Skip to main content

'My Favourite Romance Tropes and Valentine's Day' - by Sudesna Ghosh

 Sudesna Ghosh is a prolific Kolkata based romance author who shares her thoughts on Valentine's Day. Don't forget to check out her new release on Juggernaut, My First Love...

I love reading and writing romance. It wasn’t something that I planned to do when I started my writing career with short stories for children. But then I became friends with so many romance authors that I had no choice – I was talking about writing romance and reading more romance books than ever before because all my friends were writing them. 

While a few people dared to comment that I was too serious and smart to write in the genre, my author friends encouraged me to try something new. I’m so glad I went ahead with it. No matter how much I tried to brush off Valentine’s Day as a commercial, superficial event, I started writing stories especially for the big day. Even if I didn’t get any Valentine’s Day cards or gifts, I started celebrating the occasion buying nice things for myself and the people I love. Romantic feels are contagious.

This year, I have a new novella on the Juggernaut Books app called My First Love. It’s a second chance romance where two high school sweethearts get the opportunity to be together again after a long gap. And of course there’s an obstacle because all love stories need one.

I enjoyed writing this book especially because the Second Chance trope is my favourite one to read and write. A second chance means you can get closure even if you don’t get back together. A second chance brings hope. 

Hope is important. In a world where we’re bombarded with terrible news every hour, hope is a necessity. That’s why I wrote my first second chance novella A Perfect New York Christmas; because I wanted heartbroken friends to stop feeling hopeless. 

Another trope I enjoy reading and writing is the Fake Lovers one. In my novella The Perfect Fake Boyfriend, Sush and Arjun start out as fake lovers for the sake of a family wedding and then they fall in love for real. 

As a psychology graduate, I’ve always had a keen interest in relationships and it’s a learning experience when you build characters who go from feeling basic attraction or no attraction at all, to true love. In fact, I know a couple who went from being fake boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife later. Maybe spending so much time together and sharing the same space makes people feel comfortable and familiar to each other? Good friends who pretend to be a couple sometimes realise they’d be great as a romantic pair. 

I’ve read a ton of fake lover romances and can say that it’s always fun. Sometimes there’s a lot of soul-searching to figure out that the bond has gone from fake to real. There’s always drama because one person promised the other that things would be fake and nothing else but fake. 

This Valentine’s Day, I’m going to download some romance books and meet my friend for dinner. There will be heart-shaped cookies, good food and conversation. 

 Happy Valentine’s Day!

Labels:

Comments

  1. Devika Fernando15 February 2021 at 09:28

    Nice post! I'm glad you gave the romance genre a try, and I LOVE the second chance trope.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. adite19 February 2021 at 16:41

      Hi Devika. Fake boyfriends are my favorite and I loved Sush and Arjun's story in Sue's novella. :)

      Delete
    2. Sudesna19 February 2021 at 17:49

      Thank you, ladies!

      Delete
  2. Satabdi15 February 2021 at 10:54

    I like the enemies-to-lovers trope. Such fun to see people who have taken a strong dislike to each other in the beginning realising later on that they like each other very much!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. adite19 February 2021 at 16:43

      Hi Satabdi. Thanks for visiting. The enemies to lovers trope is always great fun. :)

      Delete
  3. Tarang Sinha18 February 2021 at 23:27

    Interesting post! I like second chance romances. And I really enjoy enemies to friends to lovers kind of romance. I'm so glad you started writing in this genre. And Valentine's Day story reminds me of your story 'It Started With a Cup of Coffee', one of my favourites. I wish you all the best.

    P.S.: I didn't know you are a Psychology graduate. I find Psychology very fascinating! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. adite19 February 2021 at 16:44

      Hi Tarang. Thanks for visiting. :) Absolutely loved "It Started..."

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Basu Chatterji's "Balcony Class" Films

Basu Chatterji's Rajnigandha was like a breath of fresh air in the 1970s film universe of Bombay. At a time when the Angry Young Man was beginning to dominate celluloid screens, Amol Palekar was as un-hero-like as you could get. He was the Common Man who traveled in buses, did not have hero-like mannerisms and did not breathe fire and brimstone at his opponents. Basu Chatterji's Middle of the Road Cinema burst on to the scene and surprised the movie-going audience with its everyday situations and storylines that had an undercurrent of humour. Chatterji catered to an audience that he liked to call the "Balcony Class".  Anirudha Bhattacharjee, author of Basu Chatterji and Middle-of-the-Road Cinema writes an entertaining and heartwarming account of the life and work of Basu Chatterji, one of the most under-rated directors of Indian cinema. Recall of Chatterji's brand of feel-good, slice-of-life movies is perhaps highest for his Rajnigandha, Chotisi Baat, Baaton Baa
4 comments
Read more

'Pure Evil' has been my biggest and most complex project - Author Balaji Vittal

Love them or hate them, you simply can't ignore them. That cliche is perhaps most apt when it comes to the bad men of Bollywood. In fact, some of the most memorable lines of dialogue have been mouthed not by the heroes but by the villains of Hindi cinema. So it is only fitting that these shining stars of the dark world (after all, antagonists are the protagonists of their own stories!) deserve to be spotlighted. Balaji Vittal , the author of Pure Evil: the Bad Men of Bollywood undertakes this onerous task of highlighting the world of these evil characters and how they have come to occupy a special place in the hearts and minds of movie goers.  I spoke to Mr. Balaji Vittal, a National Award winning and MAMI Award winning author of Bollywood books, a columnist for News18, Outlook India, The New Indian Express , a Bollywood commentator and a public speaker, about his journey of venturing into the world of Pure Evil .   Here are some excerpts:   Your book "Pure Evil: the Bad Men
Post a Comment
Read more

Review of Vikram Vedha - The "Kahani" lets the film down

If there is one movie that is perhaps the Godfather of all dirty-cops-and-gangsters movies, it's gotta be The Departed by Martin Scorsese. Interestingly, it was an adaptation of the hit Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs . While the latter was itself a very popular film, it may not be wrong to say that The Departed has surpassed it by acquiring near cult status.   So, it was with this in mind I wanted to watch Vikram Vedha which is a remake of the Tamil film of the same name. The original film starring Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi was a huge blockbuster and it was no wonder that the filmmakers were keen to remake it in Hindi with Saif Khan and Hrithik Roshan in the roles of Vikram and Vedha. However, the Hindi remake failed to recreate the magic of the original. Even though the film is supposedly an exact copy, made by the very same filmmakers who directed the original.  While there has been a bunch of theories about why the Hindi version failed, the consensus has been that "
Post a Comment
Read more