Love is Like a Cliche

S recently shared a piece she had written called The Meaning of Love. It was about (oddly enough) love, and it came with this note: This is the terribleness that happens when I try to force myself to write.

When I asked her why she thought it was terrible, she responded: I think it's terrible because it's full of sappy love, which I hate with the soul that I don't have.

Love is like a book of matches.

Was she being harsh, both about her writing and her soul? Probably. But it's a real concern, right? How do you write about something writers have been writing about since there were words? How do you find something new or fresh to say about love (or hate or truth or beauty)?

I suggested to S that she start by making a list of what she wanted to say about love, without any flowery language. It might look like this:

Love is painful.
Love is amazing.
Love is something you regret.
Love is vulnerable.
Love is irresistible.

This is a lot to cover, and as you delve deeper, you may discover that it's more effective to focus on just part of this list.

Once you have your list, what do you do with it?

Go with a cliché, but turn it on its head. 

Instead of comparing love to a rose with thorns, how is love like a Venus flytrap? Instead of love being innocent like a child, how is love like a temperamental two year old?

One of my favorite poems is T.R. Hummer's Where You Go When She Sleeps, in which Hummer takes the cliché image of being filled with love and drowning in love and turns it on its head by comparing love to drowning in a silo full of grain.

Pull those clichés apart and find new ways to express what is true about them. 

Love is like Big Brother.

We like the image of love being like a rose because it's both beautiful and painful. What else is contradictory like that? How about love being like a bulldozer? It plows down anything in its way and denudes the land—but it also can clear away the dead and useless, creating a place where new things can grow. 

How about love being like a spy who lies her sultry way into your life, intending to betray you, only to betray herself and her country by turning double agent.

Focus on what love isn't or how it isn't like those clichés.

A famous example of this is Shakespeare's sonnet Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Shakes spends his 14 lines explaining how his love ain't nothing like a summer's day.

Pay attention to how other writers do it.

Somehow, singers, poets and other writers continue to find ways to talk about love (and hate and truth and beauty). They do it over and over again, and while they aren't all geniuses about it, there are plenty of great examples of someone finding that fresh approach, those new lines that resonate with us.

Take Sting, for example. The guy's been writing about love since, like, the last Ice Age (or at least since before he lived in a castle), and he keeps bringing it home. Give a listen to these four songs, all different takes on the same topic:

• Every Breath You Take. From the Police years, this song is played at a lot of weddings, but Sting meant it to be about obsession. It takes something that seems so sweet at first ("He loves me so much he pays attention to my every breath!") and turns it pretty creepy.
• Fortress Around Your Heart. Sting takes this fairly common metaphor of someone walling themselves off after being hurt by love but uses concrete details to turn the metaphor into a story.
• Fill Her Up. This song is about what love can make you do and how maybe you should think twice before you do it.
• Love is Strong Than Justice. This song is also about what love can make you do, but it's unapologetic in the end.

Love is like concrete. Or a meltdown.

One thing you'll see about all these poems and songs is that they focus on one extended metaphor instead of a series of similes or metaphors. Pick one idea, and build it through your entire piece. (And don't be afraid to use humor, even on a serious topic.) Keep in mind that even though you started with a list of abstracts (Love is painful), you don't want it to stay abstract. You want specific details to make the abstract concept concrete and real for your reader; something they can see in their heads and hearts.

So What is Love Like?

Love is like a TARDIS. Tell me how.