Insta Love: The Book Trope Explained

Among many of the popular (and not-so-popular) book tropes you may have seen floating around on social media, insta love is one that comes up as... not quite so ideal. Got no idea what insta love is and whether it’s happening in your story? You’re in the right place. Sunday Times bestselling author and writing coach Kate Dylan is here to explain everything.

In this blog post, Kate outlines the elements of this frequently seen romance trope—where a love story happens just a little bit too quickly to seem realistic—and how we can ensure the path of true love in our stories runs smoothly for the reader.

It’s a love/hate thing

In any conversation about ‘book tropes we hate the most’ or ‘the worst tropes in YA fiction,’ you’re bound to find the words ‘insta love’ somewhere—and usually, it’s right toward the beginning of the list. (The terms insta love, insta-love, and instalove all refer to the same trope.)

Despite the fact that in real life, people—and young people, specifically—do often fall in love hard and fast, sometimes even at first sight, this is one thing readers have mixed emotions about in fiction.

What is insta love?

It’s probably best described as unearned love. It’s two characters who meet each other and fall in love in a way that reads as though it’s being forced by the narrative, even though there’s no realistic reason for those feelings to have evolved—especially not so quickly. Think of it as the modern-day interpretation of that classic romance trope: love at first sight.

It’s two people telling us they’re madly in love when the story hasn’t yet shown us a reason for that to have happened. We often see it in YA novels because these books tend toward shorter timeframes and more immediate action, which leaves less room for the gradual blossoming of feelings we’ve come to associate with ‘real’ love and a burgeoning relationship rather than lust or infatuation.

Why don’t people like it?

Like everything else in fiction, there’s no such thing as an inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ trope—there’s only what works and what doesn’t. Some people adore romance stories where people fall in love at first sight and always will.

In a lot of cases, insta love doesn’t work for the reader because the words on the page haven’t made them feel that love, so they don’t believe it. When that’s the case, the characters’ declarations of love become lines that are being delivered by two actors with no chemistry, rather than a sweeping love story the reader can get lost in.

Is it just about two characters falling in love at first sight?

Yes—and no.

This is a contradictory answer, but the truth is, time functions differently in novels than it does in real life. A 320-page book, for example, can detail events that take place over the course of two years or over the course of a day, and a romance plot can work in either extreme.

The trick isn’t to count the physical amount of time your characters have known each other, but the experiences they’ve shared together during that time.

If I, as a reader, have spent 280 pages with them, I will likely be rooting for their romance even if they’ve technically only known each other for a day. Whereas I could be reading a novel where three whole months have passed, but because those months passed ‘off-page,’ I still won’t buy into the romantic relationship because I haven’t been shown enough of that journey.

In that respect, you can think of insta love as love that hasn’t had enough development on the page.

The trick isn’t to count the physical amount of time your characters have known each other, but the experiences they’ve shared together during that time.
—Kate Dylan

How do I know if I’m writing an insta-love relationship?

On a purely time-based level, any book that takes place over the course of a week or less could probably be accused of being insta love, since the characters are so new to each other. That’s why my personal measure isn’t time-based; it’s plot-based.

Insta love, on a craft level, is basically love that comes too early in the plot to make sense.

It’s feelings that aren’t grounded in shared experiences.

It’s lust masquerading as love.

And lust is absolutely okay! Plenty of readers will happily buy into an unearned romantic encounter as long as the author—and characters—acknowledge it for what it is.

But in order to avoid the idea of insta love, we have to ensure our characters are bonding enough to create that depth of feeling that turns lust into love before they start declaring their intention to be together forever. In most stories, ‘I’ve known you an hour—let’s have sex’ is far more believable than ‘I’ve known you an hour—let’s get married.’

How to turn lust into love and avoid insta love

As an author whose first four books all take place in the span of three to seven days, working to avoid insta love has become a big part of my plotting process. Here are some tricks I use to make my romantic relationships feel earned:

1. The signposting

As authors, we tend to signpost the moment when the love interest first appears.

Maybe we talk about this person’s eyes, or how attractive they are, or how magnetic. And all of that is great—readers want this signpost, and most people have come to expect it. But sometimes, in an attempt to whisper: a wild love interest appears, we end up basically screaming: THE LOVE INTEREST IS HERE! And in narratives where the characters are on opposite sides of the plot, this can end up looking like too much too soon. It can strike an inauthentic note.

To avoid this, you can add a little bite to your descriptions.

Example: I notice him as soon as he steps inside, not only because the whole place seems to fall silent when he does, but because he’s a Narnian soldier in a Capitol bar...

If it doesn’t make sense for your characters to only notice the good things, make sure they see the bad things, too. Or the odd things. The curious things. The suspicious things. Make sure you’re showing the love interest through the lens of how the protagonist would actually see them. A soldier on the opposite side of the battlefield may be pretty—but they’re still the enemy. The reader should be able to see both of those things.

Insta love, on a craft level, is basically love that comes too early in the plot to make sense. It’s feelings that aren’t grounded in shared experiences. It’s lust masquerading as love. And lust is absolutely okay! Plenty of readers will happily buy into an unearned romantic encounter as long as the author—and characters—acknowledge it for what it is.
—Kate Dylan

2. The layering

This is an extension of the technique above.

When we’re first getting to know someone, we tend to notice much more about them because we’re actively looking for clues as to who they are, and what we notice tends to change depending on whether we’re inclined to like them or not.

In an enemies-to-lovers story, for instance, your protagonist is probably looking for reasons to dislike the love interest, so for every sneak peek at their chiseled abs, have them also comment on how smug the love interest is, or how wrong, annoying, loud, boring, brainwashed, etc.

In a non-enemies-to-lovers set-up, you’ll want to be layering more neutral attributes, like an interesting thing this person has said or an unexpected hobby. The point is to keep layering realistic observations because the more the love interests learn about each other, the more the reader does—and the more they start to feel the connection between the characters, even if they’ve not known each other that long.

This layering can then be gradually used to show how the protagonist’s thinking is slowly starting to change, because as their opinion of the love interest improves, so can the things they notice about them. They can gradually become more complimentary.

3. Give your couple a catalyst moment

At some point, your main character will need to start actively liking the love interest.

This is easy in slow-burns, or books where a lot of time is passing and the characters are spending a lot of on-page time together as well as in-world time together. It’s harder in books where things have to happen fast.

Usually, what’s missing in stories that feel insta-lovey is a catalyst moment that makes the protagonist realize that they are seeing the love interest in a different light, and vice versa.

Depending on the story, this catalyst can be small—they might say something unexpected or perform a kind act of some sort. In big, action-based plots, it can be a much bigger catalyst—like saving someone’s life or risking their own life for a noble cause.

The actual catalyst you choose will depend on the story, but the point of the catalyst is to give your characters a solid, on-page reason to start challenging their previous assumptions about each other.

4. Avoid declarations of love until they’ve been earned

In the right circumstances, declarations of love are great—but when they’re not earned, they can start to seem like insta love.

In many ways, most people are conditioned to question declarations of love more than we’re conditioned to question the physical act of love. It’s far more believable for a character to kiss or have sex with the first person they meet in a bar on page 1 than it is for them to be madly in love with that person on page 50.

So, while you can absolutely bring your characters together as early as you want in the plot, if you’re doing it very early, consider signposting the fact that this is likely lust, not love, to begin with, and then have those actual feelings of love grow as you go through the novel.

In my own novels, I even go a step further as to have my characters reflect on the fact that they’ve only known the love interest for a week, and so they don’t know if it’s love yet—they’re just happy to follow the feelings and see where things lead, which goes a long way toward dispelling that insta-love feeling.

5. Give your characters a reason to exist beyond ‘to fall in love’

Every person in your story—whether they’re the protagonist, love interest, or a supporting cast member like a best friend—should be the hero of their own story. Even if we’re not seeing that much of them, they need to feel like they’re a person who exists to do more than just further the plot/romance.

So, just as your protagonist needs to want something, so does the love interest, and those wants and needs should play a role in the conflict that the couple encounters as they come to fall in love.

They each need to have a goal and their own plan for achieving it, and they should both be trying to keep their goal front and center. The pursuit of those goals should then, at times throughout the novel, push them together and keep them apart, so that when they do finally end up together, it feels like they’ve really earned it.

What if I do all that and people still think it’s insta love?

As with all things writing, every reader is different and they’ll approach your work according to their preferences. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never please them all, but as long as you’re being cognizant of the insta-love trope and what the average reader doesn’t like about it, you can work to minimize the pitfalls as best as you can.

Beyond that, you shouldn’t worry too much. Our aim as authors should always be to write the best story we can; once it leaves our hands, we can’t control how people feel about our words.

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