Ways to write an essay about love

Like any essay, the opening to your essay about love must stir some emotion. Regardless of the question you are set, you must be able to respond to the question within your opening, outlining your argument. This doesn’t have to be particularly detailed, but it should contain what your general argument will be. This will allow the person reading your essay to easily understand what your argument is and where you essay will be going. It should also be noted that when writing an opening, you should try to be as punchy as possible. Your essay, particularly when on such an emotive subject as love, should elicit some emotional reaction from the reader and make them feel engaged. Try to think of your essay as a true expression of your feelings that will demonstrate your understanding of the subject and your ability to look at it clinically. Your opening should set the tone for your entire essay and balance perfectly between expressing your feelings accurately and being able to clinically and accurately analyse the subject you are writing about. It is this skill that will ensure your success and that you will be able to write an excellent love essay.

Now it is time to move onto your main argument. Your main argument will be where you will be able to shine the most, not only through your excellent argument but also as it will make up most of your essay. Unlike your introduction, your main argument needs precise planning to ensure that it is of the highest possible standard. Before writing your essay, it is vitally important that you think about each part of your argument and consider how it can be used in the essay, which points naturally go together and put them into paragraphs to support one another. Make sure that your plan isn’t too detailed – you’re only writing a plan after all and not the whole essay. Make sure that your plan covers all your main points and is easy to read and remember; you may not be allowed to consult your plan when you are writing your essay so make sure that it is memorable enough for you to be able to remember it if you are in an exam. There are of course, a variety of categories of love that your essay could be put into so let’s discuss them and how this will impact on the way your write the essay and how you will plan it.

• Courtly Love. Courtly Love is most often associated with literature and can be linked to the medieval tradition of the travelling poet, telling tales of deeds done in the name of fair maidens by noble knights. If your essay question is on Courtly Love then you will most likely be dealing with literature of some form or another and critiquing its merits. Some questions in this field will deal with comparisons of Courtly Love texts with modern texts about love and compare how love has evolved over time. Another popular choice is examining Courtly Love texts from a feminist point of view and considering how Courtly Love can be interpreted that way. When planning for these types of questions it is always important to think about the language and symbolism used. Make sure you have a full and frank understanding of the language as, because much of Courtly Love literature was written hundreds of years ago it can be sometimes difficult to fully understand the meaning of the text. It is also wise to consider how you can compare it to other types of writing about love and examine their use of language and symbolism – this will ensure that if you are faced with a comparison question then you will be able to easily deal with it and know how to answer it to the best of your ability. It is also worth considering examining feminist theory to see how you can properly compare it to Courtly Love so that you will know how to deal with it if it comes up as a comparison question.
• True Love. True Love is again used mainly in analysis of the literary convention of True Love and how it works in relation to the actual experience of True Love. It is, unlike Courtly Love, not generally defined as being part of one era of writing but rather part of several given its existence throughout the history of writing. It can be easier to plan for than if your question is about Courtly Love as True Love is a wider field of study and does not have the same linguistic irregularities as Courtly Love. True Love can also deal with the depiction of the subject in other forms of media such as art and film. If your question is on True Love is in film then it may be wise to use the literary versions of Marxist theory and the Feminist theory as they can be used highly effectively to critique the portrayal of True Love in film. Again, as with Courtly Love, this type of love is best understood by comparison and contrasting it with other forms of love that you can find in other texts or in other forms of media. It is best to engage with the medium as much as you can prior to writing the essay so that, even if you forget elements of your plan you will still remember a great deal about the areas which you are writing about. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you shouldn’t plan your essay – far from it, you will struggle writing your piece if you do not properly prepare for it by thoroughly planning it and ensuring that you have enough information about how to structure it to ensure that your work is the finest you can produce.
• Scientific Love. Scientific Love, unlike the other type of loves described, is much more clinical and much more about facts than interpretation. Scientific Love is the study of the subject as a scientific phenomenon and tries to explain the emotional reaction of love through chemicals. This love essay isn’t usually taught as much given love’s strong connotations to the arts rather than the sciences; however it is set occasionally. It is worth thinking about this subject almost solely logically when planning it as it is dealing less with the emotions we feel and more with finding a logical and scientific reason for those emotions. Plan it as you would any other type of science essay and ensure that you endeavour to utilise as many facts and statistics as possible as you are trying to quantify something that is unquantifiable. This means that you must be very focussed when writing this essay as it is in a very specific and not often written about field, so you have to ensure you have authorial credibility when writing about it. This means a clear and constant focus on the facts and nothing else.
• Love in Art. Love in Art, unlike the other topics that we have discussed is more like your average essay. Essays on love in literature are usually taught and essays about them set through the lens of literature. The same goes for science, it is not very often that someone studying science will be asked to write an essay on love. However, because of its place in art, you are likely to be asked to write an essay about how love features in art. This means that you should research around the presentation of Love in Art in detail and be as familiar with it as you possibly can be. This means examining the techniques used when painting love scenes in art as well as how art has been presented in sculpture. It means looking at the painting and understanding what the artist meant you to feel, what sort of emotions they conjure up. This type of research and development of your critical abilities will enable you to properly and thoroughly able to write an excellent essay in the category of Love in Art. Proper planning for this particular question is particularly crucial in case you are asked to comment on a picture or painting you have not seen and to critique it – if you are not familiar with the styles of paintings of love throughout the ages then you would struggle in such an exam. Therefore, preparation and writing a plan, even if you don’t use it exactly how you wanted to, is a vital tool for writing any sort of essay, particularly ones about love and emotion.