Happily Married, Battle Couple, and True Love is Boring

I'm writing an action/fantasy type story. The two main protagonists are a happily-married battle couple and I have no intention to split them up or have their relationship become rocky for any extended period of time.

Since this story is not a romance, the main source of conflict isn't their relationship or anything that would get in the way of that. With that in mind. They will spend the story doing things unrelated to "married life".

I also have no intention to include a Romance Arc of any sort between any of the minor characters.

Do I still have to worry about True Love is Boring in this instance? Or will the fact that the focus of the story isn't their relationship be enough to prevent that pitfall?

There's no reason it has to be boring (if the fact that they're a couple isn't driving the story, it's a moot point; whatever's driving the story is what has to be exciting).

It worked for Turk and Carla after all (the DVD commentary even said that the writers decided to deliberately write a relationship that succeeded, rather than a Ross/Rachel scenario), and that was a series where character interactions were one of the main focuses.

I think it's enough. Go ahead and write your Happily Married Battle Couple. If you want an example on how this is done well, read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.

Is True Love Is Boring actually a trope?

Edit: I see that it is. Awesome!

edited 28th Sep '13 7:09:57 PM by nrjxll

The only people who think that any "onscreen" couple has to be undergoing marital problems or that there has to be a romantic subplot between a couple of characters - and that the story is "boring" without it - are Hollyweird directors and script writers and they are, for the most part, morons.

Sexist morons, because they shoe-horn romance subplots into action movies to "appeal to women" because, y'know, all chicks are into romance and none enjoy the action/fantasy genres.

Their attempts to make the storyline "appeal to a broad demographic" just come across as cliched and boring (yes, I'm bored with marital difficulties/rekindling the love/romantic subplots turning up in every. bloody. movie.)

If the story you're telling is engaging, it won't be boring and won't need marital difficulties or romantic subplots to make it "more exciting" (if it isn't engaging, no amount of family crises or romance isn't going to save it anyway).

You could do a very good story with a Happily Married Battle Couple - they'd be all the more devastating for it, as they'd trust each other and know each other very well.

If you wanted to, you could even play with the "drive a wedge between them" tropes - have an antagonist attempt to break their teamwork by the cliched methods that frequently turn up in movies - and have those things not remotely work at all because they trust each other.

But that wouldn't be necessary to make the story interesting.

Just having an engaging action/fantasy story and depicting an interesting pair of warriors that also happen to be a couple should make the story "not boring".

I'd read it for the novelty value of it not having the cliched Hollywood crap in it.

Well, they get into some arguments, a couple of which are big, but I'm not making that out to be a sign that their relationship is in trouble.

Real-life Happily Married people have disagreements/arguments - they just deal with them in a mature manner and it doesn't destabilise their relationship.

Unlike movie couples who start filing for divorce over the "toilet seat issue".

The characters can disagree, argue and resolve it between them and move on.

I actually find a lot of the Marital Tension in movies/series breaks Willing Suspension of Disbelief - I find it hard to believe that the characters managed to get far enough to become a couple in the first place if they're prone to flying off the handle at the least provocation or distrust each other to the degree depicted in the story.

edited 28th Sep '13 7:47:06 PM by Wolf1066

I'm currently writing something of the opposite - my protagonist falls in love with this guy because of her attachment issues, and part of the story is about her overcoming her (incredibly shallow) feelings for him and moving on with her life. What makes it sort of similar to what you want to do is that there's little to no romantic tension between them and that this element is merely a backdrop for the rest of the story and is only there as part of the protagonist's character development.

I don't typically spend much time on it in any given scene; stray thoughts in narration that arise from new developments on that front are the farthest I've gone, and I plan to have one to two scenes towards the middle to finalize the feelings of the characters in question. In your case, you'll want to spend even less time on it as your characters are already in a state that they aren't going to move from. But I would recommend giving them at least one scene where they act as lovers to establish the extent of their feelings for each other. You can say that they're happily married, but it'd be a good idea to show the reader just how happily they're married to make their interaction that much more meaningful.

Well, when you phrase it like the way you did in your story it makes it seem like the relationship is unimportant. (Their relationship is an important part of who they are, even if the fact that they're in a relationship is not the driving force of the plot. It has relevance to the plot in the sense that it affects their motivations and character development, but the plot isn't ABOUT their relationship. In your case the plot as you said is about your character getting over a relationship (albeit a shallow one) and therefore isn't quite the same as what I'm trying to do.

My story isn't about the relationship either (and in fact, it only reaches the level of employer/employee or casual friends to begin with; these characters are not, never were and never become lovers). I said it was only part of the protagonist's character development and that it was a backdrop for the rest of the story. My actual story is an action/urban fantasy as yours is, and the only significance these feelings have in the context of the overall plot is that they provide motivation for the event that initiates the story, and that's about it. I said there wasn't any romantic tension between the leads, and you can't quite run a story on that.

It holds true for you as well. Your leads won't have any tension between them - they've already resolved most of theirs aside from any stray disagreements they have here and there. If you start ending up with writer's block, you might end up tempted to throw some sort of big problem their way that ends up causing tension. To avoid this, try to plan out all the events of your story beforehand.

This reminds me of Zoe and Wash from Firefly. Only one of them was a fighter but they were both crew on a ship and happy in their marriage.

I already have a rough idea of the events of the story; again, throwing shit in their way that causes them to leave each other isn't a part of it. (In fact, I make it very clear that they will NEVER abandon each other, no matter how bad it gets.)

Oh, and as for the whole "establishing scene" thing, I don't have any one particular part where they act like lovers and then in every other scene they just act like war buddies. (To me that's too much like "Aww, They Really Do Love Each Other" for my tastes) I'm instead writing various small, subtle, and simple expressions of affection that are interspersed through the narrative. That's part of why I have this concern.

edited 28th Sep '13 10:23:18 PM by HijackThis

Why concern? That sounds like a good way to do it.

It's a concern because I can overdo it and I don't want to. I want their interactions to be interesting and not just them being happy together.

...Now that I think about it, aside from a few rotating "guests", there's only four people in their party including them, so something tells me I'd have to try really, REALLY, hard to overdo it, given that on average 1/6 of the one-on-one character interactions are going to be between them. I'd probably get bored of writing them if it reached that point.

edited 28th Sep '13 10:31:55 PM by HijackThis

What's wrong with Aww, They Really Do Love Each Other? Even if the relationship isn't the main point of the story, I don't see how it's a bad thing. Wouldn't it actually help support the Happily Married part? Even if the relationship isn't the driving point of the story, does it really need to be completely ignored?

In Charlie Muffin by Brian Freemantle the titular character appears to be unhappily married - resentful of his wife's money and having an affair with his boss' PA. He tells his lover that his wife is tight with her money and we see this is not the case later but it comes across that he was bitter and just lying for the sake of running his wife down.

At the end of the story, however, it's revealed that he and his wife were quite Happily Married all along and his wife was aware of the "affair" well in advance of it happening as he was only sleeping with the PA to get information about his boss. Everything nasty he'd said about his wife was part of the ruse to get close to the PA.

I thought it a nice little twist.

The reveal was an Aww They Really Do Love Each Other moment, especially when you realise the trust his wife had in him all along, knowing what was going on, what the plan was and how it involved him boinking another woman on a regular basis.

edited 29th Sep '13 3:41:41 PM by Wolf1066

I never said I was going to ignore the relationship. Quite the opposite. The first chapter and a half is them living peacefully with their daughter before the inciting incident occurs.

My point wasn't that there shouldn't be at least one "romantic" scene. My point is that if you just do one big scene like that and then basically make them act like just friends, then I don't think that's realistic. Friends in the type of situations they're in can go at each other's throats; they respect each other too much to do such a thing and refuse to allow others to.

edited 29th Sep '13 7:43:08 PM by HijackThis

I originally suggested the idea of such a scene while under the impression that these were your two leads. Now that I know these characters are part of an ensemble, I agree with you. However, do keep in mind that showing what your characters do while off duty is never a bad idea for adding depth to them. People do behave differently when they're working as opposed to when they're doing other things.

edited 29th Sep '13 7:44:50 PM by DeviousRecital

Well, it's an Ensemble Cast, but the two of them call the shots for the group and they get a bit more character development than the rest. In that sense they're leads. I should have been more clear, I'm sorry...

edited 29th Sep '13 8:00:53 PM by HijackThis

Oh, okay. My mistake. Either way, if they're Happily Married you will need to demonstrate that on some level, whether it's a few romantic scenes or just the way they treat one another.

I actually quite like the idea of a couple that (as far as the story is concerned) just happen to be married and the relationship isn't their sole defining feature.

Are there any specific tips for this that someone could give me? We've talked about the general problem (if you could call it that), and no specifics. Thanks in advance and for all your feedback thus far.

You want to talk specifics, you're gonna have to give us the specifics of your story

EDIT: Actually, I do have one more thing that I'd like to mention. The main plot revolves around a group of cultists who attempt to eliminate all of the members of a certain noble house, of which the heroine (we'll call her "Alice") happens to be a member of. Alice is the protagonist and her husband (we'll call him "Bob") is the deuteragonist. Bob (obviously) married into this family and they are essentially the only relatives he has. Obviously the two are working to stop the cult and the conflict turns out to be far larger than anticipated.

Is it still correct to say the plot isn't about their relationship when Bob is only a part of the story because he's married to Alice? The assassinations would still be attempted no matter who she married, so they aren't occurring because Alice married Bob.

If the answer is no, then this entire thread will have been pointless for me.

edited 1st Oct '13 8:07:29 AM by HijackThis