How Do We Write About Love? (2024)

How Do We Write About Love? (1)

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how difficult it is to write about love. Is it because love, of the romantic kind, is too nice, too happy, too particular to the individuals experiencing it; is it because of its association with romantic novels, and stock phrases (and abstract nouns), like ‘emotional’, ‘devastating’ and ‘desire’? Does it too easily slip into cliché?

Romantic love is such a powerful all-consuming emotion and it is a challenge for any writer to write it effectively, so that the reader might have a sense of that feeling, might even feel some of its intensity.

Maybe it’s easier to answer this question by looking at those books and films that have moved me and try to work out why. The ones that immediately spring to mind are, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking about the death of her beloved husband, which is as much about love as it is about grief. “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us,” she writes “I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.” Of course this is a tragic-love, because it is a love that has been cut short. And love expands after separation.

The Bridges of Madison County is another one. I haven’t read the book, but I watched the film for the first time recently, and it got its claws into me. Interestingly, it wasn’t so much the love affair between Francesca (Meryl Streep) and Robert Kincaird (Clint Eastwood) that moved me, but more the conflict that Francesca finds herself in the grip of, and the quiet acceptance and stoicism that her husband (Richard Johnson) displays when she deliberates over whether to stay or go. When she breaks down and cries in their chevy, there’s something in his crumpled face and what feels like an instinctive knowledge that his wife has fallen in love with someone else that really got to me.

The third is The Sound of Music, which is my all-time favourite film. And my favourite scene is when Captain Von Trapp and Maria dance together, observed by The Baroness who is about to become his wife. I think it’s the first time they both really allow themselves to feel for each other and they also become witness to the other’s reciprocated feeling. Maria’s face flushes red and she quickly leaves. It is the point of no return, and the difficultly of their love is palpable.

What these three examples have in common is love denied - in Joan Didion’s memoir it is through death; Francesca’s because she is a married woman and cannot follow her heart for fear of shame; and in Maria’s case her one true love, as a nun, is God. Love with a man goes against all she lives for. As a reader or viewer, we don’t want a character to deny love, because we value love, which is to say in that moment, if done with sufficient sensitivity and craft, the writing generously invites us in to savour love itself. We feel that love.

And what about those incidences where love is missed? The film Green Card comes to mind, where Georges (played by Gerard Depardieu) gets together with Bronte (Andie McDowell) to obtain a green card, so set on this narrative that he won’t admit they have fallen in love. Remains of the Day, similarly, is a tragic story of two people unable to express themselves. That scene where she tries to grasp the letter from him to know what it is his heart speaks of and he struggles not to show her and they end up in an embrace, is heart breaking.

Share

Is it all in the subtext, then? The reader or viewer feels something profoundly that isn’t available to the character?

It’s not the simple moment of coming together, it is all that is at stake because of that union - the friction of loving and not being allowed to love, or of self deception – not even realising you do love, and the reader knows it more than you.

Thank you for subscribing to my Substack. If you like my writing, why not commit to a paid subscription. You will learn how to write better, because I bring a lot of my teaching to my writing here, but also you’ll be supporting me to continue showing up each week. We all need that…

How Do We Write About Love? (2024)

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Horacio Brakus JD

Last Updated:

Views: 5312

Rating: 4 / 5 (51 voted)

Reviews: 82% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Horacio Brakus JD

Birthday: 1999-08-21

Address: Apt. 524 43384 Minnie Prairie, South Edda, MA 62804

Phone: +5931039998219

Job: Sales Strategist

Hobby: Sculling, Kitesurfing, Orienteering, Painting, Computer programming, Creative writing, Scuba diving

Introduction: My name is Horacio Brakus JD, I am a lively, splendid, jolly, vivacious, vast, cheerful, agreeable person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.