Why did my fantasy characters fall in love?

Tropes. Well in my mind everything is a trope, you can't get away from it. All the scenarios have been played out over and over, what matters is how you tell the story and make us care about the people in your work.

I haven't had anybody in my work fall in love without expecting it. I knew when I was writing who they were going to end up with and where they were going. But I've had characters develop and change over time or new important people pop up.

So the answer to your question, Did I fall into a trope? I would say yes. But that isn't bad. With millions of books out there its rare for anyone to surprise me, I can usually peg what is going to happen pretty fast, but if I like the writing and I'm sucked in I enjoy the ride.

Like a roller coaster. From the ground you can see all the loops and turns etc, but that doesn't stop you from enjoy the ride and being surprised when you come sailing around a corner. Seeing the ride laid out doesn't detract from it. That would be my analogy for a trope.

It sounds like both characters have the right kind of internal/external conflicts that would make for good romance.

More broadly, do your characters sometimes fall in love when you don't expect them too?

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I love when contradictory characters fall in love because it leaves so much room for exploration... it's like holding a light to a dark place when one is something that the other isn't. If that happened organically in you writing, I say go with it! (The only down side is that you might end up getting extra novels out of it... oh no!)

I don't necessarily see two characters falling in love as a trope. I call it something that happens in your story.

Tropes have gotten a bad rap that I think is undeserved. Tropes are basically shorthand for things that can happen in a story, and they exist because they permeate storytelling. They're like bones in a story; when those bones are badly-fleshed out then yeah, you get something trite and hackneyed. The key is to do a good job fleshing out your bones.

I feel like you were following a story pattern or an idea that felt more right/interested you more. I'm notorious for carefully crafting a love interest, and then discarding them immediately when drafting. Recent example. Female MC meets male LI in very "he's the LI" way and by chapter 3 they're kind of friends. By chapter 13 they're still just friends. In chapter 25 new character, female from MC's past is introduced and all of a sudden she is the love interest and the story ends with them beginning a relationship, planned, plotted, and characterized LI left by the wayside.

I'd say that even if you wrote yourself into a trope, it's one you like since you accidentally found your way there. Tropes aren't bad if they're used for good and not evil.

Patty said:

Question:

Did i fall into a trope?

More broadly, do your characters sometimes fall in love when you don't expect them too?

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Yes, you did, but it's probably impossible to write a coherent and relatable story that doesn't incorporate some familiar tropes. Tropes resonate with people, which is why they show up often enough to be catalogued. The question is really whether you do it well and convincingly enough for it to work for readers in your target audience, and whether or not your approach was fresh enough that readers won't be thinking of it as a cliche. The main thing that bugs me about "boy meets girl" tropes is when the girl is nothing more than a plot device and isn't a fully fleshed and developed character in her own right (or when the only thing the guy seems to care about. the only basis of attraction, is her appearance).

Actually, I tend to find stories where no one falls for anyone, or where there aren't (at least) some pretty intense feelings and dynamics between characters in other kinds of relationships, to be rather dull and flat. The way people feel about one another (and the relationships that develop between characters as a story progresses) are a reflection of who they are, and caring for others creates stakes that make characters' choices and dilemmas more compelling.

I'm always baffled by people who say they hate romantic subplots because the characters should be too busy solving the story's main problems to have time to fall in love. In my experience, falling in love is something that nearly always happens when two people who are "too busy" cross paths and develop feelings in spite of that. Shared adversity actually makes it more likely that feelings will develop.

Patty, a random thought I had about tropes - they're like cooking ingredients. If you're making a pizza from scratch, basil will always be delicious. Too much salt is disgusting. I personally like garlic, if it's roasted. Someone told me once about a fig and prosciutto pizza--never once in my life would I have thought of that on my own.

So it's worthwhile to see what ingredients are common, what combinations and how much are frequently used. It's useful to look at other people's recipes and see where you can innovate.

When I plot, I love browsing through tropes for ideas (ummm one of my guilty pleasures is the deadpan writing on TVtropes) because I'm often like, "Ooh, why didn't I think to include some of that?" I think it's riskier to use tropes unconsciously because that's when they run the risk being pure cliche.

How much culture we consume also fascinates me. It was humbling when I started dorking out on tropes because I realized the scope of what I had swallowed unconsciously. We're all also drawn to the genres we like (readers too) for the common threads they share. Giving people what they want isn't a bad thing... especially if you want money.

I'm always baffled by people who say they hate romantic subplots because the characters should be too busy solving the story's main problems to have time to fall in love.

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The stories that leave out romantic subplots when they clearly should have been developed are a huge source of personal angst for me. (And probably all of Archive of Our Own, but I digress. )

I'm fine with romantic subplots in the face of adversity (and given this is the romance forum you're kind of expecting the main characters to fall in love), but I don't like it when characters who happen to be single for whatever reason are forced into one just because. Annoying as the romance that fails to develop despite all the signs is the one that happens despite the absence of any mutual chemistry or signs of attraction, just because characters apparently aren't allowed to remain single.

I agree tropes are hard to get away from but as long as you are creative with your storytelling it doesn't really matter. As far as having characters change love interest, it sort of happens to me. When I start writing, I don't fully know my characters well so as they and the plot develop, sometimes the characters change too. Like when I initially began with current WIP (about three years ago) the heroine was quite impulsive and whimsical so I viewed her as being quite young initially and the hero was the stoic warrior alpha type so I viewed him as quite older. However, as I plotted along, my characters age switched though not necessarily their demeanor. But this caused a shift in the way they met to change to a way I had vaguely planned another couple meeting, but it totally suited them better. This has caused me to scrape much of my story but what can you do, you can only write what comes to you