How to Write a Love Story

Everyone may have a story to tell, but it is difficult to put those stories into words. It can take time to write a love story–whether it’s a short story, a novel or even your own memoirs. If you want people to read your story, you should stick with the traditional rules of writing–create interesting characters with dreams and problems and give them obstacles to overcome. If you start by planning your love story, you’ll find that it becomes much easier to put the words to paper.

Step 1

Develop your characters. You should know everything you can about your characters–physical description, family, background, jobs, personality, dreams, likes, dislikes and so on. Your characters should not be perfect. For example, your main character may be a women who wants to get married, but she always finds flaws in the men she dates. Or, he might be a man who works hard to support his family at the expense of his relationships. This is especially important for your two main characters, but you should also know the details of the minor ones as well.

Step 2

Set the stage. Your love story could start with two people meeting and how they eventually fall in love, or it could be about a couple who is already together and how they deepen their love in some way. The first quarter of your work should show the reader what is happening in your characters’ lives.

Step 3

Change the game. Introduce an event that rocks the main character’s world or changes the way she sees things. For example, your main character may have met the man of her dreams and he seems to like her back, but then she finds out that he’s married. The rest of your story is about how she deals with this.

Step 4

Allow your character to choose her path. Once things change drastically for your main character, she needs to decide what she’s going to do about it. If she found out that the man of her dreams is married, for example, she may try to exact revenge on him to get him back, or she may try to break the couple up.

Step 5

Create tension between your characters. As in real life, no two people get along all the time. Give your main characters a reason to fight.

Step 6

Set up more obstacles for your main character. To make the story more interesting, your character should have to overcome challenges. For example, a new couple may keep trying to meet, but they constantly have challenges in getting to the same place at the same time.

Step 7

Send your character to a dark place. Your character should eventually come to a place where she feels alone and lost.

Step 8

Give your character an epiphany. Toward the end of your piece, your character will “see the light” and know what she has to do. If she’s thought that the main male character is a putz for the whole story, for example, she may realize that he acts like that because he loves her.