Basically, when you go to write a romance, even just a background one, what's your strategy? How do you build your characters' personalities to prepare them for it? Or conversely, what kinds of established personalities do you try to bring together?
Personally, I usually pair up characters that already exist in the story-- 99% of the time I don't care enough about romance to have it planned from the start. ^^;
But when I do decide to put it in, even I have one go-to strategy:
Use characters that seem different, but are secretly very similar!
...Or, in my case, take characters that are different and add details to their personalities that make them similar. It's a little hard to explain, so I'll give an example.
Character A began as a funny, sweet, but self-effacing character. You know, the kind of person who thinks everyone is better than them, but they're so positive and 'cheerleader-y' about it that it takes a while before you realize how little self-confidence they must have. He was always like this, and still is.
Character B began as a...well, as a basic 'psycho killer' character. He did have a little depth; it was implied that he acted like that as some kind of extreme rebellion against the life he used to have, which just bored him. =/ Not much to look at there...in the early drafts he was more of a side antagonist, who A barely interacted with.
Anyway, dozens of drafts later, they are in love (kinda...)! How did this happen, and what did I do to Character B to make this work??
Well, like I said: I fleshed out his personality to match A's. He's still a bit of an insane killer, but now he has reasons for it that are deeper than 'it's fun'...reasons that hint at his own lack of self-worth.
To give an extremely condensed psychoanalysis: due to some horrible childhood trauma, he has developed a sort of 'destructive' personality. He spends most of his time trying to ruin people's lives one way or another, and this is way of making himself feel safe/dominant...while at the same time, reaffirming his belief that he is a bad person.
BUT, all that is under the surface. Character B may be destructive and manipulative...but people usually don't realize it at first, because he is also extremely skilled at becoming whatever kind of person other people want him to be. If they want a ruthless killer, he can be that, and if they want a kind and protective friend (as A does~), he can be that, too.
On just a few brief occasions, the masks slip to reveal his 'true' personality...which is little more than a well of empty bitterness; pure spite without all the fun parts. You might say that he doesn't really have a personality outside of whatever he's pretending to be at the moment.
Now that I've explained all of that, maybe you can see some of the parallels:
-At heart, both A and B hate themselves. At the very least, they are dissatisfied with who they really are.
-On the outside, both A and B put on 'performances' for other people. A does this to make others comfortable and distract from himself, and B does this for personal gain (and to toy with his victims)...but both of them are constantly engaged in this behavior.
-Both A and B spend a lot of time thinking about others, and thus becoming sensitive to their strengths and weaknesses, needs and wants. Again, they have wildly different motives, but nonetheless their activities basically revolve around other people (and eventually, each other).
So despite one being a hero and the other a villain, they secretly have a lot in common, and it's through peeling away the outer layers and discovering this that they grow closer as a pairing. ^^
...Of course, they're not necessarily a 'good' pairing. ^^;;; A is essentially the perfect victim for B, and if B is ever to heal the gaping wounds in his soul, he needs someone who will challenge him to be better and expect more of himself, not someone like A who will defer to him and enable him. Unfortunately, they are attracted to each other to their own detriment. :[
But this is fiction; it doesn't need to be wholesome, it just needs to be interesting. :9 And I think this 'pseudo-opposites attract' dynamic is both interesting to write and to read.
TL;DR You get to use the revelation of common threads to develop the characters as they fall for each other (while giving them additional reasons to do so~), and challenge yourself to transform the same personality traits into different life outcomes, especially if they're both negative/both positive, just in different ways.
