Love Triangles
Although not bizarre by any means, unless you consider two points on a triangle occupied by cousins to be particularly weird, the centerpiece of the narrative and what passes for a plot is a love triangle. In addition to the aforementioned cousin, there is also a girl who has been long been a friend of both boys. Then she started dating one and, of course, that turned the friendship on its head, but after picking one of the friends to transform into a romantic interest, she then goes after the other. About the only love story older than the triangle is the star-cross tragedy that ends in death. Some readers might possibly welcome such an unforeseen twist just to mix things up a little.
Love the Nice Guy, Desire the Bad Boy
The male membership of the triangle that the girl—a preacher’s daughter, believe it or not—originally turns into a romantic partner is the nice guy. Although she enjoys having fun with the bad boy when the three were just friends, she is young enough to recognize he isn’t marriage material. But then he goes missing just long enough for the maybe the third oldest romantic plot to kick things into triangle: girls may love and respect the nice guy, but it’s the bad boy that makes that certain itch impossible to ignore.
Someone Has to Cheat
Unless the conflict of a romance is so heavy and weighty one or the other partner has to die in the end, there is usually just one option. Well, actually, there are lots of options, but most of those are not exactly crowd-pleasers. No, the only other option genuinely available to a writer needing to introduce conflict into a happy partnership is that someone has to cheat. It can be the girl or the guy or—inclusive of same-sex partnerships but not relegated to them—it can be either the previously totally virtuous partner or the one who has persevered in monogamy to this point but only through struggle and overcoming multiple temptations. Here…well, that is part of the enjoyment of the way this not-exactly-original love story is written: discovering the why since you probably already know the who going in.
