Rom-Coms. Every romance reader—and writer,—have watched their fair share, and more. Me, I am a sucker for a Sunday spent in my jammies bingeing Hallmark movies, interspersed with “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Legally Blonde.” Have you noticed that no matter what day or time, you can always find one of these movies on TV?
But something changed when I started writing more seriously—around the time I got to Bedeviled, the third book in my Beguiling Bachelor Series. I started taking notes when I watched these movies, observing the dialogue, the conflict, the pacing.
I was no longer simply curled up in a corner of the sofa eating too much junk food—mint chocolate chip anyone? I was studying these movies. Okay, in fairness, I have seen most of them half a dozen times or more. But I was seriously studying them. How many scenes were there? How soon into the film did they meet? What were common sources of conflict between the key characters? What role did their best friends play in moving the story forward?
Guess what? Most of the good ones have something in common. And all of them—good or bad—could teach me something about writing my own romance novels. And they did.
Here are four lessons I learned that were key to crafting a better romance:
1/ How Rom-Coms Set the stage
A great rom-com does a wonderful job setting the stage, a bad one takes too long, or doesn’t do enough. For example, Frozen in Love, one of my favorite Hallmark movies takes what feels like forever to introduce our characters to each other. But we learn their quirks, and their motivation so that when they meet and are instantly as incompatible as oil and water, we understand why.
Sleepless in Seattle cleverly sets the stage with a single phone call to a radio talk show. We hear our hero’s history, and pain, and watch Meg Ryan’s emotional reaction and in only a few moments we know everything we need to understand their actions through the rest of the story.
Novelists—good ones—weave setting the stage with moving the story forward. They don’t give us so much history that there is no action, nor do they give us action we can’t follow since we lack the necessary background.
Finding that balance is key in a great romance, and it’s always done well in a great rom-com.
2/ The meet-cute
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of couples meeting when one bumps into the other and spills coffee. Enter the sidekick. Best friends, doting parents, that boss we all wish we had but never did. These characters are perfect for providing a reason for a couple to meet.
Movies handle this well when they get creative. Rival a cappella groups, a radio listener across the country, the journalist who spots a hot story and keeps their identity secret as in the classic It Happened One Night, there are dozens of ways to throw people together. But a simple way is to bring in a secondary character who facilitates an introduction, or a reconnecting of a high-school fling when our hero returns to visit family.
Keeping it cute is the challenge. The situation doesn’t have to be cute, but the pair’s response to each other needs that special spark. Watch a few movies to see what I mean.
3/ The conflict
Key to every love story is character, what motivates them, the conflict that keeps them apart, and how they overcome it. In other words, conflict is crucial.
The best stories have both external and internal conflicts for our couple to overcome. Can Reese Witherspoon, transformed into a hot New York designer, resolve her distaste for small-town Alabama in order to embrace the ex-husband she still loves? Can Becca learn to let others get close so that she can lead her a cappella group and win Jesse?
Readers want characters to grow, learn and be more approachable, more lovable by the end of the story. I even created a character you love to hate in Bedazzled, book one of the Beguiling Bachelor series, and turned her into the heroine of Beholden, the second book. But Sloane had to eat a lot of crow, learn to appreciate the world around her, and stop being the biggest bitch in Chicago before she was worthy of love.
Having characters battle a fatal flaw—from being frivolous and rich to smart and hardworking, to go from loner to team player, from helper to deserving of their own life—turns out to be as important to a well-written romance as the love story.
Then there is the external conflict: from outride struggles not to eat your lover in Twilight to class differences used in most historical romances, to differences in sexual proclivities in Fifty Shades of Grey, a barrier to overcome is critical to a romance story. These are books that translated well into movies for exactly that reason. But one of my favorite novel to-movie romance conflicts is The Wedding Date.
Kat, played by the marvelous Debra Messing, must overcome her belief that she still loves her ex-fiancé AND her horror that her love interest is a professional escort. And a superb one at that. Both turn out to create both emotional and physical conflicts in the story, while giving us a gorgeous romp through England.
4/ Rom-Com Pacing
Without a doubt, I learned more about pacing a story from movies than anything else. First I paid attention to a Hallmark movie. How many minutes into the story did the couple meet? Had the first hour passed before the big blowup? Once they were in love, how much time before they declare it?
I found myself documenting 27 Dresses scene by scene when I realized it was a perfect fit for my current work in progress. There are exactly thirty scenes in 27 Dresses, and thirty chapters were perfect for my full-length romance novel.
Don’t get me wrong, what happens scene by scene wasn’t important. For example, I don’t have a scene in my Double Dare novel where the couple gets drunk and sings Benny and the Jets at the top of their lungs while standing on the bar in a strange town.
But that scene moves the story forward, gives our duo a bonding experience, a moment when they forget their animosity and enjoy each other’s company. It’s a glimpse into what their future might look like. They could be fun together. I need my couple to experience a similar moment, and 27 Dresses helped me know when in my story that could best occur.
Same with the big blowup, or the moment of realization, or the pace at which Katherine Heigl realizes the truth about herself and discovers she loves the wrong man. All of this contributed to the pacing of my novel. It helped me from having a ‘saggy middle’ in my book, although all that junk food…
Anyway, you get my point. Watch Sleepless in Seattle, a great example for a novel with missed opportunities, where the story develops separately for two characters, or Legally Blond, where Elle learns—just as Kathryn Heigl did—that she’s stronger and smarter than she knew, and that she no longer wants the man she fought so hard to win. Both movies are great examples of pacing a hero’s journey (of course, so is Iron Man, but not so much for romance).
For me, Pitch Perfect helped too, since my Double Dare series is both love story and gal-pal chick lit. When you see the “Crazy Eights” at work, you’ll know what I mean.
These are four ways that watching rom-coms helped me improve my novels, but there are so many more. What do you, as a writer, watch for in movies? How about you readers? Are you drawing comparisons or seeing similarities? Won’t you share your discoveries, and favorite binge junk food, in the comments below?