Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Rom Com Redux

This is the final episode of MaryAn's "Rom Com, This is Your Life". So, no more books, movies, and articles on Rom Coms for awhile and although I appreciate the screenwriting related emails, please stop asking me to send you $200 to find me an agent, write my query letters, collaborate with me, or enlarge my penis. Seriously. I misplaced my penis in the womb and moms being what they are, mine got rid of all my stuff and changed the wallpaper as soon as I moved out.

While all this research has not made me a Rom Com aficionado, I do think I have a better understanding now of what makes them work or not work and endure or not endure. To sum up what I've learned --

Wait. This is bugging me. Really, people, do I LOOK like I have a penis?

Okay, summing up what I've learned about Rom Coms that endure:

* Story first. Romance second - Ted Elliott
* Same, but different - Billy Mernit
* Play to the majority - Terry Rossio
* Make it about something - Billy Mernit

You know, I wouldn't pay you $200 to enlarge my penis if I had one. Nor will I pay you to do for me what you apparently CANNOT do for yourself - become a writer. I AM a writer and waxing Morgan Freeman's car does not qualify you to evaluate my screenplays OR my penis!

Where was I? Oh yes. Now that I have all this knowledge and even though my demanding new job and not so demanding old one are hogging up all my writing and blogging time, I can't resist taking a crack at Romantic Comedy. So, I'm looking at writing a feature out of a ten page exercise I wrote well over a year ago.

If you belong to The Writer's Building, you can take a look at the short in the files section of The Assignment Workshop under Assignment #7 called Soap on a Rope. Yes, I know it isn't great, but it's not terrible either especially if you understand that the scope of the assignment was to demonstrate in ten pages or fewer, a character's situation that epitomized "take this job and shove it".

So with my loose grip of Rom Com principles, which is better than my former no-grip-at-all, maybe I'll find my romantic muse -- right after I spend $200 on something I can REALLY use to help my career like Final Draft 7.0 and a bottle of tequila.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just spent an antire month of 12 hour days writing and writing and re-writing, so I don't have a penis either... I almost forgot about it, except yesterday was my 8th anniversary so I was reminded... FD7 is why I am entering FD's contest next month, I could use a free upgrade too

MaryAn Batchellor said...

Dr. Hugo says about his method, "see not much painful for 48 hours". Yeah, I'm thinking he's not gonna get too many takers.

Anonymous said...

hey, The Screenwriting Life has a logline contest for a free FD7 copy, ends Tues so hop on over Mary An

MaryAn Batchellor said...

Okie doke. I'll do that. Thanks.