once the reader is emotionally invested in it, rooting for this particular outcome, don't deliver it. Put struggles, doubts, conflict, issues, anything to make it harder and harder; at the same time make it clear "how great it would have been if they had been together".

Et voilà. You used a trope to engage your reader, but you didn't step immediately into it, perhaps you won't step into it at all. You can use it to propel your story forward, and recall it wisely with some false alarms to awaken the reader's attention every now and then. Just because a trope exists it is not necessarily a bad thing to exploit the expectations it creates.

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