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@rose-colored-fancy

I’m actually in the middle of writing an enemies-to-friends arc, which is a lot of fun. I considered making it an enemies-to-lovers arc, but the characters just don’t work together at all. (And there were a lot of personal issues between them. Like, a lot.)

Oh that’s really cool! Yeah I think it’s better to get to know the characters first before making any relationship decisions. If you don’t mind, I’d really love to know more about your two characters 🙂

I think one of the key places where it usually goes wrong is that they take enemies-to-lovers too literally and try to go right from one to the other without a healthy transition. (I think enemies-to-friends-to-lovers is actually a separate trope, but I consider them the same thing XD)

Usually, in the beginning, both characters are just like, “Oh, we’re supposed to be enemies, but I really want to kiss him/her.” So then they get together and that’s it.

I mean… kill the tension, why don’t you?! There’s no fun if there’s no internal conflict.

Yeah I agree, it’s just badly done if there is no logical healthy transition. I plan on making my couples enemies then allies then friends and THEN lovers. But the guy loves her the whole time, he just doesn’t want to admit it XD. And internal conflict is so great, you can’t do a good story without it. Tension is important!!

It’s a lot more fun for the characters to hate each other with all their hearts and have an extremely biased view of the other one but then they both keep repeatedly acting out of the ‘villain’ script and they both start to get a tiny bit of respect and feel like they’re betraying themselves and they do everything to deny it but they finally come together after lots of sarcastic banter and I enjoy that way too much XD (I have never written a sentence that long. That was impressive!) I like seeing characters kick their own feelings XD

I love the idea of love arising from great respect! You definitely just described what my characters are going through, I just can’t wait to get more into their relationship XD

Anyway, one of the things that really kills it for me is if they just completely skip the friendship stage. It just kinda feels unrealistic to me XD I’m not saying it can’t be done well, but I like seeing them slowly start to respect and then like each other, as opposed to them just… hating each other but still wanting to kiss? Or something? Admittedly, I don’t ship characters easily XD And I also suck at writing romance in general. So, any advice I give definitely isn’t from writing experience. XD

Yeah good couples always need to be good friends first and foremost, I agree. And your advice was pretty sound! Thanks for the tips Rose 🙂

It actually sounds like you have a good base, especially because they dislike each other because of outside forces/biases. And it’s so much better if you pair it with a redemption arc! I actually really like it when characters actually recognize that they did something wrong and apologize for it. That sounds so obvious but the alternative is that the author tries to explain it away instead of just recognizing they did wrong and I see that too often :/

Thanks I’m glad you think so! I had to give them a solid, simple reason to hate each other and that was the most obvious choice. I also hate it when characters never recognise that they did bad things and the author justifies their actions instead. That’s what they did with Once Upon a Time. Almost all of the villains did awful things that were justified because of their motivations or tragic backstories. Its so very annoying :/ I just have this huge desire to make my male anti-hero really tearful and full of regret, especially towards his girl, after he realises what terrible things he did.

Eeps! The dreaded plot holes that collapse your carefully crafted outline! I hate it when that happens! Hope you fix it soon!

Yeah I think I might have half solved it, I just can’t bring myself to write when I have a glaring dilemma with my narrative, even though I know that generally I figure things out best when I’m actually writing. It’s just so hard sometimes because I’m a perfectionist 🙁