《How to Write Stories People Will Love》Question 72: Meet cutes
Advertisement
asks: I've noticed that something I struggle with is coming up with authentic ways for two characters to have their first encounter. I can't count how many times I've done the classic "bumping-into-someone-and-BOOM-they're-in-love" trick and it's getting kind of boring. So, do you have any tips for non-cliche ways that two characters can first meet??
In movies and TV shows, the "meet cute" refers to the scene in which the two people who will form a romantic couple meet for the first time. I will use this phrase even though we're talking about a written story.
If you're trying to avoid cliches, then you have to first acknowledge which meet cutes are overdone. Maybe it's two people meeting in a bar, or someone hiring a sexy carpenter, or a new student being introduced in class. Now change something about this overdone scene to make it less common. Maybe instead of a bar it's a smoothie shop. Maybe instead of a carpenter he's an accountant. Maybe instead of meeting in class they meet on a field trip.
Sometimes we can't avoid cliches because the scene is crucial to the story. Also, some cliches are overdone because they are common in real life (like meeting in a bar or in class). That doesn't mean you have to twist your story into something unrecognizable just to avoid the cliche. You can add to it instead. Maybe they meet in a bar after a fight breaks out. Maybe the sexy carpenter is being hired to build something strange. Maybe the class the student is being introduced in is an after-school karate class. In other words, take an element from the cliche and embellish it so it feels less common.
There will be times you don't want to go through such efforts to avoid the cliche. Some cliches exist in stories because they are popular tropes that people love to read. In these cases, just do it well. Have the two people bump into each other in the totally expected way, BUT don't do the "BOOM they're in love". True love takes time to cultivate and develop, and it's these nuances that differentiate one cliched story from another. Give the characters personality. Make them relatable or quirky or fun. It's the interactions with each other that brings the story to life, despite the common meet cute.
Advertisement
Some chapters you might like to review to help with this:
Chapter 4: Create Relatable Characters
Chapter 6: Add Tension
Chapter 17: Create Interesting Dialogue
Question 17: Breaking cliches
Advertisement
Unlimited Power 02 – The Ranger's Domain
After losing his parents in a car accident, Ryan immediately caught his fiancee cheating on him with his best friend. In just a few days, he lost everything he loved, so Ryan decided to buy a house in the mountains to process all those events. However, something happened before he could even enter his new home: the end of the world.
8 12198Castle Kingside
A puzzling encounter leaves Dimitry a beggar with a strange emblem on his wrist. Around him, people suffer as ruthless organizations, opportunistic nobles, and an overly pious church vie for power in a medieval land under constant siege by stone monstrosities rampaging from the coasts.Can a kindhearted surgeon aid this ailing world with modern knowledge, resourcefulness, and magic? Or will rival powers crush Dimitry first?A fiction that starts brutally grim and eventually transitions into technology uplift with a focus on science, magitech, and town building.Warning: Technical terms abound.
8 253No Second Chances: The Beginning Of The End
Greed is a powerful feeling that has changed the world over thousands of years. Science, religion, and magic have built a new era and there are some who want to end it all, for the sake of a dying wor...
8 460Ciarra the Cold
The gods created a game-like world for their high-stakes contest, and Ciarra is the most powerful of their pawns, she ignores little things like racism, bigotry, and societal norms. One little foxkin who has lived a hard and brutal life becomes Ciarra's pet. For the first time in years, she has hope, and a chance to follow her dreams. Assuming Ciarra, an amoral sexual sadist, doesn't kill her first. Expect DUBCON, lesbian harem, NSFW themes, dark themes with a chance for a brighter future, and dragons eating vanquished foes - both literally and figuratively.
8 137Impossible Dream
Seventeen-year-old Aleck is a Borg, part human, part machine. She and her younger twin brothers, Shem and Payton, were the only children to survive an invasion of their home planet by the Sharlakar, savage aliens who eat other sentient beings. Their bodies were nearly destroyed in the attack, and the children were changed, along with other survivors into cyborgs in order to survive the Sharlakar raids. The evil General Wallock is sent to "help" them but finds out the colonists' terrible secret of all being turned into cyborgs so they could survive the Sharlakar's brutal raids. The general uses their Borg programming to maintain complete control over them, forcing them to not only fight in the war but also commit horrible atrocities.
8 135spin the boomerang.
takes place between the boiling rock and southern raiders episodes. the gang plays a little game what could go wrong? Everything!
8 94