Enemies-to-lovers: How Heated Rivalry Scores High in Romance

Hello Readers!

It’s only the second newsletter, by god, but I can’t help myself. I will be talking about gay hockey players in this one, so, ahem, buckle up.

Mostly we are breaking down the titular enemies-to-lovers trope. It’s my favorite flavor of romance, and our spotlight story does an excellent job of portraying the complex development between two characters needed to pull it off.

If you’ve already watched the show or read the book, by all means, read on. But if not, here’s your spoiler warning.

Heated Rivalry is written by Rachel Reid.

It follows rival hockey captains Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander as they balance their careers against the intense and forbidden attraction they feel for one another.

In other words, Reid has managed a near perfect combination of the classic enemies-to-lovers and secret-relationship tropes, then seasoned it all generously with extra spice. I could give less than a flying puck about the hockey. The tension is top-tier.

The TV adaptation of Heated Rivalry is blowing up online since the first four episodes were released on Crave and HBO Max. The series follows not only Shane and Ilya’s story but also introduces a few more characters from Reid’s romances, including Scott and Kip from Game Changer. Showrunner Jacob Tierney has brought these characters to life through streamlined dialogue and straight-to-the-point pacing, a tone that fits the sports atmosphere perfectly.

It’s seldom that book adaptations–especially queer romances–are handled with such care and brought to life as if they jumped straight out of the pages of the book itself

Both leads (Connor Storrie as Ilya and Hudson Williams as Shane) possess the acting chops to convey the depth of Shane and Ilya’s longing for each other and the undeniable weight of the attraction they feel.

All romances can be boiled down to the same basic trajectory: a story about two characters who cannot, under any circumstances, figure it out between each other until the book is 90% over.

To do this, writers have to create obstacles that keep their characters apart and balance out the pull of their romance arcs. Easier said than done, right?

There are two types of obstacles: internal and external.

Internal obstacles are tied to a character’s personality, motivations, and fears. External obstacles involve a character’s position, obligations, or societal expectations. Internal obstacles are a lot more mutable than external ones.

1.The Getting-To-Know-You Sequence

One of the first obstacles to think about for your romance is the characters’ first impressions of each other. Whether they grew up together or they’re meeting for the first time, how that initial interaction as love interests goes is crucial. That said, it’s only natural as a writer that you tend to jump the gun a bit and fast-track the whole we-are-strangers to we-are-in-love progression. We envision the end game for these characters more than the early stages, and that can lead to an unrealistic progression or an insta-love phenomenon that can pull readers out of the story.

Reid avoids this by using external obstacles like time and location to naturally push Shane and Ilya together and pull them apart. Their first meeting is cleverly set up not only to introduce the characters to each other, but also to the audience. Shane is pure-hearted and values sportsmanship. This is obvious when he introduces himself to Ilya before their game, while Ilya responds with the cool indifference consistent with his reputation. We can tell Ilya is putting on a front while Shane is doing his best to be genuine. This moment reveals the root of both characters’ internal obstacles.

With this established, Reid goes on to balance out their obstacles by building romantic intention. Every action signals desire: Ilya’s fingers lingering on Shane’s a second too long when passing him a water bottle, the constant eye contact they can’t help but make. This carries on over long stretches of time. Months, sometimes even years, pass before Shane and Ilya see each other. Reid relies on this external obstacle to build anticipation of that eventual first meet-up, letting multiple chapters filled with “will-they-wont-they” moments pass before putting Shane and Ilya alone in a hotel room together.

Instead of jumping straight to fluff and banter, see how long you can stretch the tension between your love interests to realistically portray the stage of getting to know each other.

2. The Right Environment For Tension

In Heated Rivalry, Reid sets up Ilya and Shane as perfect foils for each other as rival hockey captains. This is her main external obstacle, the reason both characters use to justify why they can’t be together. But it also gives them something in common. The best external obstacles, especially for enemies-to-lovers romance, are ones that place the main characters in similar but opposite positions. This creates the unique scenario where the characters are drawn together in mutual understanding while also dredging up a ton of internal and external obstacles for them to navigate.

The nature of Shane and Ilya’s same sex relationship in Heated Rivalry makes this set up especially tricky for them. Hockey is a hypermasculine sport with built in anti-queer sentiment, and we as an audience are shown this right away. Being caught dating a rival would end anyone’s career, but dating a man would destroy Shane and Ilya’s reputations in the sport they’ve given their life to. The stakes are through the roof.

Because they are rivals, neither Shane nor Ilya is allowed to be who they truly are. This is often why enemies-to-lovers is such an appealing trope: it comes with resistance built in, and there’s something wildly satisfying about watching two people try their hardest not to fall for each other.

3. The Price of Vulnerability

While important, its crucial to understand that external or situational obstacles are not the only way to give your romance tension. Internal obstacles are just as important, and the best way to work in tension between love interests is to give them conflicting desires.

Remember a couple paragraphs ago when I was talking about Shane and Ilya’s meeting scene and how it cleverly established their internal obstacles? Well, if we take a closer look at them, we can see that they’re basically opposite character traits: Shane cares deeply about his reputation while Ilya does not. Ilya is unwilling to open up to Shane, Shane wants to form a deep emotional connection with Ilya.

This makes sense with what we’ve seen: Shane has loving parents and a group of friends to lean on. Even if he can’t tell them the truth about his sexual orientation and often feels isolated, he has a support system. On the other hand, Ilya’s family is the opposite of supportive–his father constantly berates him, while his brother calls him only when he needs money. Ilya’s beyond isolated–he’s completely alone.

What Reid is doing here is giving characters a reason to need one another. These opposing desires and character traits don’t work as obstacles until we put Shane and Ilya together. Only then does a clear narrative emerge for how these two characters are going to help each other. But this process shouldn’t be easy.

A YouTube video called “The price of intimacy is conflict” by Francesca Psychology puts it quite succinctly: The price of intimacy means being vulnerable, and this should cause conflict.

When your characters expose their soft sides, like Shane, they are more easily hurt. They may build up barriers as a result. Or perhaps, like Ilya, your character refuses to show their softness, instead rejecting the love they so obviously feel, and this gets slowly broken down over the course of the story. Characters need to affect one another, and this is especially true if they are love interests.

When writing romance, a character’s internal obstacle will be something that they rely on their love interest to help them resolve.

Honestly, there is so much more that goes into writing romance than the above pointers. It’s an extensive genre, and while I really only touched on enemies-to-lovers here, there’s also friends-to-lovers, fake-relationships, and a ton of other hyper specific dynamics that have their own set of tips.

We’ll eventually get to all of them on The Editor’s Desk, so let us know if there’s any specific author, book, or show you’d like me to focus on. In the meantime, I’ll be adding more romance to my TBR.

So, what did you think of Heated Rivalry?

Does the show live up to the hype of the book? What are your thoughts on the newest episode, and whats your favorite sub-genre of romance? Reply with your review, or head over to Discord to start a discussion!