Every two people experience a relationship differently. So can two fictional people. Though, it helps to have experience love, but I'm sure you've been told that before. xD
Heh, writing romance is fun. I just think of it as an unresolvable argument, where the whole thing is just a challenge not to admit it. It's like the game or something - you've got to get as far as you can without thinking "this is a relationship"... There's no drama in just slowly realising that person is the right one for you. I tend to do the slow creeping falling in love over an age for a sideplot, while if I'm writing out and out romance, it's a fight. Maybe one character realises sooner than the other, and just tries to make them see it without doing anything as stupid as saying, "So, you know how you're madly in love with me...?" except as a last resort.
Just my quick two cents before bedtime: I think it's important to remember that there is an equal amount of pain involved, where love is concerned, as their is beauty. Anybody who's been in love before will know what I mean first-hand, without the need for me to explain it. As long as you achieve that balance, which, naturally, differs from couple to couple, then your story will be realistic enough. The rest is just down to how you execute it.
Others have touched on this eloquently above but I will add to it. Romantic 'boy meets girl' love where they meet and are deliriously happy is one type of fiction (Mills & Boon-ish). Interesting or 'realistic' love is quite different. As Ash said, there is usually some sort of conflict. Every couple has a sore point and in fiction the sore point should be exploited. Believable fiction will paint a picture of love that isn't easily obtained. Perhaps it is unrequited or forbidden in some way. I was once told that a couple who don't quarrel aren't in love. I scoffed at it. But after six years of a long term relationship, I understand that arguments can arise out of a desire to improve matters or resolve tension.
I truly believe that to write about love you have to either be in love, or have an unnaturally objective memory. Otherwise you won't believe your own memories. You'll think it had to be less breathtaking than you remember, you'll convince yourself it didn't really occupy all your thoughts, you'll recall it as a vaguely strong feeling. Then you'll love again, forget your previous thoughts as the ramblings of a loveless sad husk of yourself, and feel again as your heart explodes in your chest.
Love is a hard thing to write about, at least for me it is. This is because it means different things to different people on so many levels. It has been said that you can't write about love unless you've been in love. That logic would seem to imply that you couldn't write a murder mystery unless you've actually killed someone. That is where research comes in. Even if you have been in love yourself, it can't hurt to have more than just your own perspective on the issue before you put pen to paper on it. Articulating love in your writing is probably one of the most complex and complicated aspects of character development. Alas, it also one that I haven't mastered
When you write a murder mistery, you don't need to write it for murderers. So, following your example, you can indeed write about love without having loved, if your target population have never loved either.
I tend to disagree on that. You can write a murder mystery from the perspective of the killer, and actually get inside the mindset of a serial killer, without being one. It takes research on serial killer cases, studies on the psychological profiles of serial killers and interviews to see how they see themselves and how they relate to both the crime and their victims. Likewise, I think you can write a love story for people who have been in love, without having been there yourself, but you'd have to do your homework first (Study other love stories, discuss what being in love means to various people and try to gain a larger appreciation for what love really is). I never said it would easy, but that's just my opinion.
Ok so what, if I have a lesbian couple in my story, I need to have a girlfriend? My boyfriend might be cool with that, but he might not be. Is this one of those "write what you know" things?
Did a search. How about posting an example of your writing (in the Review section) but don't forget to do some reviewing first. Then others can make constructive comments about it and in this way, help you by practice. For example, show us something corny and perhaps we can suggest a way of making it not so.
Indeed, we disagree. Well, I'll keep suggesting people not to write about love until they've loved and you keep suggesting them to study love and try. That way they'll have to think for themselves and chose, which is always good.
Love is different for everyone but very few people go an entire lifetime without knowing love in some form whether that love be for a dog, sibling, parent, even plant. I personally find the idea of love being destructive and going one way as an anethema to me that isn't love. If positive feelings and support isn't going both ways that is a chemical reaction - love for me is a choice.
I think it´s always better if the writer had love experiences before. It´s easier to understand something if you´ve experienced it. However I don´t think you need to have truly loved someone to write about it because, there are many people who doesn´t try out love for many reasons. I used to be one of those people, because I was waiting for the right person. I didn´t want to just be with anyone. I think love can be learned by study, and somehow understood for those who study it. You can get the idea. Even for those who have loved, they don´t truly understand it(some, not everyone), it´s a very powefull and misterious feeling. As on how to write love, I think the answer is: read love books, watch movies, listen to songs, and most important - Imagine yourself and what/the one you love... The way you´d like it to happen. Imagination is also very powerfull and quite unlimited! The door to many worlds...
Agreeing to disagree, that's very mature of you both. But I am more with Lothgar on this. Research is good, but in case of love I don't think you have to actually sit in the library with piles of love stories or interview lovers. It's all around us. A corny statement I know, but true. Even if we haven't yet fall in love, you always know somebody who have, may be a friend, a sibling or even your parents. You have witnessed them falling in love, breaking up, making up, hreatbreaks, divorce, flirting..... Also, we experience love and hate on so many other levels in our lives, if not in a boy-girl/man-woman love kinna way. That's different, you may say. But ask a couple celebrating silver jubilee of their marriage, they'll tell you that the physical relationship part is just one small portion of being in love. It boils down to understanding human relationship, be it love or anything else.
Mature of us both? Not really...its just lunch time. After we both eat and come back, THEN we can get down to the yelling, screaming, hair pulling, furniture throwing, etc. Just kidding
I think people should definitely not be scared of love as some other thing that's Other and Mysterious in a way that no one who's ever had a relationship should ever attempt. It just gives a really bad... eh, feeling? Like people who've loved have got this great elite thing over others. And I'm getting the impression that this is people who haven't been in a relationship with a guy/gal/other (edit: but would LIKE to be) that are being discriminated against. Whoever it was said we can love all sorts of other things is totally right... I think it's silly to think romantic relationships are any different, when it boils down to it. The amount people fall in love, and how much it changes them, is different with everyone. Some people fall in and out really easily - and some do the same with relationships. Some people are very wary and never like to think they're in love until ages has gone by, and they're practically part of the furniture at each other's houses. Others label everything they feel as love and love in short, obsessive bursts. Point is, it's not like there's a CODE that everyone who's been in love KNOWS and everyone who has NEVER LOVED CAN'T KNOW SO GO TAKE A HIKE. I've never been in a relationship but I've loved hard in a very aching, distant way because I can't be with the people I've fallen in love with, no matter how much they seemed to care for me. I've had all-but relationships - the kind where people sort of automatically assume we must be dating, but we're not. It hurts, and it sucks, and I've never been in a relationship, and never at one time have I loved someone who's loved me back or vice versa, even if loads of love is being flung in both directions. For some reason my friends who've been in steady relationships a lot of their lives just look at me with this incredulous look when they read my writing and say, "How do you know!?" about the relationships I write. Like having never been with someone seriously has given me a mental disability to write romance. And when they see that I can write it, they think I've, I dunno, hacked the system or some crap like that. It's not that hard.
I agree Mel fact is almost everyone knows how they want to love and how they want to be loved. No two people are the same. I kept running into trouble when I used to say I like my husband but for a husband for me that was way more important than love, love is for me what gets you through the times you don't like each other very much. I was looking for a good man I like spending time with - the passion stuff came later lol and grows with every year.
Haha I totally agree. Just because you haven't experienced love (although everybody has in some way or another) by being in a relationship doesn't mean you can't or won't be able to write about it. Think about friendship, think about things you love (people, pets, things) and think about what they make you feel and how you react etc. Also, you mentioned that what you write is corny - love is corny to some extent.
I don't think you need to have experienced romantic love to write about it convincingly. Love is something all of us are so familiar with, whether we have experienced it or not. It is everywhere - television, theatre, art, cinema, literature. I have only experienced 'real' love with one person, two at a push. I would still feel very green embarking upon a relationship with someone new. When my friends are experiencing difficulties in their relationships, I find it hard to give them advice because the dynamics of other couples can be so different. I can only advise on what I know, and often it doesn't apply. I also don't think someone who has had countless lovers is any more qualified to write about love than someone who is inexperienced. A wonderful but inexperienced-in-love writer will write far better romantic fiction than someone who's been around the block but fails to convey it on paper. Again, it falls back on how skilled you are as a writer, as with most things.
Wel... if so, I can't write about love at all... I have only loved (if I can even call it love) in an aching, uncorresponded way. But I don't want to write about something I've had enough of. I like writing about love because it gives me a chance to imagine what it COULD be like for me. It's like I'm venting and telling someone what I wish would happen to me but it's really just paper which makes it safe. Maybe I have an incorrect vision of what a real relationship is like but, I don't know... I just like writing about it.
I respectfully disagree with this statement. It sounds like this person is in love at the moment, and thus has the irrational need to expound on the extreme and all-encompassing nature of love. People who are in love(the truly, madly, deeply phase) like to talk about love in this grandiloquent manner. I personally believe that even if you haven't experienced mutual love, you must still be able to imagine it. It's an element that echoes through all forms of fiction and reality. You don't have to be personally involved in it to know its intricacies. So yes you can write about love. Just think about all those examples you've been observing all your life.
I never said you'd need to experience every possible kind of love. I just, for example, don't believe someone who has never love really understands what you just meant by "aching". I know I didn't until I felt the pain. I don't see any problem with that. You've got all you need. My argument was that you wouldn't have been able to convincingly write about that before having felt the feeling.
My personal experience concerning writing about things I have never experienced was that I got it surprisingly right about 50% of the time. Typically, what I got wrong was describing situations or organizations that are extremely complex, with thousands of people working in them, simply because I didn't know how these things are organized or run. Anything with only a handfull of people involved worked quite well. So I will join with the crowd clamouring that love scenes should be written or at least attempted even without too much personal experience.
