Clichés: Know them, Destroy Them

Hate then love

In the spirit of Valentine's Day here's a chapter dedicated to love. A very common character interaction between the protagonist and her love interest goes as follows:

"Oh, there's B! I hate him so much and I hate that he's sexy, too."

*ten chapters later*

"I love B."

There are a few reasons why this setup is so popular here on Wattpad.

1. Romance is one of the most popular genres to write about (or to include in your story as a subgenre or subplot, if you aren't writing strictly in the Romance genre).  A lot of the reader population loves love. So you get a lot stories about it, which means you get a lot more chances for this interaction to occur.

2. Hate increases friction and tension between characters. It brings drama, conflict, challenges and injects some push/pull into relationships. It's an intense emotion and intense emotions are often great at engaging readers and pushing scenes and development forward.

3. A lot of writers tell the story they like to read, which happens to be tense relationships about will they, won't they drama, etc.

4. A lot of writers are inexperienced. The scenes all proceed the same and sound the same because they haven't figured themselves out yet. They're missing voice, style, setup, or more. They just aren't quite there yet, so the story/situation doesn't sound as original. A beginning cook can make a pizza dough from scratch and still have a pizza, but it isn't often the same as the chef whose spent 40 years making pies. The beginner is still mastering the basics, while the chef is looking at more nuanced techniques. Wattpad has a lot of beginners, so you're going to run into a lot of okay pizza that uses the same ingredients from the same store in the same way.

5. There are more reasons than what I've touched on here, but those are just a few simple ones that I wanted to point out, since they do factor in quite a lot. If you know of more, do post them!

So how do we take this tired cliche and ramp it up a bit?

1. Deepen the hate******

It's not enough to write, "I hate him." and then assume you never have to bring up the hate again because, apart from a grumpy reply here and there, they're hurtling down Cupid's path now. Give them some real passion.

Shallow hate doesn't really get into the nitty gritty about why there's a conflict between two characters. It doesn't explain itself well and readers tend to see it for what it is: a ploy and/or a cheap trick to get the reader involved. It tends to be more a passing, weak dislike than hate.

Make sure there's a reason that Maria hates Chris (rather than just being annoyed by that one thing he did in chapter two). Dig into it and see if the reader can feel it in more ways than just: ooooh, he makes me so mad with his cocky smile! Bring it up in more than one interaction. Bring it up in different ways (not just another: oooh! damn him!).

Ask questions like: Why does Maria hate Chris? In what ways does this hate impact Maria (and Chris)'s interactions with each other and others? For example, does Maria get in trouble with her mother because she hates Chris so much she didn't give his family an invite to a super special event her mother's hosting?

Now, there are times IRL when you meet someone or see somebody and you just don't like their face. It's human nature to judge others, whether you agree with it or not. We do it all the time. We love comparing things, especially people (ex. if you're shopping for a spouse, you probably do it very carefully and consciously). Sometimes, within seconds, we find ourselves disliking someone based on appearance, a single line they said, or an action, etc.