How to write a good love interest character

[ForestDweller]

Well, it's already something that you took the time to make a forum for and think about. A good start.

And even if it was a typical harem, many of those stories are popular ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm never really satisfied reading the typical harem to be honest. I only like it when the girls are written well-enough as characters that I can really see them as autonomous people that truly exist beyond the MC.

Though that also means MC must be good as well, or else I'll be pissed that interesting girls like them are all flocking to an unlikeable person like him.

 

[weakwithwords]

Well, it's already something that you took the time to make a forum for and think about. A good start.

And even if it was a typical harem, many of those stories are popular ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

*cough* *cough*

SilverDark is the actual thread starter despite your significant interaction with ForestDweller (who didn't even bother to disabuse you of that notion).

The bigger the harem the more it tends to lean towards sacrificing quality for quantity.

There is a story about a king who got enticed by a lady's dance and he asked his aide to invite the woman to his chambers. After their lovemaking, the king was still curious so he questioned her about her identity.

"Your highness, don't you remember? You married me three years ago."

 

[SilverDark]

thank you all guys.
for one i think that the advise from Amarathia, Xianpiete, Ral and Flucket is really helpful in the way i would need to show this character since most of the things mentioned are things you need to establish early on in the story.
Also i sort of liked the conversation between Amarathia and Forestdweller since it shows tricky parts or traps which i could fall into especially since i'm new at this.

 

[Amarathia]

*cough* *cough*

SilverDark is the actual thread starter despite your significant interaction with ForestDweller (who didn't even bother to disabuse you of that notion).

The bigger the harem the more it tends to lean towards sacrificing quality for quantity.

There is a story about a king who got enticed by a lady's dance and he asked his aide to invite the woman to his chambers. After their lovemaking, the king was still curious so he questioned her about her identity.

"Your highness, don't you remember? You married me three years ago."

LOL opps. Totally forgot who started it. O well. I said stuffs and it was fun

 

[Alienix]

You could always make her a whore, and then surprise the reader when her personality shines through later
You mentioned that she's a college classmate, so what better way to pay for college?

Ah, there's a lot of manga that use this trick lately.

 

[Alienix]

Well OP did say they want her to be a love interest, so we have the end goal covered already... [badumtiss]

1. Every reader will want something different from an ideal love interest. Some will want a love interest character that is their personal type -- this is most common in romance genres when there's a little bit of intentionally allowing the reader to project themselves into the story. Others will want a character that is just ideal and happens to be a love interest. For myself, the "ideal love interest" character is: one who acts as a foil to the MC.
2. What this means is -- if the MC is headstrong and reckless, the LI should be more rational and cautious. If the MC is spontaneous and gregarious, the LI is a little more shy, withdrawn, or maybe just abrasive. Personalities that play off each other, sometimes clashing and sometimes complementing.
3. As @Amarathia stressed, she needs to be an actual character. Chemistry doesn't come out of nowhere. Two fully formed, multi-dimensional people with their own personalities and motivations are going to be easier to write interacting with each other, because you understand who each of them are and how they would react, and it will play better with the audience because they're seeing two characters dialogue, not just one character and his designated heterosexual breeding pair.
4. Don't force a romance. Don't focus on building her up as a "love interest". This is just the way I write these things, so it's not "correct", it's just what works for me, but: romance between characters reads best when it's played like romance between real people. Let it form organically. I actually have a difficult time reading a lot of romance novels because right from the get go, it's set up that "these two are gonna end up together" and the author writes every interaction with the expectation that I already know these two are in love/going to be in love. The best romance subplot I've ever read in any story that hit the right beats with me was actually in a story where, by all expectations, the "2nd Male Lead" type character ended up being the OTP. The MC tried things out with the handsome Crown Prince 1st ML character, and it turned out it was just a cute fairytale idea and in reality, these two didn't have a romantic future together. They were just too different people. The 2nd ML character that had been a long time friend and doing all the real work supporting the MC ended up marrying her, because they had more mutual respect and shared goals and beliefs. Most JP and CH novels will go with the Crown Prince character just because that's the "ideal love interest", but this novel went with the common-born 2nd Male Lead because he was the most organic and true fit to the character.
5. So basically, you've "designated" what character you want to be the love interest and plan to build her toward that as an end goal, but that has a chance of reading as forced and hollow. The best way to "set something up" is to just write a character, that happens to be female, to add to the ongoing narrative (as others have suggested: give her skills that can contribute in material ways to the story, or hell, make her an antagonist, we love enemies to lovers in this house), don't think of it in the framework "how do I make this lady girl female chick heterosexual love interest character desirable to the readers and the MC", but instead "how do I make this character 3 dimensional and part of the narrative organically", and allow the natural interactions to build up that UST.

Smooth advice. I ll take a note to this

 

[LostinMovement]

Having real life romantic experiences can help you a great deal when you write love interests. How did you meet your first or last bf/gf? What brought you together? What worked in your relationship? What didn't? What kept you together? What broke you up?
You can draw inspiration from that and mimic it into your own writing so that the romance between your MC and their love interest feels more organic and less 'anime-ish/cartoon-ish'.
All my past partners all had things in common with me, same hobbies and similar fields of studies/work. Make your MC and his potential love interest bond over the same thing and take it from there.

 

[thedude3445]

A good love interest is a character designed so well that they could be the MC and it would still be a super compelling novel. Imagine yourself writing the story from the love interest's POV in some alternate gaiden book, and design them with that in mind, even if that gaiden book never exists. That's my very simple advice, anyway.

Also, a few months ago I wrote an extensive blog post about how to write cute romance. This guide assumes that both (or all) of the characters are already really fleshed out, but you might get some help from this, I think! If you read it and it is useful please let me know