I-I don’t understand this– Our daughter is dying in there. I want answers! It is your job to give us answers! Mr. Cahalan– No! This ain’t some kids club where you get to play doctor! This is my daughter’s life! Her life is in your hands and I want answers. Tell me what is wrong with my daughter!
first of all: 💀
why does every enemies-to-lovers dynamic either hit like a literary gut punch… or feel like two cardboard cutouts aggressively flirting?
there is no in between. i don’t make the rules.
and if you’re here, i’m guessing you’ve tasted both. the elite. the devastating. the oh my god i need to lie down after this confession scene kind…
and also the ones where you’re like “why do you hate each other again? because he smirked?? be serious.”
yeah. we’re fixing that today.
⚔️ if you’re writing enemies-to-lovers, we need to talk.
because most people aren’t writing enemies.
they’re writing:
mild annoyances
workplace rivals with ✨tension✨
people who had one (1) misunderstanding in chapter two and never emotionally recovered
and listen. that’s fine. that’s a trope. it’s cute.
but it’s not enemies-to-lovers.
🩸 step one: define your enemy
an enemy is not someone who:
is kinda rude
disagrees with your protagonist
has a “bad attitude” (???)
an enemy is someone who cannot coexist with your protagonist without cost.
read that again. PLEASE.
their goals? incompatible.
their values? clashing at a moral level.
their existence? actively making the other’s life worse.
what i'm talking about:
opposing sides of a war
hunter vs hunted
“if i let you live, everything i believe in collapses” energy
if they can just… avoid each other and be fine?
that’s not enemies. that’s tension with good lighting.
🗡️ step two: make the hatred make sense
this is where people fumble it CONSTANTLY.
they jump straight to:
banter → sexual tension → accidental hand touch → oh no i’m in love
NO. come back. sit down.
before attraction, there needs to be justified hostility.
and not surface-level “you insulted me once.”
i’m talking about (and yes please quote 'rin t' on this!):
betrayal
loss
ideological opposition
deeply ingrained bias they don’t even realize they have
the kind of thing where, if someone asked your character:
“why do you hate them?”
they wouldn’t hesitate. they’d have a list
the twist:
👉 both sides need to be right. (or at least feel right)
if one is clearly wrong, you don’t have enemies-to-lovers.
you have “problematic person gets redeemed because they’re hot.”
and we are not doing that today.
🔥 step three: attraction should feel like a problem
this is where it gets fun. :)
when they start catching feelings, it should not be:
“oh this is inconvenient but kind of exciting :)”
it should be:
“this is catastrophic. this compromises everything.”
love = risk.
because now:
their judgment is compromised
their loyalties are tested
their identity starts to crack
they should be actively resisting it.
denying it. sabotaging it. making worse choices because of it.
if falling in love doesn’t cost them something?
you skipped the entire point of the trope.
🕯️ step four: force proximity (but PLEASEEE make it hurt)
you can’t resolve enemies-to-lovers from opposite sides of the map.
they need to be stuck together.
BUT-important distinction-
not in a cute “one bed at the inn” way (yet. we’ll get there. don’t worry.)
in a:
forced alliance
mutual threat
political arrangement
survival situation
where they have to rely on each other…
while still fundamentally not trusting each other.
this creates:
tension
vulnerability leaks
moments where they see each other as human (ugh. disgusting. hate that.)
and every time that happens?
it should complicate things further.
💔 step five: the shift is not soft. it’s violent.
i need you to understand this.
the transition from enemies → lovers should feel like something breaking.
because it is.
their worldview? breaking.
their assumptions? breaking.
their sense of self? yeah. that too.
there should be a moment where:
they realize they were wrong about the other person
and it doesn’t feel good.
it feels like:
guilt
confusion
grief for the version of reality they believed in
this is what makes the payoff hit.
not the kiss.
the reckoning.
🗝️ step six: they don’t “fix” each other
if i see one more enemies-to-lovers arc where:
“he became a better person because she loved him 🥺”
i will simply pass away.
they don’t fix each other.
they force each other to confront things they were avoiding.
that’s different.
love isn’t the solution.
it’s the pressure that reveals the cracks.
🖤 final thought (and a gentle threat):
if your enemies-to-lovers could be replaced with:
friends-to-lovers + mild inconvenience
and nothing changes?
you didn’t go far enough.
push them harder.
make it uglier. riskier. a little bit devastating.
so, question to you my chaotic writers... what’s the real reason your characters hate each other?
not the surface answer.
the one they’d never admit out loud.
i’m nosy. tell me everything. 👀 I LOVE HEARING your thoughts (i reply because yes, i am a real person!)
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This is all well and good, but "workplace rivals with ✨tension✨" is not a common tag on Ao3 (however much I might love this new description for an old favorite trope of mine) so I think this really comes down to prescriptive vs descriptive definitions.
The above is an academic, prescriptive take. Ao3, the feeding grounds of enemies-to-lovers consumers, is an environment largely divorced from the ivory tower, and our diets must by necessity become more diverse or else our filtering skills more precise (using additional tags like "angst with a happy ending" or "heroic breakdown" to find the exact type of eucalyptus we need to survive).
I would not call the post "academic" at all. It's simply written from the perspective of someone who has noticed (as many have) that a lot of supposed Enemies To Lovers stories - not just in fanfiction!! - lack any of the bite that makes the trope effective, and is offering advice to writers for creating that bite. If a writer doesn't mind lacking that bite because they want to "tag for reach" or broadly advertise rather than accurately label, then the post simply isn't for them.
Some of us are also broadly interested in analysis of what makes a story tick. "Just learn to filter better" is a weird response to such analysis, and not really relevant to the original romance sphere.
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