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I’d say ‘Love vs Hate’ is second only to ‘Life vs Death’ in terms of oldest stories. Humans fought to survive before they had civilization, so that one is built into our instincts. It wasn’t until we became civilized that the concept of love evolved into what we see today, which is more than simply needing to breed. Of course, the opposite of love is hate, which is where we get the conflict.
Some may guess that this deals with stories of romance. While that is a genre, it’s also a fairly common storyline. Love can blossom in nearly any situation if you write it correctly, which isn’t always the case. I’ve seen plenty of complaints whenever a non-romance story gets a romantic subplot. So, an author needs to be a bit careful about adding one to make sure it doesn’t overshadow the real story. Not that it stops people because falling in love is one of the most common actions that people share. Even if the relationship failed or you only hope to fall in love some day, you get the concept’s idea.
Being that even children understand love to some extent, you would assume that it’s easy to write about with little criticism. Unfortunately, love can be defined differently from person to person. One reader might think ‘love at first sight’ is unbelievable and another will have experienced such a phenomena. A divorced person will see the emotion in a different light than one who has been happily married for years. There’s no way to effectively combat this though, so you’re going to have to hedge your bets on most people accepting your storyline. Not agreeing with the method of love, but accepting that is is feasible for the characters. Good luck with that headache.
On the other side of the ‘Vs’, we have hate. Unlike love, this seems to be more universal in its definition. Hating something is when you truly don’t like it. If it’s a person then you may want bad things to happen to them or at least for them to go away. That’s the opposite of love where you want a person to be closer. Hatred is rather straightforward in how it operates and influences people. So, this ‘Vs’ could also be about how a complicated emotion (love) goes up against a simpler one (hate). That is not to say hate is hard to explain though since the triggers for hatred can be complicated. Yet, we do tend to wrap our heads around it more easily than love regardless if we agree or not.
Something that keeps coming to my mind is the flip-flop that stories do at times. We probably all know a story where the main characters start by hating each other and then fall in love. Plenty that go from love to hate as well, especially if betrayal is part of the background. With the polar opposite nature of love and hate, we can see how easily it is to create a story where the characters can jump to the other side. Both are incredibly strong emotions, which can instill passion, so there is a chance of crossing wires. This would come off as natural too unless the division or unity is forced without any level of understanding. The characters can’t abruptly change their minds on each other, so events have to push them in the right direction.
Think I’ll always be tempted to throw a ‘love vs hate’ storyline into my books. As long as it makes sense though. Certain characters aren’t the love or hate type, so I would have to force the issue. Not a good idea. Just shows that you should think if your characters would even want to fall in love or be capable of utter hate before you attempt to add this storyline.
What do you think of the classic ‘love vs hate’ story?
Legends of Windemere 