Learning How to Plan and Construct a Romance

         After conducting research behind the Romance genre writing process, I learned that in most romance films the audience go into the film already knowing two characters are destined to meet. When writing a Rom-Com, usually one of the characters has a conflict in their life that gets in the way but in the end gets solved. In many great rom-com films, two different personalities come together and end up working together and balancing each-other out. Characters should be unique and complex. What most people think of when they hear romantic comedy is a man and a woman sharing a cheesy and cliché love story. However, some of the most successful romantic comedies are hybrids, movies that have expanded their audience by mixing with other genres. Romantic comedies can be action-adventures, sports comedies, ghost stories, political, satirical, period pieces , crime stories, teen movies and more. This kind of cross-genre mixing has kept this genre successful for decades.                  

                                                                    Casablanca(1942)                              
             

        Not all romance films start of as love at first sight. Sometimes, making the characters hate each other will give the romance more room to bloom, but they can also have lukewarm, mixed, or one-sided feelings. Even though they aren’t pursuing a relationship, external forces bring them together. They might partner to accomplish a joint goal, attend the same school, or be hired to investigate each other. Something to take into mind when writing a romance is to avoid giving the audience the wrong idea about a character. It's important to avoid giving a character unhealthy behavior. You don’t want your audience to decide that your character or characters are terrible people. Unfortunately, it’s common for male love interests to be outright abusive to their partners. As time passes, more and more audience members will feel disgust when relationships aren’t equal. It's important to avoid this pitfall by checking over your character interactions.

Titanic(1997)