Sunday was one of those rare days in Denver where it rained all day long, which completely justified my decision to lay on the couch, order takeout, and watch Netflix all day. My roommate and I finished the evening with a viewing of I Love You, Man, which I had never seen and am so glad I watched. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are America's boyfriends.
The main three relationships of the movie are a twist on a classic rom-com trope called the love triangle, with Paul Rudd trying to become friends with Jason Segel while planning his wedding to Rashida Jones. It's highly entertaining, but it made me think about other plays on the classic three-character relationship models.
The Love Triangle #1: Two Suitors, One Heroine
The most obvious three-character relationship model that we all know is the love triangle. However, there is more than one way to set up the love triangle.
The most common in a traditional chick flick is that our heroine is interested in two potential suitors, and has to choose between the two. There is usually no relationship between the two suitors, but sometimes they are friends or relatives in order to really crank up the drama.
Classic examples include pretty much every Jane Austen novel, the Twilight Saga and the Hunger Games trilogy.
The Love Triangle #2: The Jealous Suitor(s)
Another form of the love triangle is more linear, and shows up in Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. Character A is in love with character B, who is in love with character C, who isn't really interested in any other point of the triangle, or is blissfully ignorant of the dramatics going on around him or her.
There's also the inversion of the first example, in which two suitors are interested in the same third person, but the third party is either uninterested in both or unaware of the interest.
The early books in the Anne of Green Gables series have this with Charlie Sloane and Gilbert Blythe both pursuing Anne, who rejects both of them (at first).
The Love Triangle Made More Complicated
These are just the examples of triangles with relationships established in single directions. When relationships between characters become mutual, a new layer of goals can be used to motivate your characters. Sometimes it's best to become familiar with writing one-way triangles before adding reciprocal relationships as part of the plot instead of as part of the resolution.
Which love triangle in film and literature is your favorite?
PRACTICE
Choose one of the three triangular love models above and write a scene with three characters in that scenario. Post your practice in the comments when you're done.
I enjoyed the movie version of Last of the Mohicans. Lt. Heywood loves Cora. Cora falls for Hawkeye. Hawkeye is not in the market for a girlfriend but slowly falls for her as well. Hawkeye and Heywood are at odds but when push comes to shove, Heywood still gives his life for Cora despite knowing she loves Hawkeye. Of course this is the romanticized version of the original story.
OK, I’m not the best grammatical writer on the planet, maybe this works better as an outline for a story, and I’m not sure I followed the practice’s instructions to the letter, but this is my fifteen minutes return on the exercise!
The Love Triangle
Spring days lengthened into long summer ones. Sea had never had as much fun as these times with her two lovers. The couple and Sea pooled their resources and had taken a long summer’s end weekend at the beach, and now it was all unraveling.
Truly, it had become tiresome trying to be all that for not just one person, but two. Sea got to sleep in the middle because both Mountain and Tree wanted to be near her. It was rather like having to sit in the middle seat with the hump, her permanent position as a girl and the youngest of three children. Here she was, the youngest of three again, slap dab in the middle, where she couldn’t just roll out of bed and pee.
Worst yet, when they had arrived, Mountain wanted to play fantasy. “Let’s pretend,” she said. “Let’s pretend you don’t know me.”
Sea really didn’t understand. Wasn’t the breeze, the crashing waves, three people in love enough? Wasn’t pretending they were normal and that three people could all love each other enough? Apparently not.
Tree and Sea’s passion for each other kept growing while whatever was between Mountain and Sea subsided. Mountain’s temper rose. This was her marriage, her affair, her choice, but nobody wanted to play her games.
Sea found herself wishing to be home alone, or alone with Tree, but not here in the middle of Mountain and Tree with their growing discontent with each other.
Finally, finally, they were home and Sea escaped to her own house, glad to be alone with her private longings for Tree. She’d always thought, “What the Hell, if anybody gets hurt, it will just be me.” Who treats their own heart so lightly?
Meanwhile bad times escalated between Tree and Mountain, complete with Mountain shoving Tree, broken wine glasses, and threats of divorce. They wouldn’t let Sea alone either; calling her and coming over. One afternoon Mountain and Tree appeared at Sea’s door.
“He wants you not me,” Mountain spat at her while fleeing.
This was not the end. It went on and on, this saga, for over a year, ending with a divorce and remarriage.
I’ll give this a try… Although I promised myself I would do my best to never ever write a novel with a love triangle. As a reader, they simply frustrate me too much– and not in a good way. Not in a way that makes you feel for your characters; more like I want to scream, throw the book across the room and never pick it back up. I actually did that to the finale of Maximum Ride. Anywho…
~~~
Jack was musing again.
At first, Maraya had found it annoying– couldn’t he shut up, just for a moment? Then again, she had also found it supremely irritating when he refused to speak for hours on end. Now, Maraya was beginning to find it amusing. Endearing, even.
She wanted to slap herself. She was not going to fall into the trap of loving someone in an arranged marriage. It wasn’t *true* love– it was forced love. The love of never being allowed to love anyone else; being forced to spend and share every private moment with whom you were made to marry.
No, Maraya would not allow herself to be one of those silly fools. But still, she couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her face as Jack intoned blandly about how the new popularity in leather jerkins was surely the work of the witchcraft that was creeping through the land anew.
“They are peasant clothes, hardly suitable for fine lords to go strutting about it–”
The door open with a bang and a messenger stumbled in, nearly slamming into the delicate, ebony wardrobe. It had been an expensive gift to her from her former fiance. Jack, who was lounging lazily on the enormous bed, limbs in a listless sprawl, raised an eyebrow. He hardly looked surprised. In fact, Maraya suspected it was his fault the door had burst open, supposed to the messenger running into it and giving it a few swift knocks.
“Knock, next time,” Jack said boredly. The man looked confused and flustered, but he nodded, his wispy mustache bobbing with him. He was a short thing, and was twisting a long cloth anxiously in his hands. What appeared to be elegant script writing was written in bold columns.
A letter of cloth could only mean one thing.
“The ambassador of Deldore is early,” Maraya commented, standing. “High King, you should–”
“Call me Jack!” Jack said, exasperated, and Maraya scowled at him in return. Not ah hour ago he’d demanded she call him by his title, and his title only.
“Whatever,” she muttered, too low for the messenger too hear, and Jack frowned heavily.
“You are, of course, right, however. I should most definitely where my new robes. The ones that are the precise colour of Philip’s face when I challenged former Young King Fez for the throne,” Jack said, standing gracefully, and Maraya’s scowl deepened.
“Speak not of Fez that way,” Maraya said, stalking over to the wardrobe and throwing it open.
“In what way?” Jack asked, sounding uninterested. Maraya’s temper flared further, but she kept it under wraps. She felt her ‘gift’ flare to life on the side of her neck, and strength seeped through her veins. She shifted her hair subtly so that Jack wouldn’t see it glowing. He didn’t know it to be any more than a tattoo at this point, and she intended to keep it that way.
“With such… impertinence,” she said slowly, concentrating on keeping the whatever-it-was she had been born with under control.
Unfortunately, Jack mistaked it for hesitation. “Oh, you know as well as I that he was a fool. Annoying, too.”
Maraya spun around, eyes flashing. *Actually* flashing, as the power started to glow not only in its centre of origin, but all through her veins. She fought it down, until it was only a subtle luminescence, and stared calmly at Jack. “He was my fiance and long-time friend. He was…. *is*… a good person, and I will *not* have you putting him down like that.”
Jack looked shocked for a minute, and then shrugged. “Sure, sweetheart,” he said, with such lazy acquiesce that Maraya fought the urge to put her fist in his face. No reason for violence.
“I’m not your sweetheart and you know it,” she said instead. Jack shook his head, a light smirk on his face. With a shrug, he turned and left the rooms to his dressing room.
~~~
Well the third character was kind of nonexistent. He was implied.
I like love triangles where there is a girlfriend, a boyfriend, and a male best friend. The triangle happens when the boyfriend and the male best friend start hooking up – but don’t want to ruin their friendship (for one) or relationship (for the boyfriend) with the girlfriend. Please excuse me while I go do some brainstorming on my new novel with this fun subject. Thanks for the inspiration.