The Art Of Writing A Great Love Triangle

Why do love triangles keep readers hooked? Discover the art of writing a great love triangle and learn how to create emotional conflict, tension, and compelling character dynamics in fiction.

What Is A Love Triangle?

A love triangle is when both Jane and Sally love John, and John must choose between them. He likes both very much, but does he love one more than the other, and is that the right person for him in the end? The story’s tension comes from the question the plot must answer: Who will John choose, and will he choose correctly, and what does ‘correctly’ mean? Will he choose the person we want him to choose?

Two BIG Reasons To Consider Writing Love Triangles

(There may be spoilers ahead)

1. High-Risk Consequences Are More Engaging

High-risk consequences give the book more depth, more intensity, and keeps the reader turning the pages. In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, the titular character must choose twice in the book. The first time her choice is between a bigamous marriage with Rochester, whose mad wife is locked in the attic, and leaving him. His argument is that they can marry and live abroad, and no one will ever know he has two wives. Jane chooses self-respect – she loves Rochester, but she won’t be his mistress. She flees Thornfield Hall, leaving Rochester with no idea where she has gone.

The second choice is between her cousin, St John Rivers and singleness, because she is now a wealthy woman. (Rivers is in love with the heiress Miss Oliver and is leaving to be a missionary in India. He feels Jane will be the perfect missionary wife.)

Jane’s choice is between:

1. Love but social disgrace.
2. No love but a life seemingly of purpose and without scandal.
3. No love but comfortable singleness and finding purpose on her own terms.

St John is persuasive and Jane comes very close to accepting him. But Jane chooses Rochester. The only reason she returns to Rochester is that while praying for God to show her the right path to take, she has a supernatural experience, that of hearing Rochester calling for her in great despair. She returns to Rochester, not to be his mistress, but for just one look at him again to assure herself he is alright. She hasn’t abandoned her principles. When she discovers Rochester is maimed and blind she decides to stay with him to help him. Rochester, now a widower, asks her again to marry him. And, dear reader, she does.

Why is this a love triangle?

Jane must make a choice between two men who are opposites. In both cases, she loses something that matters to her. This is only because she doesn’t know Rochester is now a widower. The reader doesn’t either.

Writing Tips:

1. Make sure that the two people the protagonist must choose between are not carbon copies of each other. But also, don’t make one evil and one saintly. Rivers may have been going to the mission field, and looked angelic, but he wasn’t a kind man. It would be difficult to call Rochester a kind man either, but he was never overtly cruel. A cruel man would never have adopted an ex-lover’s child knowing the child wasn’t his.
2. None of Jane’s choices are good ones. It’s important to understand the era in which the book is set. Being an unmarried woman at Jane’s age was frowned upon, unless she was a governess or nurse. The woman would often become the subject of unfounded gossip. If you were not a servant and were living with a man but not married to him, it was disastrous. This is why Rivers insists that if she goes with him to India, they must be married. It is also why Jane had fled from Rochester in the first place.

2. The 3 Cs Make Any Book More Captivating

The 3 Cs; challenging, complicated, and confusing for the characters, keeps the reader on their toes.

If we can figure out on page one, or at the end of the first chapter, whom our protagonist will end up with, there’s no point in reading the book. Each character needs to be well developed. Sub-plots can be used to great effect if done well. A love triangle story needs the same elements as a thriller – suspense, tension, pacing, and drama. And like a thriller, it could all go tragically wrong, for everyone. It certainly does in The Great Gatsby.

In The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, we are drawn into a world in which wealth, and its source, not love, are the foundation of the love triangle. Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy are all wealthy. Daisy and Tom were born into ‘old money’. Gatsby ‘acquired’ his wealth and no one is one hundred percent sure how. Nor are we sure who Daisy will choose. Will she stay with her abusive, adulterous, brute of a husband and if so, why? Or will she abandon her husband and return to Gatsby with whom she had been in love many years before? Gatsby’s pursuit of money was always to win Daisy back. Was that because he loved her, or was he obsessed with her glamour, wealth, and social standing? Does Tom love Daisy or is she just a ‘trophy wife’?

Why is this a love triangle?

Because both Tom and Gatsby love Daisy, each in their own way, Daisy is the one who needs to make the choice between the two men. In the end, Tom makes the choice for her out of jealousy with disastrous consequences.

Writing Tips:

1. Make sure your characters have a solid backstory that explains why they are the person we are introduced to in the book. They must be fully fleshed out and have reasons for their decisions to make sense. Daisy’s vacillation between Tom and Gatsby is due to her having grown up in old money, and the fear of losing that prestige if she walks away from Tom.
2. While one person – the loved one – should be the person making the choice, you can turn it on its head. Have one of the other two characters make the choice, but there must be penalties for that choice.

True Love Triangle vs Not So Much

If you type in ‘true love triangles’ into your search browser, two book series come up – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Yes, both series feature one girl and two guys. That alone does not make them a love triangle. When Twilight came out readers were divided into Team Edward vs Team Jacob. But just because readers prefer one of the two male leads, doesn’t mean it’s a love triangle. Here’s why…

The Hunger Games

• In The Hunger Games, Katniss is friends with Gale. The operative word being ‘friends’. When he confesses he loves her, it comes out of nowhere as far as Katniss is concerned. She, meanwhile, has feigned love for Peeta, but during their time together grows to have deeper feelings for him. So what’s the problem?
• Katniss only sees Gale as a friend. And when she discovers how ruthless he is, and that he no empathy for anyone, her friendship with him sours. Yes, at one point she does kiss him, but he knows it means nothing. Peeta is heartbroken to discover that Katniss’ love for him is also feigned and is brainwashed to kill her. At the end of series, Peeta is cured of his brainwashing. He and Katniss settle down together and learn to love each other. There was no choosing for Katniss between two young men she loved at the same time.

Twilight

• Bella Swan’s story in Twilight is very similar. Jacob, the werewolf, was a friend and was there for her when she needed him. He loved her, but she didn’t return the feelings. Jacob represented family, safety, and settling down. Whereas Edward, the vampire, represented the typical ‘bad boy’ architype, as well as danger, power, and status. He was a world-class gas-lighter and manipulator. The celebrity vs the small-town hero.
• There was no choosing involved for Bella. She was only ever interested in Edward. She wanted the power he represented, the glamour – the dude literally sparkled in the sun. In a way, she was a lot like Daisy in The Great Gatsby.

If you do choose to write a love triangle please:

1. Don’t make it obvious on the first page who will end up with whom. Good examples of this are The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, and the film, Casablanca.
2. Don’t make the two characters our protagonist must choose between too similar, or evil vs good.
3. Don’t forget to put the 3 Cs into the plot.
4. Remember you can make it a comedy. The films While You Were Sleeping, Bridget Jones’ Dairy, Broadcast News, and The Philadelphia Story are all great examples.
5. Remember that, unless there are actual real-feelings for the lovers from the loved one, it’s not a true or real love triangle. And that’s fine, just don’t call your story a love triangle.
6. Make us care about the characters. If we don’t, we won’t finish the book. We have to care deeply about who our heroine or hero chooses, and never be certain what that choice will be, until it’s made. If they choose incorrectly, we have to understand why. The reasons matter. They must make sense, even if they’re tragic.
7. Sign up for our romance writing course: This Kiss.

The Last Word

A great love triangle is never simply about choosing between two people. At its best, it creates emotional conflict, raises the stakes, and reveals your characters’ deepest desires and fears. Whether you write romance, fantasy, literary fiction, or young adult fiction, love triangles can add tension, complexity, and momentum to your story.

In this post, we explored the art of writing a great love triangle. We included why this popular trope works so well, the essential ingredients of an effective triangle, and how writers can use romantic conflict to drive the plot forward.

Source for photo: Dupe

by Elaine Dodge. Author of The Harcourts of Canada series and The Device Hunter, Elaine trained as a graphic designer, then worked in design, advertising, and broadcast television. She now creates content, mostly in written form, including ghost writing business books, for clients across the globe, but would much rather be drafting her books and short stories.

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