Have you ever had a romantic comedy dream? Not the physical steamy kind – we all have those! We’re talking about the kind where your now-pain-in-the-ass significant other appears as they once were, before months turned into years and ‘Your turn to load the dishwasher, babe’ came to have a more resoundingly familiar ring than ‘You complete me, my darling’?
Us neither – as appealing as it sounds!
Fantasy and desire are why romantic comedy is alive and kicking, and probably isn’t going anywhere soon. Now more than ever, romantic comedy surrounds us. Big screens, little screens, tablets and phones… it’s virtually impossible to run away from light-hearted love stories in all their evolutions and permutations, across all platforms, apps and ads. Dating websites use romantic comedy to advertise their services on underground trains, and to run viral campaigns. In feature film more specifically, the romcom is still thriving across the globe, from Hollywood to Bollywood to Nollywood.
What does this exciting proliferation of the romcom mean for you, dear reader/writer? Perhaps you’re consulting this book because you intend to write a romcom feature, or are at least exploring the idea. Maybe you’ve chosen a character or a concept for your screenplay, and it feels like a romcom but you’re not sure. Or maybe you’re seeking inspiration or answers to creative or commercial dilemmas. Alternatively, maybe you work in film development and are interested in new views and new models – resources to inspire and inform the development process of projects you’re working on. Or maybe you’re a student looking for insights that will inspire and shape your ideas about writing in this genre, from a creative rather than a mere ‘critical’ perspective.
Whoever you are, we hope that this book comes as something of a refreshing surprise. The idea to write it together also came as something of a surprise to us, and has taken us on our own ‘chumcom’ journey. As writers ourselves, we both wanted to write a book for screenwriters about creating stories that come with certain expectations to illuminate just how broad the romantic comedy genre can be. By sharing with you approaches and principles of writing, by questioning aspects of produced romcoms, and by having some fun along the way (as we have writing it!), we hope to inspire and re-energise your own stories and ideas.
Perhaps unfairly, writing a romantic comedy can come with a little more baggage than other genres. It’s the genre that can make people cringe, angry, or look at you askance if you claim to be writing one. On the other hand, lots of people will cry out that they love romcoms and can’t watch anything else. Sometimes the biggest assumption even writers can make is that you’ll be creating something formulaic – a boy-meets-girl scenario, or a story full of dubious gender representations. There’s something about romantic comedy’s unique blend of a lightness of tone and obsessively relentless emotional terrain that presses buttons or brings a smile, depending on people’s attitudes. It is true, however, that some romcoms can be over-formulaic, predictable and sugary sweet, with the ubiquitous happy ending in which soulmates commit for life at a big fat rich wedding! What’s key to remember as writers is that what repels some people might actually provide a really fun night out for others.
The romcom is therefore a genre that people tend to love or hate, a bit like the horror and the thriller. Audiences tend not to categorise drama, biopic and comedy in the same way. Romantic comedy can be viewed more rigidly than other genres. There’s something of a lasting myth about the film version of the genre – that a ‘proper’ romcom must meet certain expectations such as having polarised characters and classic turning points, like cute meets, the lovers seeing the light and finding enduring happiness. For writers, romantic comedy screenplays are possibly more vulnerable to the age-old problem of genre definition – and a need to see certain boxes being ticked when it comes to story types, character arcs, endings and themes.
The kind of romcom you want to write will ultimately depend on what you like to watch yourself. Hopefully, this book will radicalise and revitalise your approach to writing screenplays in the genre by exploring how you can make your work delightful, original and uniquely your own take on love. We’re committed to helping you write a romcom that inspires you, reflects what you want to say about love and the human condition, and is ultimately an enjoyable journey – for you and your eventual audience.
Our approach to writing the romcom is that the first draft is your draft. Other than saying, ‘It’s probably one day going to be defined as a romcom’, our approach is to focus on the ideas around your comedic love story. We’ll explore certain familiar elements of the romcom from the perspective of writing practice, but these aim to help you question your work, not limit it. Although it might seem strange, we want to quash any rules and regulations you might be carrying around about the romcom. This is because our approach with this book is one of finding your way through development by trying, experiencing, thinking and then thinking some more. We want your story to develop organically, from the point of view of your perspectives on the world, life, love and relationships, and ideas about them that you want to explore. Ideation is, we feel, a core aspect of development. So, while we’ll be giving you lots of information about the craft of the romcom, we really want to help you get excited about your ideas. Audiences go to see films because they’re interested in ideas – in what the world has to offer us as human beings – so you, too, need to be a master of ideas.
Audiences crave reinvention and stimulation and it’s your job to tune into the zeitgeist, to mine all your creative faculties, and to put your stamp on love and romance, whatever your particular sensibility might be – crazy, quirky, cynical or upbeat. What worked five years ago might not necessarily work today. Not only do our values and attitudes change, we are living in darker, less secure and more ambivalent times. This can make us retreat to feel-good and to tradition – or it can make us more cynical. Today there is more gender equality in the Western world, and what was ‘the battle of the sexes’ is better termed a ‘constantly renegotiated truce’ between men and women. Not to mention the fact that audiences rightly expect romantic comedies to feature gay, bisexual and transgender couples. Nobody knows anything, as William Goldman, writer of arch bromance Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so saliently reminds us. And nobody has all the answers in terms of what will make a great contemporary romantic comedy. All we ask of you – as a screenwriter or someone working with screenwriters – is to detach yourself from any negative connotations or preconceptions you might have about the romcom.
In return, we’ll bring you a fertile and eclectic mix of creative, critical and commercial perspectives to aid and inspire the development of your own project, whether it’s a spec script, a commissioned project, or you’re just playing around with ideas. We do make some ‘assumptions’ in this book, and these are:
We hope you enjoy reading and working with this book, and that most of all it will add some zest to your romantic comedy screenplay.