My way of expressing love in stories (first tutorial, writing)

[Sarkilas]

Please note that the only thing I've ever been good and experienced in writing is love stories, which limits me to a select few answers for questions on this subject.

This tutorial will show examples on how to improve the feel of your feeling based paragraphs. There's much you can do to touch up your work, unless it's already up to date with my examples :D

Let me bring up the example that I'm going to touch up a little.

He looked down on her and placed his arms around her.
"How's this?" he said.
She laid her head on his chest. "That's great."
A short moment went by.
"I can feel it," she whispered, "I can feel your love."

Now that looks fine, but it could have been even better, don't ya think?
To me, I can't feel what the characters feel without having a more love-like language using some other verbs and ways of setting up your sentences.

I'll explain. As the first sentence, we could change that into:

He looked down into her beautiful, blue eyes and let his arms slip around her waist.

Now how's that? Big change! Now it sounds like a great start.
Making use of adjectives is very important, as explaining exactly how beautiful the characters look and how perfect the moment is, is really an important way of presenting love.

Let's move on to the next sentence. I feel that the word said would might not work in this situation; but of course it would depend on your story of course. Yet, a different way of presenting this could be by adding the emotions of what he does instead of the way the words come out of his mouth.

"How's this?" he smiled, and gazed into the wondrous ocean in her eyes.

By replacing 'he said' with 'he smiled', the reader will automatically think to him/herself that it's not a normal voice he's using, it's something more unique and delicate. Adding the sentence limb after is just to create this nice feel after it, and creating a short pause for the eyes before they move on to the next line. You don't want it to be too sudden the next line appears.

So now we got the third line. It's really fine, but if you want more descriptions on how things happen, you could add an adverb to 'laid' so it would look something like this:

She laid her head softly against his chest. "That's great."

It's all coming together now.

Now the next line is a but odd. 'A short moment went by.' Oh yeah, sounds a bit incomplete and boring. How about we write it like this:

He moved his hand slowly up to her head to touch her soft, delicate hair, if only for a fraction of a second.

Now that really does not express the moment, but it expresses that he now moved his hand up to her head before the next line comes into play.

The last line. Oh yeah, of course a story usually won't end like this, but this is just an example for the tutorial. The last line is fine, but whispered is a word we would not want to use. A better verb for this sentence is 'murmur':

"I can feel it," she murmured, "I can feel your love."

So the final result compared to what we started with is now:

He looked down into her beautiful, blue eyes and let his arms slip around her waist.
"How's this?" he smiled, and gazed into the wondrous ocean in her eyes.
She laid her head softly against his chest. "That's great."
He moved his hand slowly up to her head to touch her soft, delicate hair, if only for a fraction of a second.
"I can feel it," she murmured, "I can feel your love."

Now how's that compared? I think it's a way much better result than the first, but of course, it can always depend on how your story is supposed to be presented. This is more of the soft love part; the warmth.

I hope this will be helpful to some, but I know that most people here intend not to write about love, but it's something I enjoy writing about; always.

I'd appreciate feedback and suggestions from your side for improving things like the example of mine even more.

Thanks and regards!

 

[Ellescene]

I think this was a nice basic tutorial, although a little too fringe-y at times ("the wondrous ocean of her eyes"?). Love is difficult to write without proper character development. I think you did a nice job writing physical love. But there is no replacement for proper interaction and connection in a deeper love and you can't really write a tutorial on that. ^^

 

[Elijah von Bose]

Said like a true Romantic, Ellescene.

Anyways, I enjoyed the tutorial. I assume it's more of a novel-based writing, rather than dialogue. The only part I disagree with is using "murmur." Horrible word, that. But I agree with ditching 'whisper,' as well. But there is more than that to this. It's sort of a connotation based on sound. You'll find "whisper" has a harsh, hissing sound. Murmur, although I slightly disagree with the word choice, is a moderately good choice, due to the softer nature of it's pronounciation. Anyways, a nice basic tutorial, and hope to see more!

 

[Sarkilas]

Thanks for your comments!

@Ellescene: It's never perfect, I'm not really a writer for a living anyway. I understand what you meant and I'm sure it help me out knowing my mistakes.

@Eiji: Oh, yes, might seem more novel based. I had not any other words than murmur in mind that would fit, maybe you have a suggestion for something better? Glad you liked my tutorial ^_^

 

[The Cry of Fallen Angels]

Personal preference perhaphs, but unless the characters are as stunningly beautifull as you describe them it's not good to write like this from an objective PoV. Regarding the eyes this is.

Now for some repeating stuff that already has been said;

Regarding romance, the most important thing to highlight is why he/she exactly likes him/her. You should have pretty good and deep characters if you're attempting a love story, because if not, just QUIT, so you can start thinking of typical characteristics that the other would like, and why he/she would like that. As mentioned, you can't write a tutorial on that because it differs with the character.

 

[KhaoticErase]

HMMM!! I wonder...

I don't think anyone would ever say that last line. Maybe in an old black&white shakespeare movie, but not anywhere else, especially real life.

Also, how might one express love using NOTHING but dialogue? No narration? That's important, y'know. You could include blocking if you like.

 

[RavenTDA]

Hmm as far as novel writing goes it isn't the adjectives that make better writing as much as it's verb and noun choice. I find it's best to rip out as many adjectives as you can and describe things in other ways. Fancy verbs and nouns are the key. Here's an example:

"His eyes traced the countours of her body, drinking in every last curve, every last blemish, down to the scar across her knee. He longed to meorise everything, including the flaws, for it were the flaws that made her unique"

Or something liek that. :p I'm outta practice. But the idea is to get in better verbs and nouns as well as adding in emotion. Don't forget to describe what the characters are feeling or thinking, like I did with the second sentence. That to me, especially in writing love stories is more important than flowery description.

Oh and about choosing murmer... How about sighed, breathed, etc. You can use some other word there but I don't think whisper is has harsh sounding as you are making it out to be. Words that are common don't jump out at the reader as much and are usually read more smoothly despite how they are prounced because we are so used to seeing them. Somtimes throwing in a word that is said less harsh like murmer can stick out mroe than whispered just because the meaning is a little off and that will stick in the mind of the reader more than if you jsut used the common word.

 

[Sarkilas]

Thanks for your comments, and I understand everything you're saying. As said, I'm not the most experienced writer, but I'm okay.

Things will never be perfect from my side, and yet, I haven't written in a while either.

Oh, and yeah, I know that one's supposed to write for the reader, which can sometimes make things a bit hard to control; least for me. It's like looking over your text: "Hmm... will people stop up at this point and think instead of reading?" It's really not something simple to accomplish.