How to Read Romantic Comedies & Love Stories
A valuable way to read romantic comedies and love stories is by pinpointing the desire in the story. Whatever a character wants, that is what you want too as a reader and thinker. If the author wants you to commune with and feel for the heroine, the writer will endow her with likable (or sometimes self-deprecating) traits. Understanding the story's through-line, setting, conflict and the author's approach to meaning unfolds and ripens a story's romance.
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Instructions
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How to Read Romantic Comedies and Love Stories
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Think like a writer. An ideal way to understand any art genre is by trying to compose it yourself. Write an outline of a story you would like to tell. It can be from life or from your imagination. Once you have a sketch of a story idea---either funny or ardently romantic---balance the characters and the plot they are wrapped inside. Tell the thoughts of the main character while also painting the scene around them. You don't have to know where the story is going or how it will end up: watch your characters begin to move and think on their own.
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Dissect the romantic language. It doesn't have to feel like literature class. When you're reading, let the author's vocabulary tell the details of the story. Ask yourself why the author or filmmaker may have picked one adjective to describe a girl's hair or coffee drink over another. Decide whether the language adds to or subtracts from the story.
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Arrange the relationships between the characters in love. Reveal their back stories (what we learn from their thoughts or memories) with razor-sharp logic. When reading a romantic comedy---or a high-drama love story---decide who is involved in the triangle and who has the most at stake if the triangle dissolves. If it's funny, it's a romantic comedy; if it's too devastating to be funny, it's a love story.
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Discover the true love story. Books and movies about love usually have at least a few subplots (a family crisis, a communication mix-up, a reverberating past relationship), but classic love stories place love at the center of the story. Situate the love theme in the narrative. Because writers tend to add a light atmosphere even as misfortune continually befalls a heroine or hero, it's not always easy to recognize the romantic aim. Distinguish between motives that drive a character to love and actual love.
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Pinpoint desire. Locate the power in the story that draws two or more characters together. Whether inner or outer forces threaten to keep the lovers apart, decide what the author or filmmaker wants you to experience through these characters. In a romantic comedy these challenging forces are funny to watch unfold; in love stories, the threatening force is the tension that drives the story's passion and keeps reader's attention.
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Discover the archetypes. Search the text for an oversimplified character or emotion. Charlie Chaplin, for instance, is an archetype of an urban tramp or poor person. In a love story, locate the person (or persons) who establish themselves as models of a certain type of behavior. Question the motives of this character-type. Romantic comedies generally feature young people, usually in their twenties, trying to fit into the world. Crack the archetypes the author knowingly (or unknowingly) planted. Expose the story's gravity or lightness.
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Tips & Warnings
Sign up for a literature class that focuses on romantic comedies and love story writing.
Or, join a book club. Talking about what you read helps unearth new qualities, lessons, and relationships.
Try not to see the movie first when you can read the book. A book promises to be a much more intimate and rewarding intellectual experience, especially when it comes to stories with rich relationships.
