Hey friends! Last week, I shared a few of the worst romance tropes, in my opinion—but plenty of people love those tropes, so it wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously. This week, I’m sharing a list of romance cliches I love.
Wait a minute, you might be saying. Aren’t cliches bad? Eh, not really. Readers can enjoy romantic tropes again and again as long as they’re done in a fresh way. (And on the other hand, they might not enjoy a book with one of their favorite romance tropes if it isn’t handled well.)
Even though I think these are the best romance tropes, they might be ones you loathe. That’s okay! It would be boring if everybody liked the same thing! And this is really only a partial list of romance cliches I love. If I wrote about all of them, this post would take hours to read.
tortured hero with a tragic past
There are lots of these in romance! They had horrible childhoods, survivor’s guilt, they saw terrible things in the war, they made a fatal mistake, and so on. I will never get tired of it. I like tortured heroines, too. It’s easy to root for a character who’s been through hell.
bromance
Okay, this is not really a romance trope; it’s just something that I love in a M/F romance story. A bromance subplot, or at least the hero having a close relationship with a brother or male friend, is something I really enjoy. It’s like a second scoop of emotion added to the story. One of the first romances I ever read (and I came to the genre very late) was The Devil You Know by Liz Carlyle, an emotional Regency romance. The tortured hero with the tragic past and the estranged brothers plot riveted me.
opposites attract
This one is so much fun! The tightly wound character with the free spirit…the soldier and the peacemaker…the scientist and the psychic…the brooding person and the cheery person…you get the idea. It’s so versatile that it’s no wonder it’s such a popular contemporary romance trope.
In an opposites attract romance, the characters complement each other and help each other grow. Often, they share core values, despite how different they appear on the surface. It’s usually a romantic comedy trope, but it can work in more serious stories, too.
amnesia romance
I love amnesia stories! (And not just in romance—the Jason Bourne movies are some of my very favorites.) Retrograde amnesia is much more common in fiction than in real life, but I find both fictional and real-life accounts of amnesia absolutely fascinating. They bring up such interesting questions about the nature of relationships and identity. That’s one of the reasons I wrote The Equinox Stone.
time travel
Specifically, I like a guy from another era in the present day, being all charming and bewildered and not exactly appropriate. (A Timeless Christmas, which we published at my workplace, is one example!) If I met an actual guy from another century, he’d probably annoy the hell out of me with his prejudices, but hey, this is fantasy.
virgin hero or heroine
The latter is much less common, though there are a couple of very popular examples. I like either one—not in every story, but once in a while, you know? A virgin is inherently vulnerable, which makes things more emotional, and it’s enjoyable to see someone learn new things and experience things for the first time. I also have a virginal heroine in The Equinox Stone, and one of my favorite all-time virgin hero romances is Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt. The virgin hero or heroine is more popular, I think, as a historical romance trope than a contemporary romance trope, but you see it plenty in both.
the person with the big secret
They’re falling in love, but if one of them knew the truth about the other, it would all blow up! Good stuff.
Do you have favorite romance tropes? Do you love or hate some of the romance cliches here? Let me know in the comments!
And if you’re interested in a step-by-step way to plan, write, and edit a novel so it’s polished and ready to publish (whether it’s romance, or any genre), pre-order my book Blank Page to Final Draft. You can do one step a week for a year…it fits right into your busy life. Or if you want to go faster and do two, three, or four steps a week, you can do that, too! It’s based on the free series I’m doing right now on YouTube!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re having a great week!
I agree with all of these! I do enjoy reading them all. The book I am working on right now, the main character (female) has a tortured past, and the main love interest (male) is going through his own hell at the moment, so thankfully, the female with experience is there for him.
Ahh, that sounds great! I hope your writing is going well, and hope you are staying safe and healthy!
Oh, I think you and I must like a lot of the same books! 🙂 I especially love the bromance — or really any kind of friendship or strong family relationships for both the leads in a romance. To me, it’s so important that the main characters have other relationships in their lives. As a writer, I find these other relationships to be a great way to develop character in meaningful ways; as a reader, I feel closer to the characters when I know they’re not just obsessing over the other lead. A little bit of obsession is great for building tension and interest; total obsession makes for a flat character and, in real life, a damaged relationship.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on various romance tropes — very fun to read!
Hi, Christina! You’re so right…other relationships make the person feel like, well, a person. Plus, they need someone to talk to about their love life, right? 🙂 Thanks for reading! I hope you’re doing well!
The very last thing I want to read on the planet is an amnesia, time travel, or VIRGIN romance! OMG, the horror! LOL! 😀 But that’s why there are so many genres to choose from, right? Not every book is for every one! 🙂
Stay safe, my friend. 😉
Well now I want to write a virginal amnesiac time-traveling hero just for you, Felicia…hahahaha! That’s awesome. Thanks for the laugh. 🙂 I hope you’re staying safe and healthy, too!
Gonna have to keep an eye on you! ???
Stay safe!
Bryn, let me say first that I LOVE Sunrise Cabin. If I am going to read a romance, give it to me sweet.
That said, I’d like to tell a true story:
Enter Jessie Turner to her first novel writing class. As the only sci/fi/fantasy writer in the class I got an immediate exposure to the world of romance. Luckily, the teacher, Dee Lopez, felt that good writing is good writing no matter the genre, so I was allowed to stay.
It took years of critiquing and being critiqued by romance writers and my instructor before I finally got it.
1) Romance writers are just as committed to their stories as I am to mine.
2) There are all kinds of emotions in romance stories. It’s not exclusively about steamy passion scenes.
3) Though my strong suit is not formula writing, there is reason for using it. It keeps their readers engaged and gives them a framework.
4) And they love happy endings.
What is my take-away after investing ten years in Dee’s class?
1) I learned to mine and write feelings I never knew I had. Dee’s theme song was, “With Feeling!”
2) I learned about conflict and resolution.
3) I learned about relationship tension and got a good start on using it.
4) I don’t know if any of the other students went away from that class with a deeper appreciation of sci/fi/fantasy, but I certainly learned to respect romance writers.
That is such a great list. I’m a big fan of friends to lovers myself. There is just something about it that seems so real and like it could last. I mean, who doesn’t want to marry their best friend?
I have three of those in my current WIP! Yay! ❤️
Hello Bryn
I’ve been following you for many years. Just want to say I’m glad you’ve added a newsletter and email subscription. You are an excellent writer, inspirer, and content creator. Best of everything to you.
I am super late to this party, but my absolute favorite trope is the secret pen pals falling in love with each other via writing, but despising each other in real life (in the beginning) because they got off on the wrong foot.
In my work, what devolves into a depraved love triangle, with one powerless person on the abject side, breaks up with each party going their own way and one person with deserved setbacks in life. Is that still a romance? Their are comedic scenes but it does not seem a ROM-COM. Could be a comedy as in a Shakespeare play. Or, it is Romance Tragedy because one party has a downfall?
Hi Rob! If it’s a romance, it ends in a committed love relationship and a happy ever after…or at least, a “happy for now.” So no, this wouldn’t be a romance, but it still might be a great story to tell. 🙂 Have fun writing!