Love interest

The love interest is the character whose role is the protagonist's romance, the third of the three basic relationships Beemgee counts: characters "cooperate," they "oppose" each other, or they "get together," and "to make the story feel complete, authors especially of popular stories such as Hollywood movies often include the third type in the form of a love interest." The type is old: the innamorati, the lovers of commedia dell'arte, were stock characters existing "for the sole purpose of being in love with one another"; "the main function of the lovers within the play is to be in love."

For the writer the role is a plot engine before it is a person: the love line supplies goal, stakes and a second arc, and in the romance genre it is half the book, the craft of which is how to write romance. The classic staging with a rival is the love triangle; the stretched version is a slow burn.