How To Write A Romcom
How to Write a Romcom
Writing a romcom is like baking cupcakes—mix up a bunch of ideas, add heat (sexual tension please!), and cook for as long as it takes you to write a book. When done, collapse in exhaustion and self-doubt. Share with your friends and family (depending on how many sex scenes you added and whether or not you actually wrote your mother into the book). In both cases, have a glass of wine and do the dishes tomorrow.
Like baking, perfection is not required. You can perform substitutions (a graphic designer from Ohio can be substituted for a duchess for example).
Use whatever ingredients you have on hand. You might not borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbors, but feel free to take notes on their lives, as well as your own. This is where you can make use of all of your questionable decisions, like when you locked yourself out of your car on purpose so that you could convince a hot guy to help you out, but instead a cranky (but surprisingly sexy) lumberjack showed up and then he locked himself out of his truck too and you both had to walk. (Me yesterday.) Like Nora Ephron, the patron saint of romcoms, said, “It’s all copy.”
Here is my recipe for a Basic Romcom.
Ingredients:
Heroine, sassy but competent if you have one on hand, royal title optional
Hero, needs good eyebrow game, alpha or beta is fine
A meet cute, feel free to use my lumberjack rescue above
Conflict, don’t skimp
Break-up, a necessary evil
Grand Gesture, no boombox required
Happily ever after, not overly saccharine
1. The heroine: she needs to be BFF quality. That means you have to write someone who your readers want to hang out with: fun, competent, goal-driven, open-hearted, the kind of woman you want to meet for cocktails. But make sure she’s not perfect or you won’t have a story. She should believe a lie about the world caused by some past trauma. Whatever she wants at the beginning of the story is the thing that she thinks will make it all better. Finally, she is probably late with coffee on her shirt. I also imagine her covered in cat hair.
2. The hero: he’s confident and smart. Guaranteed fans if he has a dry wit and strong forearms. Like the heroine, he has suffered a past trauma and believes a lie about the world. Also, like the heroine, he wants something that probably won’t solve his problems. Bonus points if the things they want directly conflict! Ex: He wants to open a cigar shop and she wants to ban all smoking. Oh, both of them need best friends.
3. Meet cute: Throw them together, by the end of chapter two if you can. Make it funny and memorable. Avoid bar scenes. Fresh ingredients only!
4. Conflict: As soon as your lovers get together, it is the end of the book. Game over. If you don’t add enough conflict in the beginning, you will spend the whole book coming up with reasons why they can’t be together. If their initial goals directly conflict, you will be in good shape.
5. Having trouble coming up with conflict? Throw some tropes in the batter. Accidental pregnancy, fake relationship, road trip, mistaken identity. Tropes are conflict and comedy gold mines. Use them liberally.
6. Break-up: If they don’t break up, then your reader can’t see them come back together and that is what people read for: the emotional journey. The break-up usually happens when the characters get what they wanted in the beginning. When they get what they want, they find out it wasn’t what they needed. Spoiler alert: they probably needed love.
7. Grand gesture: the most effective grand gesture is when your hero or heroine gives up what they thought they wanted in order to show love for the other. It’s all about sacrifice. From a narrative perspective, make the worse actor make the big gesture. Most of your readers will be women, though, so it’s always good to make the men grovel a bit.
8. Happily ever after: it isn’t a romcom, it there isn’t a happily ever after.
9. Add sprinkles if that’s your thing.
Don’t forget, you’re writing a romcom, not a romance. Check excess angst at the door and make jokes. Stay away from all the canned jokes that we’ve read a gazillion times. A good joke comes from a place of honesty, sometimes pain. Don’t shy away from real issues, but use a light touch. For instance, the romcom I wrote about survivalists with a fun-sized nuclear reactor—that didn’t get published. Use common sense about what belongs on the shelf with other romcoms. Nuclear reactors = no. Cheating = yes. Terrorism = no. Need a plus one for wedding = yes.
All of these ingredients are essential, but the most important ingredient is your voice. If you have a little talent and are willing to put in the work (getting your butt in the seat is more important than talent), you can write a book. What makes it special, is your voice. The unique way that you see the world, the circuitous and inefficient ways your mind goes from point A to point B, your accumulated life experiences, your humor—that’s what’s going to make people want to read your book. Give thanks to your crazy family for baking the crazy in and don’t try to fit the mold or write like someone else.
Best of luck and happy writing!
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Sam Tschida is a writer of romcoms. Siri, Who Am I? is coming out in January of 2021 with Quirk Books. She’s lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with a gang of unruly children and one handsome man. When she’s not taking care of kids or writing, she runs SMUT University, an online school of writing and shenanigans she founded for lonely writers around the world.
SIRI, WHO AM I?
A Millennial with amnesia uses her Instagram account to piece together her identity in this hilarious and whip-smart comedy about the ups and downs of influencer culture.
Mia might look like a Millennial but she was born yesterday. Emerging from a coma with short-term amnesia after an accident, Mia can’t remember her own name until the Siri assistant on her iPhone provides it.
Based on her cool hairstyle (undercut with glamorous waves), dress (Prada), and signature lipstick (Chanel), she senses she’s wealthy, but the only way to know for sure is to retrace her steps once she leaves the hospital. Using Instagram and Uber, she arrives at the pink duplex she calls home in her posts but finds Max, a cute, off-duty postdoc supplementing his income with a house-sitting gig.
He tells her the house belongs to JP, a billionaire with a chocolate empire. A few texts later, JP confirms her wildest dreams: they’re in love, Mia is living the good life, and he’ll be back that weekend.
But as Mia and Max work backward through her Instagram and across Los Angeles to learn more about her, they discover an ugly truth behind her perfect Instagram feed, and evidence that her head wound was no accident. Did Mia have it coming? And if so, is it too late for her to rewrite her story?
Sam’s social media links:
Twitter: @therealsamtschida
Insta: @realsamtschida
Category: How To and Tips
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