FRENZY!!!! (or RomComs: A Discussion)

No, the frenzy isn't in reference to a zombie horde feasting on the masses. It's... 

 

I know I've posted about NaNoWriMo in the past, but truth be told that never works out because novel writing doesn't really seem to be my thing. However! Script Frenzy is this April and I will be writing my first feature length screenplay! (Yay!) Also, very surprising to me, I will be writing a RomCom. I've never really had intentions of writing one in the past but this story really seems the best choice for me for my first feature.

I've started plotting it out, and currently my plan is to have the story nicely set out in index cards before April. In addition to plotting, I think I need to examine a couple of the better romcoms to set me on the right foot, through both reading and watching. Hopefully, in the end I'd be able to produce a kind of stereotypically audience gender neutral one, like 40 Year Old Virgin or Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It seems like the key to that is to have a solid bro contingent with a healthy dose of sex and sex jokes. I wasn't really planning on adding a whole lot of sex to mine, but I won't be surprised if I make that decision further down the road, during rewrites. There's certainly room for it, character and story-wise. I do, however, have a good, humorfull, broscape that is central to the story.

I know RomComs get a bad rep, often duly deserved as they are rather formulaic and can be downright insultingly low in quality. However, every genre, particularly action movies I think, have examples of the same lack. Dramas and Comedies, while still following a formula in the way all stories pretty much inevitably do, tend to have a much wider range in their subject matter and thus, even when they are bad, don't attract a pidgeon hole for their bad reputation and criticism gets shelled out more individually. The only reason action movies, I think, escape with less ridicule than romcoms as a genre is A) Action has terrorists and civilizations hanging by threads and life and death which is automatically more "serious" than stories of individuals and B) RomComs are geared toward women which, as a matter of course, demotes them in terms cultural weight. I adore action movies, but they are an equal part of the cheesecake with romcoms.

That said, see this article on the common pitfalls of romcoms/instruction on how to write one: http://www.uproxx.com/feature/2010/03/how-to-write-a-hollywood-rom-com-in-10-easy-steps/

It's a fun article, despite having some sexist remarks I don't really care for as well as a weak Step 6 as pretty much every-single-story-known-to-humankind has the set up followed by "but then something happens." Similarly, Step 8 is awfully hard to avoid if one is going to create drama (though I can say that in my story the main characters don't have the "splitting up" problem, but the side characters do) but, along with Step 6, is good for the list as far as a "How To" guide goes, as they are kind of necessary.

ANYWAYS

While, fortunately, I don't plan on having any love scenes in the rain, I do start with the ubiquitous "main characters hate each other in the beginning" thing.

That about wraps it up for now, I need to wash some dishes. Any suggestions for great RomComs I should watch/read the screenplays of in the name of research? Any RomComs you can think of that defy stereotype? Are stereotypically audience gender neutral? Leave 'em in the comments!