How To Write a Love Story

Happy Valentine’s Day! Or Singles Awareness Day, whichever you happen to celebrate. Or if you’re Margaret and don’t even acknowledge the existence of Valentine’s Day in your life, Happy Friday Post!

This is certainly one post that I can make. I write most of the posts on this blog, but even if Margaret wrote most of them she’d probably get me to write this one.

How To Write Loves Stories

Whenever Margaret comes up with a couple or tries to write a romantic/love scene it always ends up either violent or humorous. Most of her couples either dislike each other or are friends. Whereas I crank out a 2000 word fluffy romantic love story almost every week without fail.

Don’t get me wrong; my writing is far from all romantic fluff and cutesy couples oh no. In fact that isn’t any romance in my novel. Or at least I have no intentions of adding it. I don’t ship my two main characters, though I’m fully aware that a lot of people probably will. I also do write a fair amount of the angstier, darker couples.

That being said, I enjoy writing a nice heartwarming love story.

One of the nice things about love stories is that there are a million different ways to write them, but they all involve the same thing. It involves people falling in love. Now, what those people are is up to you. Whether they’re human, another species, heterosexual, homosexual, one person falling in love with another, a love triangle, love square, love octagon if you’re really daring, that’s up to you.

Once you’ve decided that there are going to be falling in love, you have to decide on obstacles. Whether the story you’re writing is entirely a love story or an adventure with some romance splashed in, there is some conflict. That’s part of what makes a story a story. In real like we like our love lives to be as uncomplicated as we can get it, but when reading or watching a love story we typically like it with as many obstacles as we can get.

Once again, these obstacles are up to you. If the love story is the side story, the obstacles can very easily be a part of the plot interfering with our characters’ love. The Prince has to fight the dragon to get the Princess. Or if the love story is the main plot, the Prince is traveling to save the Princess with the Princess’s sister and ends up falling in love with the sister along the way except he’s betrothed to the Princess in the tower.

Just like any piece of writing, get creative.

Probably the most important part of a love story is one of the most important parts of a normal story. Just like you want your readers to rout for your protagonist, you want the readers to want the couple together. Especially if it’s a love story. I really couldn’t have cared less if Bella ended up with Edward or Jacob when I read the book. In fact I think she would have been better off with a nice human boy, or better yet, single with a bunch of cats. So the point of reading the book was ruined for me.

The problem with trying to make your readers want them together is that there are a lot of different types of relationships in the world. There are as many types of relationships as there are types of people. A relationship that might work for a pair people won’t work for another. And because of unique perceptions on romance and what it means to be in love or the types of people we think should get together, we tend to support certain types of relationships and not others.

The method I usually use when I want people to like the couple I’m writing is make them really cute together. I really love couples that are cute together. Fictional or real. That doesn’t work for all couples, it might not for the couple you’re working with. I happen to have a talent for writing cute stuff. Maybe I’ve watched too many chick-flicks in my life. Maybe I’m just naturally an optimistic person so stuff like that is natural for me. But that’s one of my favorite methods.

There’s also the Bonded By Trauma approach. Some people are really, really attracted to couples that have been through a lot together.

Another popular one is Best Friends. Best friends get paired together all the time. Especially if it’s one of the characters who’s in love with his/her best friend while the other is oblivious or in love with someone else.

The Opposites Attract method usually works pretty well too. Perhaps not as well as some of the other ones, but there are a lot of people who hold stock to the idea that opposites attract and should be with each other. Especially if they can put their differences behind them because they love each other.

The couple that seems to hate each other while they’re really slowly falling in love sometimes falls under opposites attract, but not all opposites attract are hating each other while falling in love. Whether they fall in love because they get to know each other better or one of them does something for the other or whatever the case may be, people ship them like crazy. The best example I can give you of this is Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. In case you were wondering, Jane and Mr. Bingley fall under the Cute Couple category.

And finally, one of the most popular, is the poor fellow with unrequited love. It doesn’t matter if this character is male or female, if he’s in love with someone who won’t give him the time of day or is in love with someone else, everyone will support that character. Sometimes, this unrequited love is for a best friend (see above). Best example: Eponine in Les Miserables.  The canon couple is Marius and Cossett. How many people do you know who actually like them together? Everyone loves Eponine and thinks she should have gotten the guy, especially considering she literally died for him.

And that leads me to the final big category of love: Love At First Sight.

It is a very popular method among fairy tales, myths, and Disney movies. Snow White, Cinderella, and Ariel being the most prominent. While love at first sight is a very romantic idea and I’m sure at heart a lot of us would like to believe in it, it’s very rarely going to make your audience really rout for your romantic couple. Even though most of us want to believe in it, very few of us do and we always take love at first sight couples with a grain of salt. That grain of salt can very easily kill your delicate rose of a love story if you don’t back it up with some actual bonding.

There are of course other big couple types, and there are other ways to make your readers like your couple. Those are just some of the big ones.

So, if you feel like testing your hand at some romantic writing for the day love romance and overpriced flowers and chocolates, I hope this helped and Happy Valentine’s Day!