{"id":260,"date":"2019-07-16T10:16:14","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T14:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/?p=260"},"modified":"2019-07-16T10:18:25","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T14:18:25","slug":"in-defense-of-tropes-instalove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/in-defense-of-tropes-instalove\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Tropes: Instalove"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be honest, I didn\u2019t even known this trope had a name until recently, when reading through reviews, both of my own books and of others in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off<\/a>. It refers to the fairly common situation in fiction where the protagonist and love interest meet and find themselves immediately attracted to one another. I guess some people really don\u2019t like it. They prefer a \u201cslow burn.\u201d and the feeling I get from the reviews is that they think the slow burn is somehow more realistic, that a couple thrown together by fate finding instant attraction and the desire to tear one another\u2019s clothes off is somehow contrived.<\/p>\n

Well, being the good New Hampshire boy that I am, I\u2019m going to steal a line from Robert Frost\u2019s poem \u201cFire and Ice\u201d and say \u201cFrom what I\u2019ve tasted of desire \/ I hold with those who favor fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my long and sordid history, I think it\u2019s taken me maybe thirty seconds from first seeing someone to decide whether or not I\u2019m physically attracted to them. Maybe five minutes of conversation to decide that I\u2019m intellectually attracted. Not saying I\u2019m running out to price rings and look for a house in a town with a good school system, but I\u2019m definitely sure that I\u2019m interested in a cup of coffee or a few drinks or dinner or wild, passionate sex.<\/p>\n

Now, this is subjective, and dependent on context. If your characters are a stable boy and the crown princess, maybe they have a few more obstacles to overcome, but if we\u2019re writing characters who are consenting adults in a culture which allows them a great deal of freedom, there\u2019s no reason for them not to do the deed by the second or third date. Which, as I\u2019ve said, may as well be within a few days of meeting.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019m just a cheap, tawdry slut, but to my mind, this is more realistic than a \u201cslow burn\u201d where characters, after years of friendship, finally realize that their friend is really their soulmate. I\u2019ve experienced pawing the ground for somebody I just met, but I\u2019ve never discovered an attraction to somebody I\u2019ve worked with for a year before noticing them.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say every relationship has to be immediate, or even that every pair of characters who find one another attractive have to act on that. There are plenty of reasons for people to defer entering a relationship. Maybe there\u2019s a big power imbalance, or class differences, age differences, social barriers and so on. Maybe they have a professional relationship that they don\u2019t want to jeopardize. Maybe one or both of them are already married\/betrothed, taken a vow of celibacy, or whatever. But the attraction can be instant. The psyche is a fickle thing and the heart wants what the heart wants.<\/p>\n

Another thing to bear in mind is the genre. I don\u2019t primarily write or read romance. To me, the romance isn\u2019t the crux of the story. If it is, then clearly that\u2019s where the conflict has to be, that\u2019s what the action needs to be centered around. If the main conflict of the story is something else, and the romance just a subplot, then there\u2019s no real need to string it out. And if the book is a thriller or there\u2019s some big, life threatening situation, it\u2019s more likely that people who aren\u2019t sure they\u2019ll be alive in a month aren\u2019t going to wait for the third date.<\/p>\n

I am a fan of instalove, because I feel it\u2019s a better reflection of my own experiences. Not that I\u2019m James Bond. I\u2019ve been happily and faithfully married for better than two decades. But I knew the minute I saw my future wife that I was interested, and I had a phone number within the day, and a real date within a week. Yes, there were problems and growth and change and nice juicy conflicts to mine for drama as we built our relationship, but those came after the passion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be honest, I didn\u2019t even known this trope had a name until recently, when reading through reviews, both of my own books and of others in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off. It refers to the fairly common situation in fiction where the protagonist and love interest meet and find themselves immediately attracted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,43,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-tropes","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}