5 Romance Plotlines, Ranked from Most Unrealistic to Most Authentic

Spoiler: secret billionaire doesn't even make top 5

Jane Austen does every romance trope best.

Do you agree?

Today, I’d like to welcome guest contributor

Emma Hemingford

from the Substack advice column Fictional Therapy.

Emma uses insights from classic literature to shed light on readers’ modern-day dilemmas. You can check out her posts here.

Welcome, Emma!

There is a brilliant book by the (excellently named) Christopher Booker called The Seven Basic Plots. In it, he argues that all stories can be sorted into seven structural categories: Rags to Riches, The Quest, Overcoming the Monster, and so on. This is a good factoid to have in your back pocket next time someone criticises you for reading ‘formulaic’ romance novels - all novels are formulaic, really. It’s what we do with these formulas - how we breathe new life into them, inject them with new meaning - that really matters.

It’s fair to say, though, that while some of our most beloved romance plotlines seem to express something true and eternal about love, some are just totally delulu. I mean, the secret billionaire trope? A girl can dream. And sometimes that’s what reading is for: dreaming and escapism, rather than truth-telling. So in honour of my love of classic romance plotlines, here’s a list of five, ranked from most unrealistic, to most true-to-life. They’re all brilliant, even though some are pure wish fulfilment. And you won’t be surprised to hear that secret billionaire did not make the cut. (But if you can prove me wrong, please write to me. And if you know a secret billionaire personally, please introduce me.)

5. Enemies to Lovers

I hate to criticise the holy grail of all romance plotlines – but please look around your friendship group. How many happy couples do you know that started off hating each other? None. Because it. Doesn’t. Happen. It’s the best one to read, yes, it’s the best one to watch, also yes; because narrative thrives on conflict. But real life does not thrive on conflict. In real life, fighting with someone sucks. And while nothing is juicier than Pride and Prejudice, I do worry that the enemies-to-lovers-trope has made a lot of women obsessed with finding the ‘hidden light’ inside rude and obnoxious men. Quite often you can judge a book by its cover.

4. Fake Relationship

Again, so good to watch. So good to read. And with this one, I wish it did happen more, because it is a trope absolutely rife with comic possibility. But, really - have you ever pretended someone was your partner in order to win a promotion at work, aka How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days? Okay, maybe you think I’m setting the bar too high. Have you ever even taken a fake date to a wedding? Nah. You’d look so mental when the truth inevitably came out. Better just to take your best friend, and giggle with them over free champagne.

3. Friends to Lovers

This one goes right in the middle, because it does happen, but not as often as romance novels make out. And almost always there’s been some sort of spark there from the beginning, at least for one of the two, in a Mr-Knightley-and-Emma-Woodhouse kind of way. So do you really call those people friends, or just lovers who haven’t acknowledged their feelings yet?

2. Forbidden Love

Sure, we don’t (just yet) live in an authoritarian state where loving someone from another district gets you blacklisted. Nor do we live in a Romeo and Juliet landscape of warring families, or in the Georgina era, in which class divide made loving someone from a different social milieu extremely tricky. But religious and cultural differences still stand in the way of couples getting together pretty often. And when I was fourteen I dated a guy two years above me which was extremely verboten by the laws of my secondary school. Eventually we caved to social pressure and split up. Maybe he’ll be my…

1. Second Chance Romance

It may seem like the least sexy of all romance plotlines, but I’d argue it can be the most romantic. Maybe it’s just because I’m rereading Austen’s Persuasion at the moment, but there’s so much tenderness and yearning and subtlety in the story of reconnecting with the one that got away. A second chance romance plotline inevitably involves someone who’s been hurt before, learning to love again: what’s more beautiful than that? And, to anyone reading this under the age of thirty who doesn’t believe it’s common IRL: I promise you that 40% of your friends will eventually get back together with a former partner. A lot of the time this will be a catastrophically bad decision. But sometimes it will be beautiful and hopeful and right, and it will seem to suggest that fate wanted those two people together all along.

Thanks for reading, folks!

I run an advice column on Substack called Fictional Therapy.

In it, I use insights from classic literature to shed light on readers’ modern-day dilemmas. So you might learn what Austen can teach us about red flags or what Petrarch has to say about being a hopeless romantic. Or, you can check out my whole Substack here.

Thank you so much to Emma for starting the conversation about these tropes. I was happy to see that she highlighted Enemies to Lovers. I think the bigger conversation we can have around the way Austen plays with this trope is that Mr. Darcy has character growth. Yes, Elizabeth sees him in a new light, but he also takes to heart the changes he needs to make once they are pointed out to him. THIS is the kind of Enemies to Lovers we need to highlight.

Character growth = Personal development. Let’s make that sexy.

Emma’s article is so thought-provoking and I look forward to reading more of her posts!

* for every upgraded membership, I will be donating a historical fiction or romance book to a local women’s shelter. Want to choose what book is donated? Just send me a message after you subscribe.

The Literary Assistant is Reader-Supported! Thank you so much for being part of this community! If you love the recommendations and would like to show your support, it means the world to me—THANK YOU! 💛

Please note, all posts are free for everyone to enjoy. Your support helps keep this space thriving for book lovers like you! 😊 You can support my writing for only $5 a month.