Romance Tropes: Friends to Lovers

It’s the season of love (or blanket burritos, or both), so I’m continuing my romance tropes series with the obvious sequel to my enemies to lovers post—an analysis of friends to lovers!

Friends to lovers is a much-beloved trope. It’s cozy, it’s heartwarming, it makes us feel good about the world. But much like enemies to lovers (or any other romance trope we might chat about), writing a compelling friends-to-lovers story is often easier said than done.

The central arc of a friends-to-lovers story is that—big reveal time—the main characters start as friends and something in the story happens to make them fall in love.

So why aren’t they together yet?

My first question to consider is the same one I’ll ask for most romance novels. What, at the start of the story, is keeping the main characters apart? 

In a friends-to-lovers story, there are a few main possibilities. (Drop a comment on this blog post if you can think of more!)

1. One or both of the characters have not yet realized their feelings for the other.
2. One or both of the characters are secretly in love but think their love is unrequited.
3. One or both of the characters don’t want to risk the friendship.
4. One or both of the characters aren’t out as queer yet.

These circumstances leave us with a beginning of a romance novel in which the characters are in a state of either uncertainty or ignorance. Either they haven’t come to terms with their own feelings, or they are worried about what will happen if they declare themselves. As such, at the start of the story, we have characters who are solidly—and, at this point, exclusively—friends.

How does the central plot push them from friends to lovers?

I find that this is a tricky issue with a friends-to-lovers story. In other romance novels, we can use tools like forced proximity to heighten our characters’ bonds. 

But in a friends-to-lovers story, our characters probably already have a tight bond. They’ve probably spent lots of time alone together. You can’t just chuck ’em together in a hotel room or a tent, because they’ve probably done that. 

We also likely don’t have our main characters fixating on each other the way we would in an enemies-to-lovers story. As Lacie Waldon writes in “How To Write a Friends-to-Lovers Romance (When You’re Addicted to the Enemies-to-Lovers Trope),” enemies to lovers gives you, to some extent, “free rein to run wild with the characters.” Waldon writes, “You don’t have to like someone to be attracted to them. Whether you’re thinking good thoughts about them or bad, you’re still thinking about them.” If your characters start as buddies, they probably aren’t thinking about each other 24/7.

What we need in a friends-to-lovers story is a central plot event that acts as a catalyst to change the friendship. Maybe one of them wins tickets for a romantic getaway weekend, and because she’s single, she invites her best friend. Maybe one character goes so far above and beyond the normal lines of friendship that the other falls for them.

There has to be a central catalyzing event to make a friends-to-lovers story exciting. Because cozy friends slowly and uneventfully falling in love rarely makes a compelling story.

(Sometimes it works! Legends and Lattes was so successful because it did precisely that—two characters run a coffee shop together, become friends, help each other, and gradually and quietly fall in love. But usually, we need more than coziness to make a story work.)

Consider how your central plot connects to the romantic arc, and make sure that your catalyst for the relationship is also central to the story.

How does the romantic and sexual tension change over the course of the story?

With a friends-to-lovers plotline, we might not get sexual tension right from the start. Our characters should have great chemistry, but that could, at first, be mostly just platonic. 

As the central plot forces the relationship to evolve, we need to see that evolution in how the characters relate to each other. They can’t just be friends and then lovers—we need to witness and believe the progression.

What I think people struggle with most in a friends-to-lovers arc is convincingly increasing the tension throughout the book until it breaks. If your characters have great chemistry and banter from the start, what makes their relationship different by the end?

This is equally true (honestly, I think it’s even more true) in a low-heat romance. Romance novels certainly don’t need to have sex scenes in them, but we need to believe that the characters are in love. In a low-heat friends-to-lovers story, it’s essential to show your readers that the romance and longing are central to the story.

How are you convincing your readers that your characters are better as partners than friends?

In a friends-to-lovers story, your characters already have a meaningful relationship. A good friendship is a wonderful thing, and the idea that a romantic relationship is better than a platonic one is frustrating and unhelpful. 

Therefore, we need a reason why the characters were, in this story, good as friends but even better as romantic partners. Why was friendship not enough for them? How does a romantic relationship improve your characters’ lives, and what was lacking in their lives beforehand?

This is, at heart, the central question you’ll need to consider when coming up with the premise for your friends-to-lovers story. Why are you writing your novel as a romance instead of a zany story about two friends? Figure out your answer, and you’ll be well on your way.

Does your friends-to-lovers story need a helping hand?

As we’ve explored in this blog post, writing a friends-to-lovers story can be trickier than it seems. But when we get it right, it’s oh so satisfying.

If your friends-to-lovers romance could be made more compelling by an editorial review, Rookwood Editing is here to help! Get in touch today to make your romance novel the best it can be.