Many years ago, a visit to Washington DC sparked an enduring image for me. My wife’s cousin pointed out a crypt, recounting how Abraham Lincoln, in his grief after his son Willie’s death in 1862, would visit to hold his boy’s body. This image—a blend of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pietà—stayed with me for decades. Fearful of tackling something so profound, I finally began exploring it in 2012. My novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, emerged from this exploration. Now, I, like many writers, face the challenge of discussing this process as if I were in complete control.
We often talk about art as if artists simply “express” a pre-formed intention. This embraces the intentional fallacy: art as the confident execution of a clear plan. However, my experience reveals a process far more enigmatic and harder to articulate truthfully. This is especially true When We Write Love Story, where the delicate dance of emotion and connection needs to feel both authentic and compelling.
The Accidental Love Story: Finding Emotion in the Details
Consider Stan, building his model railroad town. He places a small hobo figure under a bridge, near a fake campfire. He notices the hobo’s posture – gazing back at the town, specifically at a little blue Victorian house. Inside, a plastic woman stands in the window. Stan turns her slightly, so she too gazes out, towards the bridge. Suddenly, without intending to, Stan has stumbled upon a love story. A silent narrative blossoms: Why can’t they be together? Is “Little Jack” longing for home, for Linda, his wife in the window?
What did Stan, the artist, do? He observed, he reacted, he tweaked. He noticed the hobo’s gaze and intuitively altered his miniature world by turning the plastic woman. This wasn’t a calculated decision to create a love story; it was a split-second, wordless impulse – a quiet internal “Yes.” He simply preferred it this way, drawn by an inarticulable pull. This intuitive process is at the heart of when we write love story and any art form.
Art transcends strict logic. Merely executing a pre-conceived intention doesn’t guarantee good art, especially not a resonant love story. Donald Barthelme famously said, “The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do.” Gerald Stern echoed this: “If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking – then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.” Even Einstein, with his intellectual prowess, noted, “No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.” This uncertainty is particularly poignant when we write love story, as love itself is often unpredictable and defies easy formulas.
So, how do we proceed, especially when we write love story, with its intricate emotional landscape? My method involves imagining a “P-N meter” in my forehead, “P” for “Positive” and “N” for “Negative.” I read my writing as a first-time reader might, without bias. Where does the needle point? I accept the reading without argument and then revise to nudge the needle towards “P.” This is a repetitive, obsessive process: watch the needle, adjust the prose, repeat, sometimes through hundreds of drafts. Like a vast ship slowly changing course, the story, including its nascent love story elements, gradually evolves through these small adjustments.
The artist, in this model, becomes like an optometrist, constantly asking: Better like this? Or like this? This relentless refinement is crucial when we write love story, as it allows us to hone in on the precise emotional notes that make the relationship believable and moving.
The remarkable outcome of this painstaking process is a story, and characters within it, that often surpass my own “real-life” capabilities. They become funnier, kinder, more empathetic, possessing a clearer moral compass, both wiser and more engaging. This is the quiet thrill of creation: to be, on the page, a slightly improved version of myself, especially when we write love story, and strive to depict love in its most idealized form, even amidst flaws.
Refining the Narrative: Specificity and Empathy in Love Stories
Revision, as described, elevates the overall intelligence of a piece of writing. This, in turn, communicates respect to the reader. As text is refined, it becomes more specific, more grounded in the tangible. It gains clarity and loses hyperbole, sentimentality, and misleading vagueness. Propagandistic fog dissipates. Falsehoods are exposed, and lazy assertions are laid bare. This rigorous process is vital when we write love story, as it ensures the emotions feel earned and authentic, not manufactured or cliché.
Consider the sentence, “Bob was an asshole.” Lacking specificity, I revise it: “Bob snapped impatiently at the barista.” Still seeking more nuance, I ask why. Revision becomes: “Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife,” and then adding, “who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas.” These changes aren’t driven by a conscious desire for compassion, but by a desire to avoid lameness. Yet, compassion emerges. Bob transforms from a “pure asshole” caricature to a “grieving widower, behaving poorly due to overwhelming sadness.” He evolves from a cartoon worthy of scorn to someone closer to “me, on a different day.” This transformation, achieved through specificity, is key when we write love story. Love stories thrive on nuanced characters, not caricatures.
This shift happens through the pursuit of specificity. By focusing on Bob, striving for precision, my prose moves towards detail, and my gaze softens, becoming more nuanced and complex. The reader, witnessing this evolution, might also find their own gaze softening, reminded of the possibility of empathy. This is the power of specificity, especially when we write love story, to build empathy for characters and their relationships.
Alternatively, we could remain at “Bob was an asshole,” post it, and await “likes” and online arguments. But in doing so, we neglect the grieving Bob and the affected barista, further reinforcing the idea of an irrationally cruel world. When we write love story, we have a chance to counter this cynicism, to explore compassion and understanding through our characters’ interactions.
Alt text: Yann Kebbi illustration depicting a writer revising text with a meter, symbolizing the iterative writing process.
The Iterative Process: Tweaking and Refining Love Story Elements
What does a writer primarily do? They refine existing work. While blank pages exist, most of the work involves adjusting what’s already there. Writers revise, painters touch up, directors edit, musicians overdub. Consider the sentence: “Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch.” Reading it, wincing, we cut “came into the room,” “down,” and “blue.” Why must she enter? Can one sit up on a couch? Does the color matter? The sentence becomes: “Jane sat on the couch –” Better, Hemingwayesque perhaps, but still… why is her sitting meaningful? Soon we arrive at simply “Jane,” brief and effective. This paring down is essential when we write love story, to focus on the core emotional resonance without unnecessary clutter.
Why these changes? On what basis? Because if it’s better for me, now, it will likely be better for you, later, the reader. My adjustments here impact your experience there. This hopeful idea suggests a shared human architecture – that what resonates with me might also resonate with you. “I” might be a 19th-century Russian count, “you” a 21st-century reader, yet Tolstoy’s “Master and Man” can still evoke tears. This shared emotional capacity is the foundation upon which when we write love story, we build connections with our readers.
Another reason for those tears: realizing Tolstoy believed in you, confident his insights would move you. Tolstoy imagined you generously, and you responded in kind. We often think empathy in fiction stems from the writer’s relationship with characters, but it’s also about the writer’s relationship with the reader. By crafting a refined space—through language, form, and subtle beauty—and welcoming the reader in, we flatter them with our confidence in their ability to appreciate nuance. This mode of revision, therefore, is about imagining your reader as humane, intelligent, witty, and well-intentioned as yourself. To communicate intimately, especially when we write love story and aim for emotional depth, we must generously imagine our reader throughout the revision process. We revise our reader upwards in our imagination, constantly thinking: “No, she’s smarter than that. Don’t insult her with lazy prose or simplistic notions.”
And in revising our reader up, we also elevate ourselves. This mutual elevation is crucial when we write love story, as it encourages us to strive for the most authentic and emotionally resonant portrayal of love possible.
Scaling Up: From Short Stories to Novels and Love Story Arcs
For twenty years, I wrote short stories using this revision method, assuming novels demanded a different approach: more planning, overt intention, complex charts, numerology. But no. My novel writing mirrored my short story process: sit down, read, watch the “forehead needle,” adjust. The frame was larger, but the principles remained. At 55, I realized artistic intensity meant leveraging honed skills, perhaps destabilizing oneself slightly to keep those skills fresh. A bandleader used to accordions gets a symphony; their musicality transcends instrumentation, transferable to this new scale. This analogy holds true when we write love story in different formats – short stories versus novels. The core principles of character development, emotional pacing, and relationship arcs scale up.
It felt like designing yurts then being commissioned to build a mansion. Initially daunting, I realized a mansion could be a series of connected yurts, each built with familiar rules, their connections creating new beauty. Similarly, when we write love story within a novel, we are building a larger, more complex structure, but the individual components of emotional moments, character interactions, and relationship progression are built using the same principles as in a shorter love story.
Problems as Opportunities: Unlocking Narrative Potential in Love Stories
Any artwork quickly reveals itself as a system of interconnected problems. A book has personality, a mixed blessing. Great energy, but restless. Sensitive, perhaps too much. Strengths and weaknesses are intertwined. The initial great idea comes with baggage. This is especially true when we write love story. The very elements that make a love story compelling – passion, vulnerability, conflict – can also become pitfalls if not handled carefully.
For example, I loved the image of Lincoln alone in the graveyard. But how to make a novel from one man in a graveyard at night? A 300-page Lincoln monologue? A long-winded gravedigger? Neither worked. It felt like a problem in 2012. But, as self-help gurus say, “problem” is “opportunity.” In art, this is true. The reader senses the impending problem alongside the writer, and artistic satisfaction comes from the “cavalry” arriving just in time. Even greater satisfaction arises if the cavalry is interesting, expanding the aesthetic possibilities. This is critical when we write love story. Relationship obstacles aren’t just problems; they are opportunities to deepen the connection, reveal character, and heighten emotional stakes.
In this case, the solution was in the problem itself: “Who else might be in a graveyard late at night?” I recalled an abandoned novel set in a graveyard with talking ghosts, and a student’s suggestion for a novel of monologues. The solution: narrating ghosts stuck in the graveyard. Suddenly, the problem became an opportunity. Someone who enjoys voices and pondering death could spend years making talking ghosts charming, spooky, substantial, moving, and human. This transformation of problem into opportunity is key when we write love story. Relationship challenges, external or internal, become catalysts for growth, change, and deeper understanding.
Alt text: Author George Saunders, photographed for The Guardian, representing the expertise and authoritativeness in writing.
The Juggling Act: Balancing Elements in a Love Story Narrative
Fiction, especially when we write love story, can be viewed as a three-act juggling performance: gathering pins, throwing them, catching them. The intuitive approach is crucial in the first phase: gathering the pins. The best pins are often inadvertent, born from iterative preference. Focusing on prose sound, internal logic, or evocative description—doing what delights and about which we feel strongly—we create a “pin.” Its exact nature is best left undefined, as naming it limits it. The “pin” might be an imperative, a curiosity, a threat, a promise, a pattern, a vow soon to be broken. Scrooge’s callous dismissal of Tiny Tim, Romeo’s love for Juliet, Akaky Akakievich’s need for a new overcoat, Gatsby’s yearning for Daisy – these are all “pins.” Recurring motifs, paired events – more pins. When we write love story, these “pins” are often the core emotional desires, conflicts, and turning points in the relationship.
Then, the pins are tossed up. The reader sees them aloft, waiting for their descent and catch. If they don’t come down (Romeo abandons Juliet for law school, the overcoat becomes unnecessary, Gatsby loses interest in Daisy, the grey motif vanishes), the reader feels cheated. The “forehead needle” plunges to “N,” and the book is abandoned for Facebook or worse. This is especially true when we write love story. Readers expect emotional arcs and resolutions, even if bittersweet. Unresolved or abandoned emotional threads leave readers unsatisfied.
The writer, having tossed interesting pins, knows they must land. The greatest joy in writing fiction, particularly when we write love story, is when they land surprisingly, conveying more meaning than initially imagined. Writing my first novel brought new pleasures: more pins, longer airtime, more unforeseen and complexly instructive landings than in shorter works.
Without spoilers, I’ll say I created ghosts. Cynical, stuck in the bardo, a transitional purgatory, due to life’s dissatisfactions. Their penance: feeling inessential, unable to affect the living. Then, Willie Lincoln arrives, newly dead, vulnerable. In the final third, the pins rained down. Early decisions compelled certain actions. The universe’s rules and formal conventions took over. Characters acted independently, driven by prose quality, yet collectively forming a pattern advocating a “viral theory of goodness.” They collaborated, seemingly guided by something beyond me, to save Willie Lincoln. It wasn’t me; it was them. This sense of emergent narrative is a powerful force, especially when we write love story. Characters, driven by their desires and the logic of the narrative, can create a love story that feels organic and deeply meaningful.
This had happened in stories before, but never at this scale, so detached from my intention. It was a beautiful, mysterious experience, both craved and daunting due to the immense work required to initiate such a machine again. This emergent property is deeply hopeful. This pattern’s thrilling completion might be a brain feature, a byproduct of rigorous engagement with a thought system. But there’s wonder in seeing an unbidden figure emerge, feeling a presence within and beyond the writer – something consistent, willful, benevolent, with a plan: to guide you to your own higher ground. This is the ultimate reward when we write love story: discovering deeper truths about love, connection, and humanity through the very act of creation.
