By Jessica Kate, @JessicaKate05

Do you adore love/hate character arcs like those found in Pride and Prejudice, You’ve Got Mail or His Girl Friday…but when you try to write them in your own novel, they don’t quite click? 

You may have received feedback like, “these characters are too mean to each other” or “there’s a lot of banter but it’s kind of purposeless”. Don’t worry! Your love/hate character arc (also known as the ‘enemies to lovers’ or ‘enemies to allies’ trope, depending if it’s a romance or friendship story) is totally fixable – and the three tips in these two blog posts will go a long way to getting you there. 

We covered guideline #1 in the first blog post – Root the conflict in opposing worldviews, not just misunderstandings. Now, we’re here to cover guidelines #2 and #3, which are closely linked: 

2. Keep the pranks, sabotage and ‘hate fights’ in the first half of the book. 

It feels wrong, I know. I can hear you gasp: “Only the first half? But the banter is the best part of the book! What will I write in the second half?!” 

Before you reject the idea, I challenge you to watch three of your favorite love/hate movies and pause them in the middle. Take note of when the bulk of the ‘hate’ stuff happens. Lizzy and Darcy’s sharpest banter all happens before his middle-of-the-story proposal. In The Prince of Persia, Jake Gyllenhaal and the princess only sabotage each other in the first half. And in You’ve Got Mail, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s main rivalry happens before the middle of the story, where Tom Hanks’ character realizes just who is pen pal really is. 

So then, what conflict can you use to keep your story interesting in the second half of the book? I’m so glad you asked:

3. Unite the characters as a team against an external threat in the second half of the book. 

If you’re waiting until your end-of-the-book climax for your characters to begin acting as a team, then you’ve waited TOO LONG! After hundreds of pages of disharmony, the reader will struggle to believe that your characters have magically changed their minds at the eleventh hour. 

If you want to convince your readers that these characters can really be great as a united force, consider shifting this turnaround to the middle of the book.

Now, don’t mishear me: your romantic leads don’t have to become a couple at this point. But they do need to begin acting as a team more than they’re fighting. And the best way to do that is to give them a common enemy. This enemy (or antagonist) could be a person, a financial situation, a natural disaster…anything! But our characters must be able to stop fighting each other (mostly) and unite against it. 

Now will they fail? Yes. Will they still have conflict with one another? Of course. The push/pull nature of relationship arcs means you’ll utilize both fighting and teamwork as you constantly push your characters closer together and pull them apart. But the point is that the first half should be more fighting than teamwork and the second half should be more teamwork than fighting. Only then will your reader trust that your happily-ever-after really stands a chance against the characters’ conflict-riddled history. 

Want more examples? Check out Pride and Prejudice. After Darcy’s midpoint proposal, Lizzie and Darcy battle Lady Catherine’s disapproval and Wickham’s deception, but not each other. In The Proposal, after Sandra Bullock opens up to Ryan Reynolds about being orphaned, they no longer sabotage each other. But Sandra does have to battle her fear of Ryan’s family discovering their deception, and the diligent government agent seeking to prove their lie and deport her. In  The Prince of Persia, after half a movie of banter and sabotaging each other, Jake Gyllenhaal and the princess unite against his evil uncle and hired assassins.

So, as you plan or edit your next novel with an enemies-to-lovers (or enemies-to-allies) trope, remember to root the characters’ conflict in opposing worldviews, keep the bulk of the pranks/sabotage/hate in the first half, and have the bulk of the teamwork in the second half. 

And have fun revisiting some of your favorite movies and books to check if this pattern holds true—and if it doesn’t, consider whether it would’ve made the story stronger! 😊