I'll be working with christianc in this thread on helping him to develop a better sense of creating his pieces so that they transcend the realm of mood ambiences and pass into the wonderful world of melodic music. He's specifically asked me to help him with writing love themes and battle themes, so I think it'd be most prudent to start with one of those. The love theme gives much greater flexibility in terms of thematic production and development, so that'll be our first topic.
As the name suggests, a love theme must capture the essence of romance for a particular scene in an incidental production (game, film, etc). It may sound like a fairly easy task, but creating a sound that manages to do the trick without coming off as terribly cheesy takes some serious work. Love themes are generally very melodic and introduce a memorable tune that may then occur at later points in the soundtrack. For this reason, the melody must be well-thought-out, catchy, and effective for the setting.
With that in mind, a good first step would be to listen to a number of existing love themes out there in order to familiarize yourself with the style. I'm sure you can think of some famous ones (Across the Stars, from Star Wars Episode II, etc) but if you can't, let me know and I'll help you find some. Once you feel like you're getting the idea, you can start coming up with a theme. Before I start directly guiding you through, I want to see what kind of a melody you come up with just from the inspiration of listening to various existing examples.
Your assignment, therefore: find and listen to as many examples of love themes as you can. As you're listening, note the titles and source so that we can take a look at them later. See if you consider them effective or not and do your best to analyze why - think of how they make you feel more than the technical side of things for now. After you've done that, try your hand at creating one or two melodies that you think would work well in love themes. Just a melody for now - don't harmonize unless you have to to convey the melody better. Once you're satisfied with them, post them up here and we'll go from there!
Good luck, and feel free to ask any questions right here.
