Imagine this scenario: two characters start the story fighting but end it kissing. Sounds completely implausible, right? Surely, this could never be a trope that single-handedly keeps BookTok afloat! But if you were to try writing such a story, how would you do it? This week, we’re talking about what it takes to write a successful enemies to lovers romance, which of course starts with a debate over what exactly an enemy is. This is still Mythcreants; did you think we weren’t doing sandwich discourse?
Transcript
Generously transcribed by Maddie. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
Chris: You are listening to the Mythcreant Podcast. With your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi, Chris Winkle, and Bunny. [Intro Music]
Chris: Welcome to the Mythcreant Podcast. I’m Chris, and with me is…
Bunny: Bunny.
Chris: And…
Oren: Oren.
Chris: I’m afraid we have a new podcast nemesis. They’re constantly making snarky jokes at our expense, which, excuse me, is our brand.
Bunny: Ah! The nerve.
Oren: We hates it.
Chris: I know, right? And these jokes, they’re really deep cut, like they’ve been listening to every episode. So clearly the only way to settle this is to challenge them to a podcast-off. Where their hosts come on our podcast and our hosts go on their podcasts. To fight. Of course. Just to fight.
Bunny: Yeah. We’ll get ’em.
Chris: Nothing else. Nothing else going on here. We don’t even like them.
Oren: Well, what else could be going on here? I don’t even know.
Bunny: We hate their guts and they hate ours, and that’s all there is to it.
Oren: That’s all it will ever be.
Bunny: We are just enemies.
Chris, Oren: [Chuckle]
Chris: It’s interesting how we managed to make podcasts into people. Look, don’t wanna make a romance joke about the actual hosts of this podcast. So that’s what we’re left with. This is what we resort to. So we’re talking about enemies to lovers.
Bunny: We have had, by this point, multiple meta podcast romances in the setups of our episodes, I believe.
Chris: It happens every time we cover romance. [Laughs]
Oren: It’s just something that needs to happen, okay? That’s just a ritual we have to perform now. Otherwise, the machine spirit will be angry.
Bunny: Yes, it’s true. It’s true.
Chris: It’s true. Podcast will take her revenge. We do not offer her proper tribute. Okay! So, enemies to lovers. So first, what are enemies?
Oren: From what I can tell, it’s when a man treats a woman like shit for 200 pages and she occasionally doesn’t like it. That’s been my experience with enemies to lovers books.
Bunny: That’s pretty mean of her. She should apologize.
Oren: She kind of went too far. I think we can all agree, right?
Bunny: Yeah.
Oren: I found out recently there’s a subgenre called “bully romance” that maybe that’s what these books should be filed under. But then I looked up more of it and apparently that subgenre generally involves a big groveling scene where the guy admits he was wrong and begs forgiveness. Which, whether you like that or not, is more than some of these supposed enemies to lovers books have. So no, they can’t be bully romances. They don’t meet that bar. They’re too far down.
Chris: So Oren is thinking about Shield of Sparrows, which I read the beginning to do a critique post that is now out, and then Oren was like, “But I have to read it. The title is so good.” And I’m like, “Oren, this is not a good book.” He’s like, “No, but the title, it calls to me.”
Bunny: Oren, the title is not even that good.
Oren: I like that title. I’m sad that that’s the book that exists, is the one that got that title.
Chris: So he got it in audio and since he had it, I was like, “All right, I guess I’m listening to it too.” So we both listened to the entire book.
Bunny: Trapped into listening to Shield of Sparrows.
Chris: And it’s advertised as enemies to lovers, but no, he’s just the biggest jerk. Then suddenly his personality changes partway through. Then he just kind of stops and then we just completely forget about it. So there’s no amends at all of any kind.
Bunny: So this is the one where she pretends she’s gonna jump off a cliff at the beginning?
Chris: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Oren: Well, no, she’s not pretending she’s gonna jump off a cliff.
Chris: She is going to. But–
Oren: The book is pretending that it’s a possible suicide, is what the book is pretending, but it’s actually just her jumping into the water, which is a thing she does regularly. So, that’s fun, I guess.
Bunny: Standing dramatically on a… cliff.
Chris: So she’s like, “What will happen? Will I fly, or will I fall?” And it’s like, you’ve done this before. Do you think something different is gonna happen than last time?
Bunny: I stand over the lap pool, goggles in hand. What if I jumped?
Chris, Oren: [Laugh]
Chris: But this book is advertised as enemies to lovers and if I’m being fair, there are a lot of blurry things. It’s pretty common in romance for the lovebirds to hate each other at first. And knowing when it goes far enough that you call it enemies to lovers can be kind of hard. I’ve been in that situation before.
But, at the same time, this is just clearly not it, because it’s not going both ways. He is mean to her for literally no reason. I suppose this is kind of spoilers for chapter three, but it’s so obvious I’m not really worried about it. But basically in the beginning, the idea is that her sister is in this elaborate arranged marriage to become the crown princess of another nation. And of course we quickly swap that so that it’s her instead.
Oren: For reasons.
Chris: And the love interest is called the “Guardian.” He eventually gets a name, but not for a very long time. Basically chose her and decided that we should play switcheroo and she clearly doesn’t like it. So then after he basically forces her to get in this arranged marriage, not just asking her dad, but pressuring her dad into it. Then he’s just really mean and resentful as though this is her fault. That just happens and she probably never fights back and he just comes and just makes a point of following her around just to insult her some more.
Bunny: Oh my gosh.
Chris: So, it’s pretty unsatisfying.
Oren: And I have read a few other books, there is supposed to be a conflict between the lovebirds and it is not equivalent. This is, I think, the most extreme I’ve ever seen it. Where it’s like, that’s weird. It’s really weird how awful he is. And then he just suddenly stops and we never talk about it again. I am happy to say that’s a bit of an outlier.
Bunny: They should have an equal number of dislike and an equal ability to get under each other’s skin. They should probably be on the same level, for instance, so that if it was a boss and an employee, that would be a weird dynamic. They should be able to punch evenly at each other rather than up and down.
Chris: This goes back to what we were saying when we were covering banter, right? About how do you make the banter not… If you want them to be enemies, you may want them to be mean at some level. At the same time, there’s some ways that you can do that, that it seems fair and some ways where it just seems gross.
Having them both doing it and being on the same level with each other is an important part of that. Otherwise, again, you’ve got more bully dynamic. And I’m not into that. I understand other people are into that, but having him grovel afterwards seems like the least you could do if you’re doing a bully romance.
And also, what are the taunts about? One of the things that makes this so gross and makes him so unlikeable, this Guardian guy, is the fact that he makes frequent sexual remarks about her that feel inappropriate. She had a fiancé that they broke off that engagement, to force her. And then he decides it’s a great time to be like, “Are you spreading your legs for this other guy?” And it’s like, he was her fiancé, and you decided to take her away from him. This is weird. Again, a weird thing to get mad at and also makes it feel punching down because it’s a man talking to a woman.
And luckily, this setting is actually surprisingly sexually liberated. Which, the kingdom is supposed to be patriarchal, so it’s a little unrealistic, but whatever. But nonetheless, the real world context is that kind of thing is just really gross. And so any kind of using slurs or punching down, it’s just always gonna feel particularly bad.
Oren: Maybe this isn’t the expectation other people have, but when I see a book or any story advertised as enemies to lovers, I expect them to be enemies.
Chris: Okay, so what is an enemy? Now you gotta define it.
Oren: People who work at cross-purposes. That’s my basic definition of an enemy. I know a lot of people I don’t like, almost none of them are my enemies. They’re just people I don’t enjoy spending time with. I’ve only in my life had two or three people who I would consider even mild enemies because we were working at cross-purposes.
One guy at a place I used to work really didn’t like me, and the rumor is that he was the reason I never got a job higher up. Who knows if that’s true, right? But if it was true, he was at least mildly my enemy. There are a couple of other people like that, but it’s very rare. Most of the time I just don’t like somebody.
Bunny: You mean it’s not enough for me to get my dog’s leash tangled in the leash of a cute guy, and then we stumble into each other and the dogs wrap around us and I’m like, “Oh! Well I’d never.” And he spills his coffee on me and he’s like, “You got in my way.”
Oren: Technically the dog is your enemy now. I’m sorry about that.
Bunny, Chris, Oren: [Laugh]
Oren: You are enemies of the good boy.
Bunny: Oh no, there’s no coming back.
Chris: Okay, for instance, here’s an example that I think works, I don’t think you have to super lean into the cross-purposes if you have other stuff going on. So, Fourth Wing, Violet and Xaden, I think that qualifies as enemies to lovers. They do warm up pretty fast, so they’re not enemies for that long. But at the same time, what they have is family history. Once they’re in school and they realize that they both are actually pretty good people, they don’t have cross-purposes anymore, but they think that they might. There’s mutual distrust because of a background where their family members killed each other during this rebellion that happened.
When she goes to Dragon Academy… Actually, it’s really funny ’cause it’s just so tropey, so blatantly obvious. Where it’s like, “Oh, and last thing, don’t go anywhere near Xaden Riorson.” It’s like, okay, that’s the love interest, huh?
Oren: Don’t do it.
Bunny: “So, I went near Xaden Riorson.”
Chris: And immediately, “Oh wow. This guy, he’s so hot. He’s the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. Look at how hot this guy is. And what?! He’s Xaden?”
Bunny: “Xaden… who…?” I do think you can slot the types of adversarial relationships into a couple different buckets. And the one that you’re describing there is one that I’m calling “political factions,” where they’re part of adversarial factions with opposite aims or that they have bad blood, like… Romeo and Juliet isn’t enemies to lovers, but it is the “Montague/Capulet” dynamic. Or if Dune had a romance between the Harkonnens and Atreides, that would qualify.
Oren: There’s a lot of fanfic about that, so sure.
Bunny: I’m sure you could find plenty on AO3. Officially. And then I think that’s also shades of the competitive rivals, for lack of a better word. Which is where it’s more circumstantial dislike, and they’re working against each other for a goal that they can’t both win. So both wanna be the concert master of the orchestra, or the starting quarterback, or they’re both competing for the same grant. I think that qualifies.
Chris: I think if you make rivals, you really gotta have them compete over something. To make it intense enough. But I think you could have a situation where there’s just kind of deep personal history that’s kind of bitter.
Bunny: I call that one “sworn enemies!” Deep interpersonal conflict! They’ve been wronged or they’ve wronged each other, or there’s a big misunderstanding. I feel like this one is difficult to pull off if they have a bad history with each other, because what you don’t want is for one of them to have had a very good reason to cut off the other one. If one of them has gone too far.
Chris: It’s the same with personality clashes. You can do a good personality clash that creates interpersonal conflict, but a lot of writers have trouble just not making either character a jerk. So I have an article that lists ideas for personality clashes where they can both be a little bit wrong.
And, for personal history, I have one that I put out recently that’s how friends can have a rift between them, and that one’s meant for them to make up. But you could probably take some of my list there, for a past breakup and use something like that if you need ideas for how to have them have bad blood in their background and to make them both a little wrong. So it’s not just one person’s terrible.
Oren: I’ve noticed that, at least in successful stories, maybe this is just because the books that I read tend to have romance as a side plot. I’ve noticed that there are way more enemies to lovers in TV shows that I watched, than in books. I was really struggling to come up with ones with examples from books, but I think of TV shows, it’s like, “Oh, Catra and Adora, Buffy and Spike.” But it was pretty easy to find some, and with books, I was like, “Uh, Luke and Mara Jade, I guess?”
Chris: I think Spinning Silver, Miryem and the Staryk qualify. So that’s a situation where the reason I think it qualifies, is Miryem does kind of get him back at some point. As opposed to, there’s another romance in there that has some similar dynamics, but isn’t as good, between Irina and this prince. And at that point he’s got an evil demon in him and is doing bad things ’cause of his demon and she’s just, surviving. And that does not feel like enemies to lovers.
With Miryem, first the Staryk comes just like, “Hey, you can, basically metaphorically turn silver into gold.” Well, no, it’s literal but not magical. It’s not really metaphorical. “You could literally turn silver into gold. That’s useful to me. I don’t really care what happens to you as long as I get this gold because my kingdom needs it.” And then after he’s basically put her through enough, she finds a way to escape that ends up getting him in trouble. So she’s able to throw her own punches.
Oren: That would meet my working at cross-purposes definition from earlier. This part is kind of interesting. So on a whim, I decided to look up and see if the first Crescent City book is advertised as enemies to lovers because I wouldn’t describe it that way, but the two characters don’t like each other when they first meet, and sometimes seems to be all it takes.
It’s not advertised that way, which is interesting. Although it is advertised as “fae.” Which seems like false advertising to me. There are some fae in there, but none of them are the romance interest.
Chris: In that setting isn’t everybody fae? Everybody magical?
Oren: No, they’re all called “Vanir” for some reason. Might as well take a random Norse term, I guess. The main love interest is like, an angel, and the main character’s brother is fae. And admittedly, her brother is written enough like a rival romance interest that I kind of wonder if originally that’s what that character was.
Chris: Interesting.
Oren: I didn’t like it. Her brother is really possessive of her. Granted, so is the love interest. So, whatever. But it was weird. It was like, this doesn’t really feel like a brother character to me.
Bunny: I don’t know how these are arranged, but if you look up enemies to lovers and then just go to the first Goodreads page that shows up, the very top one is The Cruel Prince, followed by Fourth Wing.
Chris: Yep, yep. The Cruel Prince. I also did a critique of that, but didn’t get introduced to the love interest. Isn’t that one a bully romance? Maybe?
Bunny: I can’t help you there.
Chris: A romantasy I’m sure, because romantasy typically has some really high stakes, lots happening alongside the romance. So that’s where I would expect to see at least some enemies to lovers.
Bunny: “Danger boys.”
Chris: Mm-hmm. But anyway, obviously romance starts, you establish they’re enemies, generally working at cross-purposes. Usually they also dislike each other at some level. And then the next thing that has to happen is, you have to force them together.
Oren: And I do wonder if maybe that’s also part of the reason why I tend to see this more in TV than in books. Because I think in TV we are just more willing to accept contrivances to get characters on screen together at the same time. This is my new working hypothesis. Whereas with books, I have often struggled to find reasons why the protagonist and the antagonist should be in the same space, even when I’m not trying to make them fall in love. I just need them to interact a little bit.
Bunny: TV series also have more time to unspool that. That might also be part of it.
Chris: This is again, what we talk about with the, I commonly call the “push and pull” romance, where you need something that pushes them together and something that pulls ’em apart. And a lot of romances, they are already into each other and it’s tough to figure out reasons why they can’t get together yet.
But if we start with enemies, then the first thing you need is something that actually forces them together. And that’s something that usually just has to be at the center of the story, has to be important to the plot. It’s not easy to think of that last minute. Need to be in the same room. So an alliance of necessity, even for enemies. Introduce another enemy, give them a common enemy so that they have to work together. Trap them in a place together, called “trapped in a labyrinth.” Or they get trapped in a haunted castle, something.
Bunny: An elevator.
Chris: [Laughs] Hopefully not a whole novel in the elevator.
Oren: I can see it working if they interact a lot because they’re going head to head in in various conflicts a lot. I can see that working as a way to build romantic chemistry. Now you need to be careful that the mood fits what they’re doing. It’s probably not gonna be good flirting if this is a super serious, gritty story about trying to protect refugees. It’s gonna seem real weird if your characters are flirting while fighting over that.
Chris: If they’re already classmates or coworkers, that’s certainly a lot easier. “Oh, they have to share a class.” Even then, it can be useful. Like, we have a competition in school. They butt heads. Then because they were fighting, they both get in trouble and then they do detention together.
Oren: That’s classic. They gotta clean the school or something. And then the school sends them to do something that is irrationally dangerous, that a school would never do, and then they have to bond.
Bunny, Chris: [Laugh]
Oren: There. We solved it. We figured it out, guys.
Bunny: Or the “buddy cop” thing. And we have a whole episode on that, where they have a run in and they dislike each other and, “Oh, you got in my way during this caper.” And, “Oh, you shouldn’t have, you were the one who got in my way.” And then the boss summons one of them into the office and is like, “I’ve got a new job for you. And you’ll be working with… [Dramatic Gasp] That person you butted heads with.” Uh oh!
Chris: Yep. An authority figure who can–
Bunny: They’re like, “Fine, we’ll work together. But. Just. This. Once!”
Chris: –Authority figure who can put them on the same team of some kind is helpful.
Bunny: I do think they need to have face-to-face time when they’re doing something other than hitting swords together, because then they can see each other in a different context. But I do like flirting while they’re hitting swords together. That is fun.
Chris: Why do enemies to lovers if they’re not gonna flirt while they’re fighting with each other? [Laughs]
Oren: First one then the other, right?
Chris: You could probably have a situation where they’re in competition or fighting and it goes too far and they’re actually sorry, and then they talk to each other. That would be a little bit trickier to finagle. But I do think that something that forces a little bit more conversation besides them just opposing each other is helpful, anyway.
Oren: I do think there should still be some challenge and obstacle to them getting together because it’s possible to go too far in the other direction. And that was my main beef with This Is How You Lose the Time War. I think that’s the title?
Chris: Yep, yep.
Oren: Because technically we have two characters on opposite sides of a fight, but the fight doesn’t matter to either of them. [Chuckles] They have no attachment to their cause.
Chris: That book, honestly, it doesn’t really have any tension. It’s just one long love letter. It’s just poetry. It’s an interesting work, but the plot doesn’t really function particularly well because you don’t really understand what’s happening at all. You can’t anticipate what they can and they can’t do. Everything is made up as the characters go along, and things just kind of happen, but it doesn’t have what it needs to create an actual tension or a sense of obstacles. But it’s very pretty. That one is kind of an odd case.
But certainly if you do something like, their factions decide to make up with a marriage alliance, and what do you know? Now they are supposed to get married to each other. You’re gonna have to switch… Again, was why I think it’s helpful to also have some kind of personal history, or dislike, or something where they butt heads without all of those external factors. So they have that to get through.
And also, it’s not as much fun if they’re technically at cross-purposes, but they’re really nice about it. That could be a fun dynamic, but that’s not really what we’re going for usually with enemies to lovers.
Bunny: That’s the “Aziraphale/Crowley” dynamic.
Oren: You usually want some kind of hostility, otherwise what are we overcoming here?
Chris: And then of course once they are forced together, usually having them work surprisingly well together is a good way to start to get them to warm up to each other.
Oren: Then you gotta remember your basic romance fundamentals. They still gotta be better together than they are apart. They gotta have things that draw them together, that sort of thing. Can’t just be like, “All right, well now we’re stuck together and we used to fight, but now we kiss instead.”
Bunny, Chris, Oren: [Chuckle]
Bunny: No, they have to kiss. But in kind of an angry way. That’s how you know.
Oren: That’s exactly right. If one of them is the villain, you wanna make sure that they haven’t crossed the moral event horizon. That’s why it would’ve been a bad idea for Dukat and Kira from Deep Space Nine to be a couple. It’s a little unclear if that was ever actually a serious idea, but you hear various behind the scenes reports that that was something they were considering. And thank God they didn’t do that.
Chris: That would’ve been bad.
Oren: That would’ve been real bad. And the reason is that–
Bunny: Oops, all genocide.
Oren: –Dukat, even before he became a full villain, had overseen a horrible military occupation that was just too evil. He can’t be a good romance interest for Kira after that.
Chris: I also think the actress objected to that.
Oren: I’ve seen different accounts of it. The most recent one I looked up, the writers talked about it and were like, “Yeah, that was never a serious idea, but it had been suggested by someone at some point.” And there were some episodes that made fans wonder if they were going in that direction.
But your villain doesn’t necessarily have to have been a genocide guy to have crossed the moral event horizon. There are less extreme ways that they could become too evil to have a good romance with.
Chris: Just coming to mind ’cause we were talking about books versus movies… And obviously some of the enemies to lovers we have seen have actually specifically been TV shows like Adora and Catra. And TV shows have usually a lot of time to develop characters if they have the same cast. Not anymore…
Oren: Now it’s a lot less.
Chris: [Laughing] But once upon a time they did. They got enough episodes. Whereas I’m thinking of Willow, the original 1989 movie, which still is a surprisingly good movie. Has held up pretty well, and it has this romance between Madmartigan and, ah man…
Oren: Sorsha.
Chris: Sorsha. And I honestly think that they do a really good job of finding ways to have them interact and build chemistry despite the fact that they are on violently opposing teams. Where, first she captures him, then he captures her. If you need a way to force them together, having one side capture the other and then use him as a hostage or compel them to help in some way, can be one way of doing that while keeping up a lot of the antagonism. And we have a whole scenario where they have a love potion, but luckily they don’t get too creepy with it.
Bunny: I still get a little creepy with it. That scene gave me the willies.
Chris: Where he goes in and starts spouting love poetry to her in her tent. When he is supposed to be grabbing the baby and running.
Oren: At least she’s not using it on purpose to try to seduce him. That’s where the bar is on love potions.
Chris: The fact is that she didn’t use it on purpose. He had another reason for going into her tent, I think is also important. He didn’t actually go into her tent to creep on her. He needed to get the baby back and then saw her and the love potion took effect. There’s some things that make it better than most instances.
But in any case, they have this back and forth, and then later he takes her hostage and it kind of gives them exposure to each other. But they didn’t have a good way in the movie, and I think partly ’cause they just didn’t have enough time, to get her to realistically come over to the other side. So she just spontaneously watches him kill a dragon and then she’s like, “That’s hot.” [Laughs]
Oren: She’s into it. [Laughs]
Chris: She just instantly is on the other side. It’s real weird. So, do think that books have the advantage there. But sometimes, if one side is supposed to be, “Oh no, we’re the baddies,” you’re gonna need time to give that character their own incentive to realize that or leave.
Oren: They need to believably change sides, and with her, she went from being into Madmartigan as an enemy to suddenly deciding that that overrode her previous loyalties.
Chris: To her mother. And her mother’s evil. But at the same time, she clearly wanted to please her mother before. She was clearly going for motherly approval. And something in there to help her reevaluate that. And it could have been caused by Madmartigan. If they’d had time. But that would’ve really helped that plot.
Oren: We needed another couple episodes worth of time to make that believable.
Chris: I do think with novels, one of the helpful things about enemies of lovers is sometimes, people can run out of obstacles. And so it does extend the amount of time that you can have their romance last, because they started out as enemies. And then once you get them past that, you have to introduce new obstacles. But that’s still more than if they started out, liking each other better. So it gives them more distance that they have to get across in order for the romance to happen. And that takes time. But a novel often has a fair amount of time, especially if you’re not splitting it into a million viewpoints.
Oren: All right, well, with our evergreen advice to not split the story into a million viewpoints, we will go ahead and call this one to a close.
Chris: If you enjoyed this podcast, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants.
Oren: And before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel, and there’s Kathy Ferguson. Who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week. [Outro Music]
Outro: This has been the Mythcreant Podcast. Opening and closing theme, “The Princess Who Saved Herself” by Jonathan Coulton.