How do you write about love? I like writing about it, but it seems that 99% of the time that I do it comes off extremely corny. Is there anything I can do to write about it so that it's better? What do you do? Please, help me...
Well, I guess it depends on the kind of love you want to express. If you're going for general romance, it's going to seem generally corny. Thing about why you want those two together. How do they compliment each other? What do they learn from one another? I think if you elaborated on why they have chemistry, you'll learn to fall in love with their romance and will make what they have completely unique. When you don't think about it, they'll seem boring and you'll find yourself using a lot of cliche 'I love you, baby' type of dialogue. Suddenly, it'll get repetative.
Yeah, that's another good one! I think the whole 'perfect' guy with his oily chest-bearing...overly tan...dark haired.......uh. You get the point...is too overly done. That's NOT the typical man a woman wants and men are getting this idea that we want that. I'd create a perfect lover in your OWN image. Apply some of your traits to the girl and really do your research on the type of person that would fit the personality of the girl you have in your story. Unless it's a gay story, man on man. Or woman on woman.
I always try to do that humour thing. I agree completely, the whole thing with the perfect people and the perfect romance is usually no fun... The idea of applying some of my own traits is actually very helpful! I'll do that and see what happens! Thanks
Not sure if you mean poetry, romantic novels, or just love as it crops up in creative writing generally?
Well, everything basically! Idon't write novels, but everything else from short stories to poems always gives me this problem...
Do all women want the same kind of man? If so, how do you know? Nobody speaks for all women (not even Oprah, and not even Cosmopolitan), and nobody speaks for all men (not even Esquire). I'd argue that there's room in fiction for any kind of woman and any kind of man having a love relationship.
Read how other authors do it. It isn't hard to find novels with a romantic component. Indeed, it is harder to find novels without it. There is no one, single, best approach.
There are a lot of different ways to decribe love, and it depends a lot on what kind of relationship the characters have. You can express love with a lot of passionate words, or keep it as simple as "I love you". There are a lot of strange books on love out there, you could try reading something by writers who aren't very well known. Other than that, I would recommend the book Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and the books by Katarina von Bredow. They have both very different ways to write about love.
yes, that's what i'd say to do, too... however... how old are you? what do you know of love? what kinds of love have you experienced? how many times have you 'fallen' in love and/or had 'love affairs'? how you'll be able to write about the phenomenon will depend on all of that...
If you don't know much about it, I'd think your best bet would be to listen to what other people say about it. Talk to your friends and listen carefully to what they say about their significant others. Go out in public alone and just spend the day watching different couples interacting. What seems romantic? Sweet? Endearing? Loving? How do they talk to each other? Look at each other? Read famous love stories and well-regarded romance authors. Write from your heart. Maybe even create a character who isn't sure what love is, and have this person discover it. Okay, that's all I've got. ^ Hope it helps.
The above posts are great advice, and I just wanted to add one more thing. Not only do you need to discover what it is the two chars love about each other, but also examine what they don't love. This will add, if done right, a touch of realism to their relationship. Even the most happily married people I know all can find at least one thing the other does that irks them. I have at least a half dozen with mine and I still couldn't imagine loving anyone more than I do him. People in love can find situations where they disagreed on how to handle it. But, as with real relationships, if you want them to be cohesive, then they should agree on the most important things. What is considered most important is relevant to the char.
Have you ever been in a situation where you helped two people (possibly friends) fell in love with each other.... some kind of match matching? If you did, you must know that you can't forced them to love each other, you can arrange situations (may be fix a date) where they can get to know each other, but you can't forced them to kiss or say 'I love you'. That's how I approach romance in my writings. I create a scene/situation, treat the chars as friends, and write what they'll do in such a situation. Best way to avoid writing corny stuffs.
well talking about any emotion you need to talk about it in any flowery language and they should appear as very natural to the reader. the reader should be able to relate.there should be a yearning in it....it also depends on the type of love you are talking about.
If you want to write about love, and I mean really write about it in an authentic, honest way, then you need to stop writing for the moment, and do some research. In all likelihood, mature love probably isn't something you haven't experienced for yourself, so it's time to hit the books. And no, I'm not talking about fiction, though that can be useful. Nonfiction is what you need to study. Look at love from a non-fiction point of view. What IS love? The better you can define it from a scientific, definitional point of perspective, the better you will be able to manipulate it in your writing. That doesn't mean you have to treat it like a scientific object in your writing, by no means! But the scientific method will give you the accuracy and grip to be able to see what you are looking at. Flowery generalities and poetry or fiction just makes things more vague. It makes love slippery. If you can look at love from a scientific viewpoint, you'll be able to manipulate it from any angle, scientific, flowery, emotional, rage, sad, tragic, etc. And that's the power of it. So go out there and start researching. I promise it'll help.
Two thoughts: first, remember that the best relationships occur when each person loves the imperfections of the other. Second, go listen to "Do You Love Me?" from "Fiddler On The Roof".
I use an indirect approach. If there is love, friendship, sexual attraction, hate or whatever it affects how people act. I think many like me see two friends "secretly" falling in love or becoming a couple when it obvious to all that they are falling a love. No grand gesture but subtle changes in a myriad of signals. The same way most can pick up when two family members are annoyed at each other without it being expressed. And when it come to internal things, like if you write the character thoughts you can use the same approach. Rather then writing the character pondering about love, let the love seep in and affect the characters other consideration. Like the brief hesitation that normally wouldn't be there when choosing a restaurant for a lunch meeting if you had a romantic interest in the person you're meting.
I prefer the grittier aspects of love. That it hurts, or makes you insane, or makes you morally dissonant. To explain the latter, let's say Bob is in love with Alice, who is the big bad and is using him in her evil schemes. Bob is fully aware of this and the fact that Alice probably doesn't love him back, but he'll still follow her to the ends of the earth and kill those around him so that he'll prove himself useful, so that she'll be pleased. Like Harley Quinn and The Joker, or Misa Amane and Light Yagami. Morally dissonant love is a hard thing to make optimistic, but for the previous two types of romances I favor a glimmer of hope at the end of the tragedy. Deconstructions and reconstructions like these make love tropes easy to bear and even enjoyable. But, I do have a penchant for quirky-sweet romances, since you can't survive just off of the sad stuff.
You basically said exactly what I said. I never said that all women want the same thing....at all. I said that's what people typically write about in romance novels. In movies.
J, me too ... that's what makes love exciting. Thats what makes writing exciting, really. No one wants to read, they met, they boned, they lived happily ever after. GIVE ME DRAMA!!!
