# Writing Believable Love Triangles



## Deleted member 4265 (Jan 22, 2016)

In my WIP there are two men who are interested in the main character. Both of them have chemistry with her and separately both romances are believable and make sense.The problem is that both of them together comes off as a bit silly. I don't want to give the impression that men are just throwing themselves at her feet, because that's certainly not true. The whole thing's pretty central the her character development and also serves to move the plot forward so I need it. 

Any tips on how to write love triangles that don't read like teenage melodrama?


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## glutton (Jan 22, 2016)

For me it would seem a bit more likely to come off a bit contrived if both romances start inside the events of the story, the times I've done love triangles there has been one preexisting relationship from before the beginning of that particular story and one that starts - or resumes, in one case - during it.


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## Mythopoet (Jan 22, 2016)

I think love triangles where there are essentially 2 suitors, two people actively seeking to be in a relationship with someone, and 1 person who just has to sit back and decide between the 2 suitors, are the worst love triangles. Something about that set up just makes me lose all sympathy for any of the characters involved. Especially because in 95% of them there's a girl with 2 suitors who just goes around being indecisive while the two suitors proceed to engage in every stereotype imaginable to win her. Anything where it could be said that the suitors are trying to "win" someone is automatically bad. 

On the other hand, a love triangle where you have, essentially, 2 separate romances going through development from the ground up, where all three people are actively making choices that impact the development of the relationship (rather than just either seeking or being sought) has much more potential. Basically, I need active relationship development from all 3 people.


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## Miskatonic (Jan 22, 2016)

It would be nice if the options open to the different people goes beyond either getting the girl/guy or living the rest of their life miserable because he/she didn't pick them.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jan 22, 2016)

In a love triangle, I always feel like the two competing over the one are both schmucks.



EDIT - Maybe ^that's too deadpan, but I wasn't sure what to add. I'm not saying love triangles are unbelievable. Love triangles happen. The challenge isn't believability, but likability. Look at crap like The Bachelor. That's more of a _lust dodecahedron_, but I mean I have no respect for those women when you see them in commercials with the tears and the "oh, I'm just another notch in his belt, waaaaah!" I have no respect for the men on the Bachelorette, and the people who are the Bachelor/Bachelorette think of other people's bodies and emotions as toys...

Um.. yeah, so anyway... that's the challenge of writing a love triangle. How do you not make everyone involved unlikable? If you go from the POV of The One as if two-timing is cool, we're all adults here, everyone's cool… she might come off as a Mary Sue, or the male equivalent: a James Bond. As for The Two, if male they look like saps. If female, it only works in the movie _The Other Woman _where the man ends up humiliated, broke, and in severe physical pain. Otherwise, the women are victims of a player.


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## Chessie (Jan 22, 2016)

Devouring Wolf said:


> In my WIP there are two men who are interested in the main character. Both of them have chemistry with her and separately both romances are believable and make sense.The problem is that both of them together comes off as a bit silly. I don't want to give the impression that men are just throwing themselves at her feet, because that's certainly not true. The whole thing's pretty central the her character development and also serves to move the plot forward so I need it.
> 
> Any tips on how to write love triangles that don't read like teenage melodrama?


Hm. Unrequited love is the first thing that comes to mind. I know it's not a fantasy genre example, but the first of these is "Gone With The Wind" where female heroine is in love with one dude throughout the entire novel, but keeps marrying others. The triangle is between Scarlet, Rhett, and Ashley (who doesn't love her but leads her on, so to speak). The entire novel is based on this drama and it's one of the most amazing books ever. So yes, you CAN make it believable. 

However, the above example only works if one of the dudes she likes doesn't like her back in the same way. Another option would be a taboo aspect to one of the romances. Maybe the men are brothers? Or there's a problem with social ranks/hierarchy/she isn't of the same social class to be romanced by one of the dudes.

It sounds as if you've already got the romances set up a specific way, so now you just have to add conflict into them. Triangles are wonderful because there's plenty of room for conflict. Romantic triangles are all over the romance genre, which sells well, so have faith in your ability to create an interesting story here. 

As for tips on it not being a teen melodrama, the best thing I can say is that we're too hard on ourselves as writers sometimes. My suggestion is to have a trusted partner or friend read your story and tell you whether the romance seems cheesy. Also, think conflict. How can A, B, and C push against one another? How can they provoke conflict in the lives of the other(s)? Take a good look at some romance movies, read a romance book, pay attention to how the romances develop and cause problems. Jealousy is a big one in triangles.

But I would say the single biggest thing is that if she has a good relationship with both of them but can't choose, then that's not enough conflict to keep readers hanging in there. Personally, that wouldn't work for me because I would be like "ugh, make up your mind already!". BUT if she married one and was still in love with the other...or got pregnant by one but was married to the other...or was betrothed to one but ran off with the other...or was madly in love with one and rejected by him and so therefore she chose the other....you see where I'm going with this. Your problem might be that she has a good relationship with both of them but can't choose and in that case, yes it would seem like a teen problem. Give her adult problems with adult solutions. And hey, you can do this. Good luck!


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## Noma Galway (Jan 22, 2016)

Why must there be a choice made? Polyamory is a legitimate and not-always-thought-about solution.


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## Ban (Jan 22, 2016)

Noma Galway said:


> Why must there be a choice made? Polyamory is a legitimate and not-always-thought-about solution.



It is also a solution that most people wouldn't desire. I can understand that some are capable of sharing intimacy with multiple people like that, but for me and most people that is just not really an option.


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## Caged Maiden (Jan 22, 2016)

I only wrote one love triangle, and I went the route glutton suggested. One suitor was a man the mc met and instantly connected with, and their love story began. Then, halfway through the journey he has to leave, and she has to stay home with friends of her grandfather, and she finds out the son of her grandfather's friends asked for her hand long ago, and the proposal was accepted (unbeknownst to the mc), but later cancelled by the grandfather. He believed the woman rejected him, but then he realizes she never knew they were supposed to be engaged. 

I let the MC choose the man she fell in love with during the story, and the previous love interest bows out, because he sees he's not the winner of the contest. There is a point late in the story where the husband (they got married) is dying. All the other guy needs to do is walk away, and the woman would lose her husband. But he doesn't. He saves the husband and reaffirms that he wants the woman to be happy. 

I think what makes a love triangle dramatic and not like teen angst, is to have people make mature decisions, rather than playing manipulative games. Also, if the genre of the story isn't romance, but fantasy or something else, it's important to not make it feel like a soap opera (I'll do anything to keep you, or I just don't want to lose you). Those kinds of messages devalue the drama of a story that's meant to be taken seriously. If you're writing fantasy for male and female adult readers, you'll want to avoid the kind of feelings of obsession that resonate with younger readers, and the feeling that the female lead is making a simple choice between two "lesser" male leads. That might feel degrading to male readers.

I think the most important thing to show is how each of the men has good qualities and bad, and how the woman central to the conflict is also strong and flawed, too. That allows you to show plenty of moments where the woman can connect with the two suitors individually, but raises some questions about whether they would be a good match. 

I don't want to imply the choices I made were the right way to go, because every story requires a different set of circumstances, but I felt like the maturity of the three involved made for a tense conflict that was more sad than melodramatic. I tried to show in subtle ways how both the men loved my MC. I made the woman choose one of them, and I left it at that, only making one more conflict (the near death of the one she chose) after the point where she made a choice.

While it works fine to have the drama stretch out over the course of the whole main plot, it can sometimes get unbalanced if too much focus is on the romance and the decision of who to pick. I'd think that if you want the plot to take a front seat, the love triangle needs to be kept in check by bigger events of the situation, like maybe being in love is a luxury the mcs can't afford when their home is in danger, or whatever.


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## Heliotrope (Jan 22, 2016)

When I have a hurdle like this, I turn to the greats....

The great movies, that is  

I will pick four or five really good examples of the issue I'm focusing on and have a movie marathon. I just finished a heist marathon for my wip and ended up with pages of usable notes to apply to my story. 

In your case, watch at least 4 movies that are good examples of love triangles and pay close attention. How are the characters introduced? What is their "save the cat" moment? What is it that the mc finds so charming? How does the relationship evolve? 
Etc. 

Off the top of my head I think of:
Casablanca
Bridget Jones Diary
Gone With The Wind
Sabrina
First Knight
Something About Mary

Have fun with it! Watching movies with a notepad and pen is still "work".


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## Penpilot (Jan 22, 2016)

For me, when I write triangles, here are some of the things I generally do. 

1- I don't treat any of the characters like fools. No secret dating. No hiding one suitor from another. No big drama when one finds out about the other. There's nothing wrong with dating more than one person, so long as you're truthful with everyone involved.

2 - I don't have any of the characters sitting by the sidelines pining for the other. Everyone has their own lives, which brings me to...

3 - When possible, give each  character options outside of the main choices. 

4 - Make nobody the villain. No dastardly plans to foil the competition. No dirty pool.

5 - Nobody is a prize. They're just a choice. Whether the choice is right or wrong, it doesn't matter.

With that said, I reserve the right to break any of these guidelines when it fits the story.


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## Caged Maiden (Jan 22, 2016)

You know, Noma, I kinda thought about it in my novel. The men are best friends by the time their plot together runs its course, and the woman they both love is sort of anxious about seeing the one she didn't choose, because she feels like her husband might be jealous if she does her hair or something when he's expected to visit. I really considered whether the three could happily live together, and I believe they could have, but it wouldn't have been a fulfilling situation for those involved. 

I guess this was the trickiest think for me as I wrote this bigger plot. The woman picked the one guy, and they had a child, and got married, and then had more children, and built a life. They gave their first child to the other guy (for plot reasons), he loved her and raised her, kept a friendship with her parents, and loves them both enough to die for either of them, but he's still in love with the woman, despite being almost a brother to the man. Is that realistic? 

So when I look at my love triangle, I am trying to reflect a married couple who are devoted and happy, but not representative of the kinds of couples mass-produced for romance novels, and a guy who is a trusted and loved friend of them both, who relates very well to either of the others individually, but when they're all three together, the ambience is awkward.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jan 22, 2016)

Noma Galway said:


> Why must there be a choice made? Polyamory is a legitimate and not-always-thought-about solution.


I would think that if everyone in the love triangle is straight, then the two that are the same sex are obstacles to each other. If they're all paying the field, then whoever hooking up with whoever isn't an issue, so it's not really a love triangle.

Since I'm married, I'm not comfortable inserting my current self into a hypothetical example, so for the following example, pretend I'm talking about me in my twenties and I wasn't a loser back then…


*I'm one of The Two:* If I find out She is with another guy, She can have him. I'm obviously meaningless to her.
*I'm The One:* If I've got two girls wrapped around my twenty-something-year-old finger, and they find out about each other... well, even in my imagination it doesn't happen. So never mind.

The thing about love triangles is that they depend on the audience perception aligning with traditional values and double standards.

If everyone's cool with the triangle, it's a nonissue which is boring. If there's jealousy and betrayal, you have a problem, like your story's supposed to have. The catch is that the problem isn't _that_ hard to solve. Everyone has different thresholds, but there's a point where the reader has to wonder, "Is she the last woman on earth? If so, either share or fight to the death. If not, move on."

For double standards, if a man is The One, he's a jerk. If the women are both aggressively fighting over him and the story is trying to tell me the man isn't a jerk, then there either isn't a problem or there isn't a believable problem. You can have a woman as The One and still make the men two idiot alpha males drooling over her and she's so flattered... well, anyway, it's one female jerk, two male jerks, a male jerk manipulating a female jerk and a male sap winning her back, or three jerks. If you have zero jerks, you don't have a love triangle.


EDIT - I may not be the best person to advise on this topic. Just think of me as being that reader that's a hard sell regarding love triangles.

I don't hate them automatically. My wife and I both loved _The Other Woman. _In _Supergirl_, the Winn/Jimmy rivalry is amusing. But it doesn't drag on longer than it has to. As I said in the above rant, everyone has a threshold. Supergirl didn't cross mine.


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## Ireth (Jan 22, 2016)

In the only love triangle I've ever written, there were two men vying for the affection of one woman. And then the woman turned out to be asexual/aromantic and declined them both, so neither one "won". Everyone was happy with this. There's no reason I can see why your triangle HAS to work out with a pairing in the end. (Or, you might throw a curveball and have the Two realize they have feelings for each other, not the One. XDDD)


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jan 22, 2016)

@Ireth, I like that twist!
_
Miller's Crossing_ is my favorite movie that makes awesome use of a love triangle moving the plot. Many lives are affected and ended because of it.


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## Chessie (Jan 22, 2016)

Ireth said:


> There's no reason I can see why your triangle HAS to work out with a pairing in the end. (Or, you might throw a curveball and have the Two realize they have feelings for each other, not the One. XDDD)


This depends on the OP's target audience though. If the main plot is a romance, then it must pair with an ending + happily ever after for now since those are requirements of the genre. Now, if romance isn't part of the main plot (which it doesn't sound like it isn't), then that's a different tale altogether.


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## Penpilot (Jan 22, 2016)

Legendary Sidekick said:


> If everyone's cool with the triangle, it's a nonissue which is boring. If there's jealousy and betrayal, you have a problem, like your story's supposed to have. The catch is that the problem isn't _that_ hard to solve.



IMHO there can be lots of conflict even when everyone is cool with things. To me betrayal is low hanging fruit, which doesn't mean it can't be good, but there are so many more interesting and complex situations that can be explored.

In one of my short stories, I did a triangle between three long time friends, a guy, his wife, and their best friend. The story starts several years after the wife died. It explores lots of different things, and part of the drama of it lies in the question of how does someone compete with a memory?



Legendary Sidekick said:


> If you have zero jerks, you don't have a love triangle.



IMHO triangles are more broader than this.


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## skip.knox (Jan 22, 2016)

Noma Galway said:


> Why must there be a choice made? Polyamory is a legitimate and not-always-thought-about solution.



To quote David Crosby, why can't we go on as three?  Seems especially possible with our genre.


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## Deleted member 4265 (Jan 22, 2016)

glutton said:


> For me it would seem a bit more likely to come off a bit contrived if both romances start inside the events of the story, the times I've done love triangles there has been one preexisting relationship from before the beginning of that particular story and one that starts - or resumes, in one case - during it.



Both my relationships start out in during the story, but the story spans about four years so it doesn't happen at the same time. She falls in love with one, only to find out that he neglected to mention he was married with kids and my MC has too much self respect to let him continue stringing her along so she leaves him and then she spends about a year training to be a magician before she begins to develop feeling for someone else and that's when the first guy shows up to help fight a common enemy, who at this point has killed his wife and kids. They have no intention of getting back together, but even though she knows he's no good for her, she never really got over him and their feelings for each other resurface.


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## glutton (Jan 22, 2016)

Devouring Wolf said:


> Both my relationships start out in during the story, but the story spans about four years so it doesn't happen at the same time. She falls in love with one, only to find out that he neglected to mention he was married with kids and my MC has too much self respect to let him continue stringing her along so she leaves him and then she spends about a year training to be a magician before she begins to develop feeling for someone else and that's when the first guy shows up to help fight a common enemy, who at this point has killed his wife and kids. They have no intention of getting back together, but even though she knows he's no good for her, she never really got over him and their feelings for each other resurface.



That kind of timeframe could work, I was thinking more of a shorter timeframe like I usually do my stories in. Like if the MC falls for one guy and then another 3 months later, that would have a decent chance of coming off contrived.


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## Deleted member 4265 (Jan 22, 2016)

Chesterama said:


> This depends on the OP's target audience though. If the main plot is a romance, then it must pair with an ending + happily ever after for now since those are requirements of the genre. Now, if romance isn't part of the main plot (which it doesn't sound like it isn't), then that's a different tale altogether.



It's more of a coming of age adventure story than a romance. One of the central conflicts of the story is whether or not she's going to let herself be ruled by emotion or principle and the love triangle is a reflection of that. She has to choose between the man she knows is the "better" choice and the one she truly loves who she knows will betray her. In the end she decides she's prepared to enter a doomed relationship.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jan 22, 2016)

Penpilot said:


> part of the drama of it lies in the question of how does someone compete with a memory?


That is actually quite interesting. I think my cynicism is due to the all-too-common love triangles that involve affairs, and are really about lust rather than love.

Your example, and CM's where the ex saves the husband, are examples of actual love with zero jerks.


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## glutton (Jan 22, 2016)

I don't know how helpful exactly this will be but I do have a romance and pseudo-love triangle (the MC isn't really interested in both girls) at the center of my last completed novel. The MC is a prince who is already engaged through arranged marriage to an earl's daughter who he finds boring, but falls for a foreign diplomat who challenges the champions of his nation to duels to settle disputes between their lands and kicks all their butts. So there's a double conflict for the MC in that he loves the foreign girl but is obligated to marry the fiancee who insists she loves him and they should be together, and the foreigner is also considered an 'enemy' by many of his countrymen. They wind up dueling and he runs her through with a sword, but she still beats him before saving his kingdom by pleading for mercy from her liege and then fights the main antagonist, a centuries-old dark elf sorcerer. She ends up going back to her country after deciding her career as a diplomat (and beastly champion of champions lol) is too important for her to abandon and he decides to give the arranged marriage fiancee a chance, having found out she isn't bad as he once thought. I might change it to an HEA with the foreign girl so I can label it a romance though...


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## ThinkerX (Jan 23, 2016)

Now that I think about it...

I do have several characters in political marriages.  A couple are content with this; at their social level in this society, it's the norm.  Politics, not love, determines ones spouse.  But...

Tia, a central character in my 'Empire' series has a sort of 'list' of prospective candidates for her political marriage, and while she's resigned to this, she does have another romantic interest.

Likewise, Bao, daughter of a minor provincial governor in 'Labyrinth: Seed' had her heart set on marrying Amentep, a bottom rank aristocrat.  Then she was rather abruptly informed she was be married off to a minor scion of the very powerful and widely despised Maximus clan.  As far as she is concerned, this marriage will make her a social outcaste.


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## arboriad (Jan 24, 2016)

We relate to different people in different ways, and different sides of us come out in different relationships. I think that the Twilight series was a deliverable exercise in seeing how two totally different relationships could work with Bella and why people root for the two different teams. 

One relationship promised mystery sense of the exotic, and another promised warmth and courage. Both are desirable. Perhaps the key is finding out what it is about each relationship that would make it stand on its own. Like some of the other commenters have said, I also dislike it when there is passivity in the girl, and the guys are jockeying about as to her decision was a winner-take-all, as opposed to a decisive choice for a particular person.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk


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## Zara (Jan 26, 2016)

I'm sorry but to me love triangles NEVER make sense unless:
Boy 1 like girls and she likes him. Boy 2 likes girl but she doesn't know or play with his emotions of have that 'hmm do I like him better or the other one?"
Because when it's a 'which one do I like better?" I always feel she can't be serous about either because if she was she wouldn't need to ask herself. She'd just know.

I don't like love triangles. It's always obvious who she'll end up with so why have the second guy?


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## Heliotrope (Jan 26, 2016)

I'm a sucker for love triangles. Hunger Games? Loved it. It was the triangle that made the story for me. Gale is so fierce and strong, Peeta is so kind and funny... I love them both! I'm watching The Office again on Netflix... Because of Jim and Pam. I think love triangles can be done well, and I think a certain audience loves them. I'm considering one in my wip, though very minor as my characters are only 13... So likely a first kiss is about all it will amount to. However, I know my readers (13 year old girls) would appreciate a little romance, so I will put it in for them.

Zara, love is never cut and dry like that, unfortunately. I've been in a few love triangles in my life. It does happen. And even years later, when the honeymoon stage is over, you can second guess the decision.


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