June 19, 2004
ROMCOM Update!
Wow, a month into the summer already! Well, here's what I've been up to:
Romantic Comedy Screenplay (aka, the ROMCOM)
I've wanted to write something like this for years, mainly because I've wanted to make a romantic comedy film for about as long. Of course, I came into it with a lot of ideas, but they were alll more like vague feelings I wanted to convey, rather than concrete plot points.
So I bought a notebook and began writing--in a lot of ways, just spewing things out onto the page. After a month of writing in this notebook, I've written almost 30 pages of notes (front & back). I also bought a book, entitiled Writing the Romantic Comedy by Billy Mernit--great book!
After a month of writing, pondering, and an all night stint at several of LA's finest diners, I think I may have finally hit upon a theme: preparing your heart for the love of your life. Interestingly enough, this phrase originated in a Christian sermon on dating that I heard almost six months ago, and I guess it kind of stuck with me, because it seems to have universal appeal. When two people truly love each other, they must break out of their protective shells and open their hearts to one another (in a lot of ways, this breaking out may be the very prerequisite for dating in general). This may sound really broad, but I'm excited about this discovery, because I think it has the potential to unite several subthemes that I keep coming across, including opening up, quarterlife crises, shedding immature & incomplete views of romance, etc.
Perhaps now that my theme is beginning to emerge (could still change somewhat though), maybe I can actually start figuring out the actual story!
So it's not interactive, you say? Well it's been said several times within the Division that we need more content, and I gotta say, this whole project is giving me some great experience in theme and character development (which the aforementioned book goes over beautifully--definitely recommend it), and theme and character development are two things that are currently lacking (to a large extent) from our field.