Houston writer Katherine Center knows plenty about the romantic comedy genre. She’s built a career around it, having penned numerous novels in the genre, including some bestsellers and a couple that have been turned into movies, like Happiness for Beginners and The Lost Husband.
Her latest novel tunnels into the world she knows best — it’s a romantic comedy about…people writing a romantic comedy.
The Rom-Commers tells the story of Emma, an aspiring writer, trying to help Charlie, an accomplished screenwriter of everything but romantic comedies, fix the poor attempt he’s made at crafting a romantic comedy script.
In an interview with Houston Matters producer Michael Hagerty, Center tells him more about the story, about what makes a romantic comedy work, how the genre has changed over the years, and how she tries to propel it forward in her books.
Michael Hagerty/Houston Public Media
Center says what draws her to focus on stories in this genre is simple.
“They are built on a very specific kind of anticipation,” Center said. “…that’s kind of what keeps us all turning the pages.”
But, while there is anticipation in most stories, plenty of them are built on a more negative anticipation.
“More of a sense of dread,” she said. “You’re piecing the clues together that the writer has left for you, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh, that man’s going to go to jail.’ Right? Or ‘Ugh, that kid’s going to get arrested.’”
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Romantic comedies, however, are centered around what Center calls a “positively valanced anticipation.”
“Rom-coms don’t give you things to dread in that same way,” she said. “They give you things to look forward to.”
And a part of that is the guaranteed happy ending. That’s a promise of the genre. But that happy ending is there for a very specific reason.
“And it is to enable the writer to create a very particular kind of emotional bliss that you can only get from having something that matters to look forward to,” she said.
In the case of a romantic comedy, that thing to look forward to is, of course, two people getting together. The question is not if, but how.
“So, the question is never, with a romantic comedy, ‘Will they or won’t they?’ Because they will. They definitely will. They absolutely will,” Center said.
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She adds there’s another word to describe that anticipation: hope. And, with all the stresses of our modern lives and turmoil in the world, sometimes you need to feel bliss, something Center believes the romantic comedy genre — whether in the form of a book, a movie, or a TV show — can deliver better than just about anything.
“You get this sort of extended, dance remix version of experiencing hope in real time — looking forward to something good — and I love that,” she said.
Of course, there still needs to be some conflict to propel the story along.
“You can’t just have happy people wandering around eating ice cream in a story,” she said. “You need there to be struggles.”
But she thinks a lot about carefully balancing the ratio of that conflict with the amount of positive anticipation.
Barbara Nitke/NETFLIX
For instance, her novel Happiness for Beginners, which was recently turned into a movie on Netflix, was about a woman on a long hike. An early online review by a reader complained that there was too much kissing and not enough hiking. Center still thinks about that to this day, careful to balance the various elements of her stories.
“I want there to be conflict, but I don’t want the conflict to be the main emotional experience of the story,” she said. “I want the conflict to be there to propel the good stuff forward and to intensify the good stuff and to make the fun more fun.”
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While Center has loads of experience with the genre, in The Rom-Commers, one of the main characters is an accomplished screenwriter who does not. Charlie has written nearly every other kind of movie but has done a bad job at crafting a script for a romantic comedy. That’s where Emma comes in. Her dreams of writing were derailed by a family tragedy, but she gets a chance to work with Charlie to try and fix his script.
Cue some conflict and some of that positively valanced anticipation.
