Presently—under the unscathed bed frame in Wynnter’s guestroom—stacks upon stacks of August Winslow’s work reside. I’ve finished two stories thus far, and they have been…enlightening.
In many wonderfully delightful ways.
Lifting my gaze off the screen, I locate August—a vision of warm summer beauty swaying about her kitchen as she fixes dinner.
My heart reacts at the sight, and I lose myself for spare moments.
She’s so…pretty. I can hardly believe I’m here, within reach of her. After years of friendship and a month of excruciating pining, there she is.
My August.
And here I am.
Staring like some kind of strange creep.
Dropping my attention back to the spreadsheet, I click on a box in the trope list to mark it as done.
Forced proximity, check.
Next up where it concerns foundational story elements…enemies to lovers.
I have absolutely no clue how I’m going to become theenemyof someone who has just opened up her home to me. It seems if I manage that feat, I’ll wind up losing the check on forced proximity. How in the world do authors manage combining these two particular tropes all the time? They seem in direct opposition.
My brow furrows, and I open a different tab on my spreadsheet so I might thumb through the blurbs of August’s books and the notes I’ve taken on what I’ve gleaned from them thus far.
She has her range of enemies, both contemporary and fantasy. In fantasy stories, the enemies are knives and blood, forced together through arranged marriages or natural disasters. In the contemporary, the distaste is milder, yet ever present, and the proximity is less…shoved into the same room by forced wedding vows and more…next door neighbors or coworkers by unfortunate chance.
Enemies are people on opposing sides of an issue.
There’s active hostility.
Active…hostility.
I sigh.
How can I, in good conscience, beactively hostilewhen I’m alone with a small woman in her very own house? I am already pushing the bounds of my moral constraints as it is.
This…this is insane, isn’t it?
All of this is insane.
This entire plan, the wholeplot.
Why couldn’t she have wantedstrangersto lovers, or even friends? Outing myself as Ali Montgomery could have created the perfect foundation for our already long-standing friendship to shift and deepen.
But. No.
She wants the trope that comes with knife wounds and sword fights.
Evenrivalswould be easier than this.
Maybe I can glean the elements of an enemies romance and emulate them without the hatred or disdain? Maybe I don’t need to becomeenemiesso much as I need to condense the enemies to lovers down into whatever makes it so addicting?
What is the part in an enemies-to-lovers romance that results in “swoon”?
The desperation? The obsession? The self-loathing?
Wanting something you can’t, or shouldn’t, have?
