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WHO LOVES YOU, BABY?
You probably know the expression character is story. Well, in a romantic comedy character is love story. Itâs your job as a screenwriter to create a character whoâs so unique that they can only lead a unique love story â one weâve never seen because weâve never met your character before. Ideally, not even somebody similar. Now itâs time to focus on the first step of discovering and creating your romantic comedy protagonist. The eventual story this character compels you to take them on will be explored in Chapter 6 â Love Lessons. For now, weâll introduce some of the key factors that you can work with to create a truly fabulous protagonist. Theyâre not prescriptive but, as always, aim to support your ideas as they develop, with the ultimate aim of strengthening your romcom and making it more saleable.
By undertaking an intensive process of character development, youâll be in a better position to know answers â hopefully more original ones â to the following questions:
- Why is this character the best one for the kind of romcom story I want to tell?
- Why is this character worth travelling the distance with â for me and my audience?
- Whatâs unique and memorable about them? How is this so?
- What are the characterâs issues/problems/factors affecting their ability to âloveâ â themselves and other people â or to connect with others in a satisfying and healthy way?
- If they donât have issues, whatâs their real function in the story?
- Why is my character attracted to the other person/persons? Why do they have strong feelings for them?
- How does my character feel about intimacy?
- What does romantic love mean to my character?
- How does my character represent my own thoughts about love â and do they help me to tell the kind of story I envision and want to write?
- When it comes down to it, is my main character really a version of me? Are their issues my issues? If so, what am I telling myself about love and/or connecting with others?
It might be quite useful to ask yourself these questions now, and jot down the answers. You can review them in later drafts as your understanding and intentions for your main characters develop.
If you take romantic comedy as the all-encompassing super-genre, itâs virtually impossible to define any unifying trait in their protagonists other than they have strong feelings for another human being. Those feelings can be passionate, angry, hateful, joyful, obsessive, lustful, deranging, confused, hurt, delightful, fascinated, helpful, unhelpful or downright destructive â but always with a sense of humour (depending on your tonal preferences). The point is, theyâre overwhelming to your character and will form the main engine of the screenplay. Itâs those strong feelings thatâll take centre stage as your character travels a primarily emotional journey, dealing with the other person(s) and resolving â or not â their strong feelings for them. And itâll be the nature of that journey thatâs shaped by those feelings.
GOING THE DISTANCE WITH YOUR CHARACTER
Depending on whether you start with something high-concept â âItâs about a werewolf who falls in love with a stripperâ â or a specific character portrait â âItâs about the young Queen Victoria falling in love with a young Albertâ â your biggest challenge will be creating that character and making them memorable, unique and sufficiently entertaining that an audience is happy to go the distance with them. Learning who that individual character really is, not to mention the person or âthingâ she/he/it has feelings for, will be probably be the most time-consuming and challenging aspect to the entire process of developing your screenplay. Itâs just like falling in love/lust at first sight, when the person you see at the start and make all kinds of assumptions about based on their looks certainly isnât who they really are inside â or, more to the point, who theyâll be after years of togetherness.
With your romantic comedy protagonist, who you start out with at the beginning isnât necessarily who youâll end up with. Characters can undergo such huge transformations in development that their name, age, sex, race and personality traits might change radically. But the long haul in character development, like a good marriage, is worth it. Taking feedback, self-examination, knowing when to compromise â all of which are essential to a functioning relationship that can go the distance â will bring great results with your character. Youâll get to the point when your characters live and breathe â when they take on lives of their own and you know the external masks they hide behind, all their defence mechanisms and all of their good, bad and ugly sides. In this way, they drive the love story because theyâre fully fleshed out, complex, relatable individuals with minds â and story desires â of their own.
EXERCISE â Whatâs their story?
The purpose of this exercise is to develop your observational skills about people, and to study actions and behaviour as a means of communication.
Go to a bar, a restaurant, a museum, a tourist attraction, a market â or somewhere like that â and do some serious people-watching. Ideally choose a place where you can see couples in action. Try to avoid a train, which tends to zombiefy people on long journeys! The idea is for you to do some âcouple watchingâ so youâre inspired to draw creative conclusions from what you see and sense.
- Make up a story about who they are, based on what theyâre wearing, how they carry themselves and their general vibe.
- Give the couple pretend names.
- Study the interactions between the couple and imagine: how long have they been together? Whatâs the state of their relationship now? How do they feel about each other? Whatâs their future?
- Now write a scene about what happens when they get home from this place. How do they act with each other? How might their visit to this place affect what happens when they get home?
CHARACTER DEMOGRAPHICS
Choosing the protagonist/s of your romantic comedy is on the surface the easiest thing to do in screenwriting. No character, no story, remember? You probably know theyâre male, female, transsexual or gender neutral...
