The Wattpad content team is back to talk more about our verticals. We last chatted about LGBTQ+ romance and now we're back to share two of our other new verticals that we know our romance readers will love — Hot Encounter and Dangerous Love. While these two verticals have some similarities due to their steamy story elements, they also have quite a few differences. In this post, we're going to tell you all about how Hot Encounter and Dangerous Love might seem similar but are definitely not the same.
Hot Encounter
These are our hot and heavy love stories. Whether it's a lighthearted enemies-to-lovers fiction between college students, a marriage-before-love story set in a recognizable historical time period, or a slow burn featuring a billionaire or athlete love interest, these are stories that make us believe in love—and lust—again.
Dangerous Love
These are our NSFW love stories. These love stories are taboo, they are not something your readers may ever experience, but that makes it even more intriguing. Whether it's a mafia story, a psychological dark romance, or a romantic suspenseful thriller, these are stories that give your reader a hot escape.
Now that we know how these verticals are defined, let's start easy and discuss their similarities.
What Hot Encounter and Dangerous Love Verticals have in common
Romance
Needless to say, these are both romance genres. This means there are certain narrative beats of a romance story that their target audience will expect them to incorporate, i.e. the lead characters having a happily ever after. However, while they're in the same romantic genre, they occupy different subgenres.
Hot Encounter has more ordinary romantic subgenres like billionaire, sports, young adult, and workplace. These subgenres reflect that these stories often have a more contemporary or familiar setting that readers can relate to.
Dangerous Love encompasses more intense romantic subgenres like dark, mafia, and romantic suspense. These subgenres typically feature darker themes and play with illicit or taboo relationships.
Enemies to Lovers
While not a requirement, both verticals often feature an enemies-to-lovers trope between the lead characters.
While the stakes may not be high in Hot Encounter, this vertical often utilizes the opposites-attract trope that leads to the prevalence of enemies-to-lovers. However, this trope is not only confined to enemies to lovers, which is why you will also have other dynamics like grumpy/sunshine and rivals to lovers.
When it comes to Dangerous Love, the enemies-to-lovers trope is included usually because one of the lead characters is effectively an audience-insert and is supposed to represent the everyday person, while the other is involved in some sort of organized crime. This often presents a morality clash that pits them against one another at the start of the story.
Bad Boys
A classic and beloved Wattpad trope is—of course—the bad boy. It should come as no surprise that these two popular verticals tend to feature them.
Hot Encounter features our more classic bad boy, who is rebellious but whose cheekiness and charisma help draw the main character in. They are also fairly harmless when compared to the bad boys often in Dangerous Love.
Now, Dangerous Love has actual bad boys with questionable morals, as they actively participate in various forms of organized crime; whether they belong to gangs or mafia organizations.
It's clear that even in their similarities, these two verticals have distinct differences which we will dive into now.
How Hot Encounter and Dangerous Love verticals differ
Fantasy vs. Escapism
Both verticals owe some of their popularity to fulfilling the imagined desires of readers, who want to feel as if they are the ones experiencing the romance themselves. The key difference between these verticals is that Hot Encounter creates a fantasy, while Dangerous Love creates an escape.
Hot Encounter features common story elements that a reader could potentially run into in their daily lives; most readers can relate to dreaming about a workplace romance, or a sports team crush. The relationships feel real to them because the characters are normal people, and the story tropes are exaggerated versions of normal events that can happen.
Dangerous Love creates an escape because these explore taboo topics that the reader will likely never encounter in their real lives; unless they have close ties to the mafia... for some reason. They are able to escape from their mundane lives and imagine what a thrilling, criminal romance would be like.
Tone of Story
While tones of individual stories may vary, the most common tones seen in these verticals are quite different.
Dangerous Love stories usually have a dark and more serious tone. Due to the more serious subject matter and the intensity of the story arcs, a serious tone is better fitting for the story.
This differs from Hot Encounter as the tone for these stories can range from a lighter, more comedic tone to an angsty, sexier tone. Even at its angstiest, it still will likely not be as consistently dark as what we see in Dangerous Love.
Morality of Characters
The morality of the characters in these verticals vastly differs.
In Dangerous Love, you have characters that are directly involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping, and even murder. These are characters that are deeply flawed and have highly questionable morals. Even if the main character represents the more rational side of their relationship, that character still doesn't see it as a dealbreaker that their partner might have to literally kill people as part of their daily routine, which means their own ethical standards are likely pretty low.
This isn't to say that Hot Encounters don't feature flawed characters, but those flaws don't typically involve tendencies to murder. Instead, their flaws are more relatable and might be due to internal conflicts, trauma, and/or just simple miscommunication.
Sex!
Now both of these verticals will likely have sex in them—a lot of sex in them. However, they differ with what kind of sex is included.
Dangerous Love usually incorporates taboo sex, the type of sex that the reader might be too nervous to try themselves but are intrigued to learn more about. This includes but is not limited to: BDSM, legal kinks, and consensual rough sex.
Hot Encounter might not be that out there but it is definitely still steamy. Even if the sex is vanilla, readers want details! They want to immerse themselves in the experience and let their imaginations run wild.
Now that we have a better understanding of what Dangerous Love and Hot Encounter actually are, let's dive into some stories we recommend from each vertical.
Hot Encounter stories on Wattpad
- The Billionaire and The Waitress by moonsarai
- Fake Married to My Billionaire Boss by anselacorsino
- Hired to Love by JordanLynde
- Together At Odds by fleuresmell
Dangerous Love stories on Wattpad
- The Criminal by Rebecca-Jade
- Mayhem by peachpsedudonym
- Protecting Selené by FatFreeCoolWhip
- A Yakuza Affair by seayongahn
We’re looking forward to reading what hot and steamy stories you write next! Keep checking in with our blog and sign up for our newsletter to continue getting more in-depth details on each of the remaining verticals.
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