Are All Romances Cliché?

[Noblejanobii]

I was writing a story earlier tonight and while trying to avoid some cliches, I was trying to figure out a romance dynamic between two characters. I was starting to hammer it out as guy likes girl but girl is oblivious AF so she doesn't know it but a lot of their friends and most of the girl's siblings realize guy likes girl. It's even to the point where girl's sister teases them about it mostly to freak out guy but girl just thinks it's her sister being her sister. And as I was reading it to myself I went "this is too cliche". So I started to try and rework it but no matter how I reframed it, it still felt cliche to me. And that got me thinking, is just all romance considered cliche now? A lot of my friends think that most romance in movies is cliche unless the girl rejects the guy to be a strong independent woman. So what are your thoughts?

[Scytherwolf]

I'm not into romance, so I'm not really sure what is or isn't considered cliche with that, but honestly, with my own writing, I've just stopped caring whether or not something is cliche. I write what I want to write about and that's that.

[Suicune's Fire]

I think that the concept of cliches is a little narrow-minded. Yeah, things are overdone, but there's things being done well and things being done poorly--regardless of whether they've been done before or not. You can take a commonly used idea and portray it amazingly, and everyone will love it. Or, you can take it and play it terribly and everyone will dislike it.

I am familiar with that type of romance story but I don't think it's a bad idea to include it. As long as it reads well and you do a good job, it shouldn't matter whether or not it's cliche. As long as things aren't predictable. I think worrying about predictability is far more important than worrying about cliches.

[[Desolate Divine]]

I feel like it is possible to do romance as part of a story without it being cliche. And if you nail it, then kudos to you. Granted, when the story is centered around romance, it becomes a little more difficult. I guess cliche is okay, but if you can nail it without it, that is pretty sweet.

[Neo Emolga]

I usually don't read or write romance, but sometimes it finds it's way in there. I've read fantasy stories that had a bit of romance and even for stories I've written, it seems fitting to add it and work with it. Even Trial of Juno had a romance between Juno and Sita.

I would say make the relationship unique and under special circumstances. Don't make the relationship all about love at first. Otherwise it feels artificial and shoehorned in and that just feels cheesy. For Juno and Sita, they both had a mission to carry out and they started off helping each other. Juno was a warrior commander and Sita was an oracle and seer that helped guide him along the way. It wasn't about love at first, though Juno did admire was she was able to do for him and Sita admired him for how far he was willing to go for it to see that justice would be done. She gets killed later on and Juno realizes how much he lost as a result of her death. When they start working again in the afterlife, the love bond gets stronger. I'll admit, it was actually refreshing and nice to work with. They literally go through hell for each other. That's the kind of romance I would enjoy writing about again.

I think the cliche you would need to avoid is a cheesy "love at first sight" kind of thing. Make the love relationship have a role in your story. Not just "oh, I think it would be cute if these two characters had a romance." Make the why and the how have a lot of substance and give it a reason and purpose in the story. Let love emotions be a driving and working part in the plot engine that you have going on rather than just a loose strand that really doesn't relate to anything else that's going on.

[Noblejanobii]

Yeah it's more of one of those things where the guy is just patiently admiring the girl from a distance because he doesn't want to force her to make a decision. It's not really a major theme for the story as a whole but rather just a detail for their character interactions. I can't go into huge detail without going on a long winded explanation but to make it short the girl has a variety of reasons as to why: a) she hasn't notice the guy likes her and b) the guy hasn't approached her about his feelings. The stories they are in more or less focuses on something else (like this one is about them being abducted by a theater ghost and being forced to perform a play) but I don't want their interactions to be too predictable because of their relationship.

[Noblejanobii]

Yeah it's more of one of those things where the guy is just patiently admiring the girl from a distance because he doesn't want to force her to make a decision. It's not really a major theme for the story as a whole but rather just a detail for their character interactions. I can't go into huge detail without going on a long winded explanation but to make it short the girl has a variety of reasons as to why: a) she hasn't noticed the guy likes her and b) the guy hasn't approached her about his feelings. The stories they are in more or less focuses on something else (like this one is about them being abducted by a theater ghost and being forced to perform a play) but I don't want their interactions to be too predictable because of their relationship.

What about this? Does it sound cliche?

[Morzone]

What about this? Does it sound cliche?

I think it depends how you portray it in the actual story. You could easily turn it into a more cliche scene of one person liking an oblivious person, but at the same time you could turn it into a much more realistic and mature story, which while it isn't really new it's certainly a lot less cliche than the first due to its realistic and mature qualities.

[Noblejanobii]

I think it depends how you portray it in the actual story. You could easily turn it into a more cliche scene of one person liking an oblivious person, but at the same time you could turn it into a much more realistic and mature story, which while it isn't really new it's certainly a lot less cliche than the first due to its realistic and mature qualities.

Yeah I can see it. It's certainly not the first case because the girl is not that dumb. She's just got a lot on her mind that she doesn't really stop to consider things like romance for herself. You know those people that put work and family and friends before their own wellbeing. That's her.

[Arrow-Jolteon]

Well, I personally don't write romances at all, but from the things I've seen from other works, the issue with romances is that the reason they seem cliche is because just about every possible avenue you could take with a romance story has been done to death. However, I don't think overuse is necessarily the problem; to me, the real problem is that there's surprisingly very few people out there who can write romance well, so that makes it look like romance is a bad genre when the reality is that most people just don't know what love is :P