Romantic Screenplays 101 (5 page)

Hauge solved a story problem for one script writer with this concept when he explained how a love triangle proves who should be the lover who wins. Of the two vying for the third’s affections, one is attuned only to Identity of the apex person while the true soul mate (who should win) recognizes and plays to the Essence of the beloved.

THE RELATIONSHIP PLANE

This approach to a relationship’s evolution fits well into the structure of Syd Field’s Paradigm and those suggested by various other Hollywood gurus.

Start with the idea of a stair step of complications encountered, blocking life moving forward and forcing consideration of other options, a choice of action moving forward until another event forces consideration of new action. The result is ever-worsening circumstances, the climb up the staircase of dramatic action thus creating Rising Tension and sucking the audience along with empathetic concern.

Relationship Plane Definitions as related to Screenplays:

Look
: Initial encounter where Linda Howard’s Step 1 happens . . . but characters are going about their business. Though other person is noted and that event is seen by the audience, the two characters are not instantaneously turned on.

Interest
: Howard’s Step 2 . . . This contact can illicit an awareness of pheromones prompting the body language of opening toward this other person, watching and listening for what makes this person so intriguing. This is a cinematically intense moment of one character’s focused POV. This event must happen to move the relationship forward, to make them memorable to one another when they are apart. This event will have a direct link with the Permission of Plot Point I that ends the set-up and launches the couple into actually investigating the totally new world of this relationship.

Engagement
: Howard’s Step 3 . . . Where the two people seek a mental commonality and acknowledge the Pull Factor of the pheromones-physical attraction. but the tentative nature of cautious humans maintains the distance with the Push Factor.

Permission
: Howard’s Step 4 . . . The two have moved close enough to physically touch hand-to-hand and maintain that contact. Trust blossoms and in the awareness of accepting, the two step across the social barrier from acquaintances to curious investigators. They allow themselves to intellectually open to this other person.

Attraction
: Howard’s Step 5-6 . . . Acknowledging that this might be an important person is admitting one may not be complete and independent, may need someone else to make life a happy experience. How does one happily survive life incomplete? That can create insecurity and fear of loneliness not previously recognized. The need to step close and hold this other person can be a driving force.

Liking
: Not related to any of Howard’s Steps but a definite element in relationships, liking one another is vitally important to the longevity of the relationship. In the build up of physical attraction, the signaling of all that chemistry, a writer has to demonstrate these two people
respect
one another so they can see glimpses of Essence. Those inner qualities make them feel so comfortable they want to be around that other person more. They want to share some of their own Essence to see if they are compatible. Are their values the same?

Connection
: Howard’s Steps 5-9 . . . At the Mid-Point of a story an epiphany happens, a culminating event that shocks the characters into an awareness of the high stakes of both failure and success. This could be merely a heightening of the physical tension, but it could be taking the couple all the way through Step 12,
if
your plot events will now rip them apart in the second half of the story. Otherwise, you have just completed the story of the-happy-people-of-the-happy-village and now who wants to see the rest of the movie? This physical epiphany has to really complicate the evolution of the relationship. It has to result in questions and consequences that drive through the rest of the story.

Love
: Characters remembering Howard’s Steps . . . These two people privately recognize internal Essence is changed forever because of the other person. They accept they are in love with one another, but are not ready to announce it. The visual evidence of this awareness, this cherishing of new emotional depths is the False Reward of the Silver Chalice wherein the two people so badly want to love and be loved. They falsely believe they can win the heart and devotion of the other person.

Increase
: Risk of losing intimacy forever . . . When the antagonist or the world beats the lead characters into a corner, all of their skills and knowledge are proven inadequate. What is the one thing they want above all else in a romance? To be a whole unit with the beloved. The bond forged now may never reach its fullest potential. This increased risk of loss so assaults the Essence that the characters have no choice but to come up fighting for the very survival of who they are.

Need
: In the climactic battle for survival, both parties recognize and accept that they are not whole without the other, Essence to Essence. Words are not enough. Visuals, visuals, visuals. Body language, eye contact, a race through Howard’s 12 Steps. The couple joyously succumbs to the Pull Factor.

Commitment
: This is the visual evidence that the two have become one, not skin-to-skin, but as a united couple ready to face the world. This provides the logical consequences the audience can imagine as the After-Story.

Happily Ever After
: The relationship goes on with the two united and making a happy life together. They can cope with anything life throws at them because they are together. That ain’t SOMERSBY where he chooses an honorable death over the relationship or LOVE STORY where she dies and OUT OF AFRICA where he dies. In both instances the partner lives the rest of life alone.

Does this all sound too prescribed, too predictable? That is the fun part in the process: You-the-Writer get to insert and rearrange all your complications and unique personalities as they meet the audience expectations.

Anything can be analyzed to the “nth” degree. The point is to understand the analysis and make it work for your story.

CLUSTERING OF STEPS

The joy of experiencing a cinematic romance is in the anticipation. If you cram everything into one meeting, you are cheating your audience of that element that keeps them focused, hoping what will come next. Most males in the audience prefer everything as a give at once. They tend to say “Cut to the chase. Don’t give me all that touchy-feely stuff.” So, yes, you could condense. Unless the female is desperate (which is a tad pathetic), aren’t you rushing the story?

A movie-going audience likes to see the characters work for whatever. Make them contemplate one another in the Pull-Push game (Pull of attraction but the Push of denial). Engagement is the tantalizing tease of saying “Yes, I am available to
you
!” Permission is the surrendering to the desire. Create your relationship in droplets, not one bucketful splash scene. Sudden splash scenes are sometimes thrown into action-adventure movies and come off as gratuitous. Light brush strokes of finesse that build and focus are much more tantalizing in a cinematic romance. Example: YOU’VE GOT MAIL

BRAINSTORMING POSSIBILITIES

Brainstorming is the creative process of letting your imagination run wild and thinking of any possibility that could happen. It is like free writing where you make lists. Those lists give you options to consider. Two things to remember: 1) Do not go for the most obvious or most convenient and 2) do not make anything a coincidence. The choices made and the actions taken must be deliberate. Yes, two people can be in the bank as the same time it is held up and they are taken as hostages, but that they just happened to have gone to school together and had a high school affair is too much of a convenience. The What-if becomes contrived, melodramatic and improbable. You lose your audience’s sense of illusion because they are refuting the storyteller’s contrivances.

 Bring the two parties together and have them interact within their natural, normal routine. That meeting will come off as “of course it was meant to happen” serendipity. 

By the time you get to the last scene before “The End,” think about how you want your couple feeling after the climax of the story, after they have come into their powers to overcome the antagonist and have recognized they need one another to go forward into life as a unit. How do you want them showing their commitment to each other?

ROMANTIC SCREENPLAYS Chapter 3 Exercises

Exercise 3a:
State four possible situations or events for your story’s four major relationship points:

1) Meeting

2) Misunderstanding

3) Separation

4) Commitment

Note: This is an exercise in making What-if lists, of many possibilities of actions and reactions you could use.

Exercise 3b:
What are three major roles in your female lead’s life that create her Identity? Now, the three major roles in your male lead’s life?

Exercise 3c: What is your female’s Essence (what does she want more than anything else, but keeps locked within)?
The Essence of your male lead?

Exercise 3d:
How do you want these two complex people to celebrate their victory over life’s assault on their tenuous relationship after the Climax of your story? What Happily Ever After images will your audience take home to translate into their own imaginings of the couple’s future? (Note: If you can imagine the histories of these two characters then how they meet at the beginning of your story . . . and you know how you want to conclude the story, it becomes much easier to construct the middle.)

Chapter 4

Unique but Universal Hero

& Heroine and Cast

FUNDAMENTAL CINEMATIC CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Because a romance is character-driven, it is absolutely essential that you totally understand your Hero and Heroine through in-depth character profiling before you write the script. Cinematic characters make the events happen. The events do not happen then the character is forced to react. To control your story from the get-go, you have to understand character history, influences, motivations. Many novelists like learning about their characters as they set them in motion. The length of the medium gives them that luxury. Screenplays demand succinct depiction of character. To do that, you must figure out character beforehand. Period, end of the discussion of the need for Character Profiling.

Here is a
36-Step Character Profile.
There are many kinds of profiles out there that others may like better, but this contains the essential information for you to understand your character. It is divided into three main sections.

36-POINT CHARACTER CHART

General

1. Name:

2. Age:

3. Height & Weight:

4. Hair:

5. Eyes:

6. Scars/Handicaps:

7. Birthdate & Zodiac:

8. Birthplace:

9. Parents & Childhood:

10. Education:

11. Work Experience:

12. Home & its Physical Atmosphere:

Personal

13. Best Friend:

14. Men/Women Friends:

15. Enemies & Why:

16. Strongest/Weakest Characteristics:

17. Greatest Fear:

18. Sees self as...

19. Is seen by others as...

20. Sense of humor about...

21. Basic Nature:

22. Ambitions:

23. Philosophy of Life:

24. Hobbies: