Experts say…

It’s always a joy to discover after I’ve done something that people who know what they’re talking about say it's exactly what I should do.

And so it was with much delight that, while researching a presentation for my screenwriting group, I came upon writing guru Michael Hauge’s “Essential Elements of Romantic Comedy.”

They are:

•The heroine must be involved in some sexual or romantic pursuit, trying desperately try to win (or win back) the love of another character.

• The heroine must pursue an additional desire. Pursuing two goals adds originality and accelerates the pace, and when the desires come into opposition, the conflict increases.

• The characters never think their situation is humorous. Motivations grow out of pain and loss; humor arises from the heroine’s overreaction to her situation—including devising fantastic plots, telling enormous lies and adopting false identities.

• Romantic comedies are sexy.

• Romantic comedies have happy endings.

• Romantic comedies usually involve deception, which increases conflict and humor while forcing the heroine to confront her inner conflicts.

All of these are present in Fast Lane. (Remember, I have thumbs-up proof from actual females attesting to that bullet point about Fast Lane being sexy.)

Hauge devised his list for screenwriters, but the screenplay and novel paradigms are rapidly merging. Novelist Lani Diane Rich even teaches an online course that essentially applies screenwriting principles to novels—and uses movies as examples to augment her lessons.

I consider Hauge’s list an imprimatur for Fast Lane from an impressive source. Feels good to me…and I hope, ManWARriors, it’ll help you in your writing pursuits as well.

Spotlight on women’s lit

A (female) friend of mine sent me a link to an interview at Woman’s Fiction Writers.com of a man whose upcoming book has been classified as “women’s fiction,” and I liked what he had to say.

The man is Keith Cronin, a rock drummer whose book, Me Again, is due out in September. I was pleased because, like me, he says he “consciously set out to write a book that women would want to read,” appreciates Jennifer Crusie's writing style and sense of humor, and has kind of a cynical streak.

That streak is represented by his definition of women’s fiction as “fiction that men won’t read.”

Saying he feared that definition was truer than he’d like to admit, he added that women’s fiction should involve a central character who’s “responsible for solving her own problems” and “storytelling that takes the issues women care about seriously.”

Neither of these should be controversial. I mean, are there really still people who think women—that is to say, adult female human beings—are not capable of solving their own problems? Are there still people who think “things women take seriously” are not things men also take seriously?

I suppose there are. Don’t ask me why. Listen to any contemporary or classic hard-rock radio station for one hour and tell me men don’t care about love and relationships.

Or women.

Who knows? Maybe making lots of noise with drums and guitars and looking tough makes it more acceptable in the minds of some men to reveal glimpses of their innermost feelings without running the risk of looking too sensitive. You know…like sissies.

Cronin also pointed out that the Romance Writers of America’s definition of women’s fiction refers to stories about women “on the brink of life change and personal growth” and transformation.

That’s interesting to me because it’s what screenwriting gurus drum into you. A script can be about two people falling in love or about a cop chasing a serial killer, but the main character must change, grow and transform.

I got that down while writing twenty screenplays, including seven with female protagonists. And I pride myself on never having written an important female character who was stupid or weak. Not in any screenplay, or in Fast Lane.

And if only women end up reading Fast Lane, that’s fine by me. I’m assuming my readers will be smart, whatever gender they may be

Short-shorts vs. evening gowns…sort of

A little while ago the folks at TVSquad.com came up with a list of “TV’s Greatest Women,” by which they meant not real women like Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey who actually accomplished something in life, but characters.

Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show was No. 1 out of 75, which is cool, and Lucy Ricardo from I Love Lucy was No. 3, which seems a lot less cool. Elaine Benes, one of Seinfeld’s self-absorbed retinue, was No. 7, one ahead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s selfless avenger. Marge Simpson was 24th, Miss Piggy 26th.

Shirley from Lavern & Shirley was 42nd, while two the most-talked-about female TV characters of all time, Ginger Grant and Mary Ann Summers of Gilligan’s Island were…conspicuously missing.

You gotta be kidding me.

Yeah, Gilligan’s Island was stupid. But stupid in a great sort of way.

The question on everyone’s mind since 1964 has been, “Ginger or Mary Ann?” As in, which one would you rather…you know? Okay, so maybe that particular question has not been on the mind of everyone who isn’t male. But my question is, has anyone ever thought of asking females?

Not exactly the same question. More like, “Who would you rather..you know…be?”

This question never occurred to me until today, when Mary Jo said it. Marriage can be great that way: Opens the mind.

What Mary Jo actually said was, “Who wants to be Mary Ann, cooking and sewing and being nice all the time? Maybe I’d like to be Ginger. At least every now and then.”

My subsequent hasty and far-from-exhaustive search of the Internet found a gajillion sites devoted to asking men whom they’d prefer as a sex partner—as though, one time, the answer would come up Ginger.

No, really—Mary Ann is always the answer. Always.

I found just one place where what women thought was addressed, though rather obliquely. Here’s what women had to say on a forum at a site called City-Data.com:

When I was a little girl, I used to dress up in my mom's full length slip and high heels and pretend I was Ginger. I thought she was so pretty.

Mary Ann totally had more sex appeal.

Mary Ann.....simply put she isn't as high maintenance.

Ginger might have been the sex symbol but Mary Ann was prettier.

Mary Ann was very pretty, in a more natural way. Ginger looked more "store bought.”

BTW...why are Mary Ann and Ginger wearing pumps with their bikinis?

Good question, that last one. How many men are going to think of that? “Wait—they’re wearing shoes?”

Surprisingly, the women in this chat seem to be on board with men in general, voting 4 to 1 in favor of the farm girl from Kansas—but not necessarily because she’s “hotter.”

So, whattaya think, ManWARiors? Let me know who you’d rather be—glamorous, but high-maintenance Ginger or sexy-sweet Mary Ann. And why.

Blueprint for a romance

Printed out Fast Lane today, which is kind of weird because it may be the only time it ever sees paper. Love the promise of e-publishing: Printing is such a pain in the butt.

I printed the manuscript so I can read it at a writing retreat. A retreat that will, if I want it to, offer plenty of time to write in an environment unpolluted with distractions. Not such a good idea, maybe, since I thrive when the writing environment is absolutely lousy with distractions—the byproduct of having worked as a reporter in newsrooms rich in opportunities for goofing off and shooting the shit with other reporters.

Other writers, in other words. Just the kind of people who will be at the retreat.

Of course, there were always distractions as I pounded away at the first draft of Fast Lane. Not the least of which were the pop-up ads for lady's underthings that started showing up after I did my most-read ManWAR post, “No panties, my ass.” The computer is a veritable distraction machine.

At any rate, as much as I love writing on a computer instead of a typewriter—and yes, I had to clack away on dull, grainy newsprint in college—I have to say that seeing my words on paper puts everything into a whole new light. All kinds of things I needed to change jumped off the printed pages of my screenplay The Sky Below, making it that much easier to kill them all with a trusty, and very sharp, No. 2 pencil.

I’ve forwarded a PDF of Sky to someone who promised to look at it, and so now I cross my fingers on that one and turn my attention back to Fast Lane.

I already know lots of stuff I’m going to change, especially at the beginning, before the characters were wholly formed and weren’t talking to me as loudly as I need them to. Or, should I say, before I was listening to them as closely as I need me to.

I’m not ashamed to admit that over time I fell in love with my heroine, Lara Dixon. Don’t worry, that’s happened to me before. Dani Stahl. Anna Petrovic. Leti Washington-Gonsalves. Mary Jo knows about them all—and doesn’t seem to mind. Too much.

What’s weirder, though, is that I’ll probably be surprised at some of the things I wrote. I’ll no doubt wonder from time to time what the hell I was thinking. And I’ll most certainly roll my eyes when I happen upon vestiges of Fast Lane’s initial incarnation as an “erotic” book. I still may try to write one of those again some day, but for now, I’m very pleased about what my romance novel has evolved into.

And very eager to see what it will become. In whatever medium.

A whole latte love

“Wine, women and song,” the saying goes. But some research suggests a guy who wants to make a woman sing should eschew the shiraz and treat her to a jigger of Joe.

“Caffeine may put females in the mood.” So begins an article on WebMD about a Southwestern University study in which females who consumed a shot of cappuccino not only got muy grande romantic, but also were “quicker than uncaffeinated females” to demand seconds.

I did say we’re talking about rats, right? That could be important.

In a study called Coffee, Tea, and Me. researchers gave female rats who were caffeine virgins a dose of jitter juice, then observed how they behaved after hooking up.

In the study, the article says, “the caffeinated females didn't just skitter around their cages aimlessly. Instead, they specifically sought a male sex partner.”

The obvious question is whether this means ground Arabica beans are the secret ingredient that makes Love Potion No. 9 work so much better than its eight forgotten predecessors.

Maybe not.

First, WebMD stays this business of “revisiting” the male is “a normal behavior for female rats.” Being hopped up apparently made the randy rodents scurry back faster and be a little more insistent about having their needs met.

Second, the study observed only rats who were tripping on the Big C for the first time, while their human counterparts are likely to have experienced daily doses in coffee, tea and soft drinks. On the other hand, if rats that regularly used caffeine behaved the same as those in the study, Guarraci said she’d be “more confident in saying that it would be something useful for women to consider."

For women to consider? There must be a reason God put a Starbucks on every corner. Asking a gal out to coffee couldn’t be cheap—but have you checked the price of pinot lately?

The flip side of romance

This is gonna sound crazy, but I watched Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf the other night for the first time since high school, and I’m thinking it’s probably one of the most romantic pieces of fiction ever.

That’s right: More romantic than Romeo and Juliet. After all, the histrionic Tweenagers of Verona end up dead, so there’s not a whole lot of “happily ever after” going on there. In Virginia Woolf, this couple who love to show their love by declaring—loudly—their undying hatred for each other live to scream another day.

For anyone who’s never withstood the shrill voyeuristic torture of this movie classic, here’s a fairly biased and wise-assed summary:

Liz Taylor and Richard Burton are unable to have children, so they belittle and antagonize each other all the time just for sport. They come home tanked after a party one night, only to have George Segal and Sandy Dennis come over to participate in the sick, sad games while they all pour enough booze down their gullets to kill a couple of horses.

In the end, Dick says his and Liz's son who never existed has died, which sends Liz into paroxysms of overacting that make George say “I think I understand” about fifty-seven times.

I’m glad somebody gets it. I’m pretty sure I don’t. Even after reading it for a college German class as Ver Hat Angst vor Virginia Woolf and finding out from the Cliff’s Notes of our day, Wikipedia, that the whole shebang is supposed to a metaphorical to-do about “living in illusion.”

I always thought the movie, which was based on an immensely popular and universally acclaimed play by Edward Albee, was overheated claptrap about how a million little jabs in the boxing match of the sexes will knock a romance to its knees.

I don’t know. I don’t seem to be living that life.

Or writing that book.

One thing you gotta like about romance novels (and most romantic plays and movies) is that while there’s plenty of fun and games and sturm und drang, they ultimately do have happy endings. That added greatly to the joy of getting to the end of Fast Lane. Wow! After all that, unlike poor Romeo and Juliet, they have their whole life ahead of them—and unlike Dick and Liz, that’s a good thing.

But, hey, if two people find themselves happiest when they’re most miserable, we should be glad the central characters of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf hooked up and left the rest of us alone.

Finding your perfect match. How much more romantic can it get?