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Essays on the Craft of Writing

About the Author

The Art of the Romantic Comedy
by Bill Johnson

The romantic comedy has long been a staple of American films. It Happened One Night, She Done Him Wrong, The Thin Man, Adam's Rib, Annie Hall, Tootsie. Every year, every generation, a particular film in this genre stands out and speaks to audiences in an engaging, satisfying way. While every film of this type has on the surface as many similarities as differences, there is an underlying dramatic purpose that weaves through these stories.

What is a Romantic Comedy?

A romantic comedy is a dramatic story about romance told with a light, humorous touch. As any writer knows, that simple statement is easy to make, hard to accomplish. An easier place to begin is with the question, why do romantic comedies engage the interest of an audience?

They do this by setting up dramatic issues that revolve around romance. Thus, they can act out that:

  • true love does exist
  • there's someone out there just for us, and if we could only find them, we would experience true love
  • romance can overcome all obstacles

Further, the romantic comedy often offers an experience of shared intimacy to couples -- married, dating, old, young, life-hardened -- that is fulfilling and pleasurable, and difficult to initiate or sustain for some people.

Well told romantic comedies are also, in the main, very observant about the humor and mores of their time. For example, changes in the role of women and men and how they approach each other romantically can be perceived in the popular romantic comedies of each generation. The cross-dressing in Tootsie, for example, is played for an entirely different dramatic effect than the cross-dressing in Some Like It Hot. The humor of Tootsie develops over a man coming to terms with what it is to be a woman. Some Like It Hot finds its humor in manly men trying to pass themselves off as women. In that sense the romantic comedy serves as both a herald of change and a subtle instigator of change.

In that vein, the romantic comedy often offers a sense of what is sophisticated and current about romance. It Happened One Night, for example, defined for many in its audience what was sophisticated. Audiences, then, can learn about romance from viewing stories about it.

Romantic comedies also offer a view of how people relate to each other in a particular generation. The interplay among the adults and children in Sleepless in Seattle, with children presented more like miniature adults, might seem incomprehensible to a parent in the thirties, forties, or fifties.

The writer of the romantic comedy, then, would be served by understanding not just stories popular in the past, but understanding what makes their material fresh and new.

The "How" of the Romantic Comedy

How does one set out to write this magical beast, the romantic comedy? First, by understanding that like any well-told story, the romantic comedy should have a solid story foundation. This is expressed in a story's premise, which lays out its core dramatic issue, movement and fulfillment.

To explore the underlying principles of the romantic comedy, what follows is a breakdown of the structure of Sleepless in Seattle. This premise of this story:

True soul mates can find each other in spite of any obstacles to their being together.

Note how this premise applies not just to specific characters, but to an idea about romance that the story acts out dramatically.

Sleepless opens with Tom Hanks at the funeral for his wife. Immediately, a story question is raised.

Can Hanks recover from the loss of his beloved wife?

That's the dramatic purpose of this first scene, to set up that story question. One scene, a story question taking shape.

The opening shot of this scene focuses solely on Hanks and his son. That engages the audience in the story through the characters of Hanks and his son. Only then does the camera pull back to reveal that this is not just a day when Hanks has taken his son to his mother's grave, it is the day of his wife's funeral. The actual service is in progress. That revelation adds to the dramatic impact of the scene.

If the writer had started by describing the funeral, the purpose of the scene -- setting up its story question that arises from the story's premise to be acted out by Hanks -- would not have been as clear. This scene is deliberately designed to guide the audience to focus on what's dramatically important.

Note also that while the scene at the funeral sets the story into motion, the story is not about the death of Hank's wife, but about whether Hank's character can recover from his grief over her death. Therefore, a death-bed scene would not serve the dramatic purpose of this story. Communicating that Hanks is grieving over the loss of his wife is not the same as setting up the question, can Hanks recover from his grief over his wife's death? The first is a statement, the second a dramatic question.

In the following scene, friends of Hanks ask him if he understands how to make orange juice. Note how the story moves from the question, can Hanks recover, to, can he not just recover and regain a sense of life, but can this heartbroken man even recover enough to figure out how to make orange juice? It's a brief scene that quickly makes its dramatic point. The scene also introduces Hank's friends without explaining who they are. That they're close friends of Hanks is established because they are there with him at this moment.

By limiting the number of characters on the screen, the audience is guided to focus on what the author is setting up as dramatically at stake.

Third scene, a man at Hanks' office approaches and offers a card about his therapist. Hanks pulls out a handful of cards about various recovery groups.

Dramatic purpose: We're not shown Hanks going to these groups, we're shown the aftermath. That's the dramatic purpose of the scene: to show that Hanks can't recover.

The scene also gives us background information about Hanks.

Outcome of scene: Hanks decides that he can only recover if he moves to a different city where he is not reminded of his wife's presence.

Dramatic question raised by first and second scenes: Is there anything that Hanks can do to recover from his grief? Answer, quit his job and move to another city. Next scene, Hanks and his son are at the airport, leaving.

Again note the dramatic focus of the story. It's not about whether it's right or wrong that Hanks move or not, so there are no scenes where Hanks talks about his decision. As in all well-told stories, characters reveal who they are as they react to dramatic situations. Therefore, in this story, we aren't offered scenes to explain why characters are acting. That's made very clear by how the scenes act out a visible dramatic purpose. Writers struggle with they create scenes merely to introduce characters or to set up situations, but the scenes themselves have no dramatic purpose.

Continuing, Hanks walks on the airport concourse with his friends. They counsel him that at some point, he will start dating again. Hanks' response, he'll never again find the kind of love he found with his wife.

It's a brief, focused exchange that happens while characters are physically on the move, not contemplating moving. This exchange gets to the story question that is at the heart of the story, can Hanks recover from his grief and find another soul mate?

The first scene asked a question that arises from this story's premise. In this fourth scene, the story's premise comes fully into view. Four quick, dramatically focused scenes with a minimum of dialogue, and this story has set up a story question that arises from its premise.

Now the movie cuts to its credits, a song about love, and a map of the USA.

Point: once a story is in motion, its music and background credits can be used to add something to the dramatic effect of the story. But you have to set your story into some type of dramatic motion for these kind of effects to advance the story. Returning to Sleepless, the question has been raised, can Hanks find true love again?

Next scene, Ann, played by Meg Ryan, is introduced with Bill Pullman, her boyfriend. The audience is being cued that Ryan is the one Hanks will find true love with.

The scene is designed to introduce what kind of relationship Ryan and Pullman have: workable, nothing special, no pizzazz. The audience is also being primed in a subtle way to want Ryan to get together with Hanks. This idea of true love being special, magical, is introduced as an issue in this scene by emphasizing that Ryan's relationship with Pullman has no magic; it's just two busy, on-the-go people agreeing to a joint schedule that will constitute their married life.

Now that the audience has been cued that Ryan is the woman Hanks will eventually meet, how can that event be made more dramatic? In the next series of scenes, Ryan announces her engagement to Pullman.

By blocking the potential movement of Hanks and Ryan toward each other, the story's plot heightens the dramatic tension around the story's outcome. If Hanks and Ryan are soul mates unknown to each other, living several thousand miles apart, how can they be brought together and fall in love? To get the answer to this question, the audience has to view the entire movie, in the same sense that a reader has to read to an end of a novel to get to the resolution of its central story question and the dramatic issues that arise from it.

After Ryan announces her engagement to Walter (Bill Pullman), Ryan's mother asks her if she has a satisfying sex life with him. It's the story playing out an unusual issue to a main stream audience, a mother asking her daughter about having sex with her fiancee. It's a way to make the story seem fresh and current.

Ryan tries on her wedding dress and it rips, a sign, her mother warns, that Ryan doesn't believe in her love for Pullman. It's a way of suggesting there is a true love out there Ryan is unconsciously calling to, to forestall her marriage to Pullman. How are Ryan and Hanks to be brought together?

First, the inexperienced writer should understand that the writer of Sleepless probably started out with an idea about true love and soul mates. Putting a great distance between them is one way to make more dramatic their finding each other. A storyteller is always on the look-out for ways to introduce the elements of their story in a dramatic way.

In this story, to begin this process of bringing together Hanks and Ryan, Hanks' son calls a live radio show and speaks to the show's host. He talks about his father's grief and loneliness, his need for a new wife. The host then asks that Hanks be put on the line. Hanks tells her that he will NEVER be able to find again the love he experienced with his wife. Note how the audience is primed to anticipate/desire that Hanks CAN find such a new love, with Ryan.

Ryan, listening to the radio show, at first thinks Hanks' son calling the show is phony. This creates a sense of drama within the scene over its outcome. Scenes, just like stories or character issues, can be set up to have a dramatic purpose and a question over their outcome. The outcome of Ryan listening to Hanks talk about his grief is that Ryan -- and millions of other women listeners -- want to meet and comfort Hanks. Hanks and his son inadvertently create a media frenzy.

Note in the interchanges between Hanks and his son following the call how his son is more like a companion of Hanks. This mirrors the changing relationships between parents and children in our society.

Ryan now has become emotionally enmeshed with Hanks' character, even though they've never met. Note also that this scene comments on something new in the lives of many people, making emotional connections with people they never meet through a medium like radio call in programs.

Now the question becomes, Ryan now knows about Hanks, but how will they meet? Ryan, a journalist, begins inventing reasons for why she should meet and interview Hanks. The storyteller gives Ryan a reason to think about Hanks.

Ryan talks with her colleagues about Hanks and the reactions other women have had to hearing his story. Her male co-workers raise the issue that it's more likely for a woman over 40 to be killed by terrorists then to find and marry a man. This pronouncement sets off Ryan and her woman friend. Even when Ryan and her friend attack the idea, they agree that it feels true.

To start her campaign of meeting Hanks, Ryan writes him a letter. Hanks' son reads Ryan's letter and decides that he wants her to meet his father. The story then cuts back and forth from Ryan on a New Year's Eve date with Pullman, in which he proposes that they go to New York. Again, what would make Ryan meeting Hanks less likely, and therefore more dramatic? Pullman showing that he's a closet romantic. That's the dramatic purpose of the scene. On a level of timing and getting characters where they need to be to act dramatically, this date in New York also puts Ryan in a necessary position to act later in the story. The location of this date serves a dramatic purpose on different levels. It speaks to the issue of every element in a story, even its environment, having a dramatic purpose.

For his part, on New Year's Eve Hanks has a fantasy and, seeing his wife, he tells her, "I miss you so much it hurts."

Again, what makes it less likely, and therefore eventually more dramatic, that Hanks would meet and connect with Ryan? That he's still deeply enmeshed in grief and loneliness over his wife's death. But receiving letters from women does get Hanks to think about dating. Hanks doesn't want to become involved with women he doesn't know, so he asks a friend's advice about dating. The friend gives him an update on it. The scene is played for humor, but it also underscores the current realities of dating in the 90's. It offers a fresh insight on the dating scene, in the same vein that Tootsie had several humorous scenes about dating in the mid-eighties.

Armed with a new understanding of dating, Hanks asks out a woman the audience is primed NOT to like. She laughs too loud. His son doesn't like her.

Ryan, rehearing Hanks on the radio, begins to wonder about her feelings for Pullman. The audience is primed for this by showing how BORING Pullman would be as Ryan's mate, that it would be a marriage without pizzazz or excitement.

Ryan flies to Seattle unannounced to meet Hanks...and sees him hugging a woman friend, the friend introduced in scene two. She interprets that to mean he's in a romantic relationship. Note how this friendship was not introduced just to set up a particular scene's dramatic purpose. This woman's character only a small part of the film, but her role has a dramatic purpose that affects its course and outcome. Characters whose actions have no effect on the course of a story are dramatically inert.

At the last moment, Hanks sees Ryan watching him...and in their gaze, something special happens. But then Ryan is gone.

The audience has been primed to want to know what would happen when Ryan and Hanks meet. They meet, and the magic is there, but then the scene's over. The meeting answers one dramatic question, will Ryan and Hanks meet? It sets up another, more urgent dramatic question. What will happen when they really meet? Will they meet after Ryan assumes that Hanks is in a relationship? And the twist, he is in a relationship, it's just not with the woman Ryan thinks he is.

Hanks' son, afraid he's drifting more deeply into a relationship with this other woman, contacts Ryan about meeting his father in New York atop the Empire State Building. He then flies alone to New York. When Hanks' discovers his son is missing, he's frantic. His loss would be devastating, coming so soon after the death of his wife. One purpose of this scene is to allow the audience to experience Hanks panic over his son being missing.

Hanks flies to New York.

Ryan goes to dinner with Pullman. She accepts that hers will be a life of mundane reality. This particular date happens in a restaurant with a view of the Empire State Building in the background. What comes out is that Pullman does not want to marry Ryan if she doesn't love him in that special way she seems to feel for Hanks. There's a reversal of the scene based on Pullman's reaction to events, not Ryan's. In a story where Pullman's character has been set up to be considered a bore, this scene works dramatically because it allows Pullman's character a sense of dignity.

Ryan, who was told she would meet Hanks on top of the Empire State Building at midnight, now rushes to make that meeting. Hanks' son is already at the top of the Empire State Building...alone. Hanks arrives and finds his son. They are reunited...but there's no Ryan in evidence. Hanks and his son leave.

Ryan gets special permission to go to the top of the Empire State Building, even though it has just closed. Note the detail of how the scene raises a dramatic question: will Ryan be allowed to go to the top of the Empire State Building even though the observation area is now closed. Again, the scene is set up to have a dramatic question and outcome. The answer, yes. But when she gets there, Hanks and his son are gone.

But, Hanks son has left his teddy bear behind. When Ryan turns to go...Hanks returns to get the bear, and the two soul mates meet.

The main story question has been dramatically answered: can Hanks find true love after the death of his wife?

Yes.

Can soul mates find each other in spite of any obstacles?

Yes.

Through answering these questions in a method deliberately designed to be dramatic, this story engaged and satisfied its audience.

To write a romantic comedy like Sleepless in Seattle, understand your characters and how to set your story into dramatic motion. Then, resolve the romantic issues of your story in a way that offers a fulfilling experience of romance with a light touch.

That is the art of writing the romantic comedy.

Top of page Bill is author of The Combat Poets of Maya, a humorous science fiction novel in the vein of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.