I didn’t do a post for Valentine’s Day (book deadline!) but here’s one for you romance writers, for Leap Day! And this is not just for romance writers. Every writer in every genre should be familiar with the MAGICAL DAY story.
A few weeks ago I posted about Groundhog Day, which is one of the best examples I know of a MAGICAL DAY story pattern: The idea that there is a day, or hour, or place, that will lead magically to true love and/or marriage.
The pitch perfect and highly bingeable new romance series One Day, adapted from the book by David Nicholls, is just the latest example of the popularity and marketability of this high concept trope. (NO SPOILERS for One Day, please - I just started it, book and show, and do not want to know!)
The Magical Day, or Magical Holiday trope is one of the most popular story patterns of all time—and not just for romance! I’ve used Easter (The Price) Thanksgiving (The Harrowing) and full moon nights (the entire Huntress Moon series) in my books.
These categories are not only useful for plotting and writing your book or script; I think that done well, they add an extra mystical resonance to the story.
In One Day, it’s St. Swithin’s Day- (July 15, the pagan day that predicts the next 40 days of weather) — which sets up the star-crossed lovers theme and the quirkiness of this achingly romantic story (with a clear nod to Groundhog Day, another anti-romance romance!).
Leap Year, on the other hand, is not a great movie. At all. Although there is a pretty nice Midpoint kiss, and it gets points for being shot in Ireland, with Irishmen. I would five million times rather binge One Day. So why am I not analyzing One Day instead?
Well, as much as I could binge it, I actually can’t, because writing. And as I am always saying— it is far, far easier and faster for writers to learn story structure from movies than from TV shows.
Leap Year hits so many typical romance points that it’s kind of a Cliff’s Notes version of a romantic comedy, and it also combines several story patterns (the KIND of story) that are useful for our love story vocabulary. And who doesn’t have a love story in their story?
In Leap Year we have a typical Hallmark/Lifetime pairing of an uptight, overcontrolling city woman thrown together with a rugged, rustic man in a fantasy vacation setting. But as mediocre as it is, Leap Year is still miles above the typical Hallmark/Lifetime offering in quality, a much better teaching movie for you than those more overprocessed versions. As well as being a magical day story, it’s also a Road Trip story and a Forced Pairing (what I think of as a Couple Handcuffed Together) story.
It’s also, I hope, a good reminder that it takes more than hitting all the beats to create a great story. But since it actually hits most of those elements, it’s useful to look at.
Getting familiar with tropes is a vital part of your writing education and also incredibly handy for marketing— as many readers are familiar with these tropes and will seek out their favorites by searching social media hashtags and Amazon categories.
So yes, binge your heart out on One Day, but use the hell out of Leap Year to improve your craft!
Let’s look at Act I.
Read more on Story Patterns:
Working with Story Structure Patterns: What KIND of Story is It?
Another magical day movie: The Holiday
Stealing Hollywood Chapter 4 and throughout, especially the Story Breakdowns
Writing Love Chapter 4 and throughout, especially the Story Breakdowns
Leap Year
Written by Simon Beaufoy, Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan
Directed by Anand Tucker, starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode
2010
Running time 100 minutes
ACT I
SEQUENCE ONE
OPENING IMAGE: A shot of heroine Anna’s feet in stilt heels (which thankfully the pandemic has thrown out of fashion. Not that I don’t love heels, but for work? I don’t think so!) These $600 shoes are clicking over pavement and fallen leaves. Not the most original of opening images, but it is setting up the central story action of a journey and foreshadowing that Anna will be doing a lot of walking in those highly impractical heels.
Under the credits there is a montage showing that perfectionist Anna micromanages everything, from polishing the bar while she waits for a drink, to getting a dress tailored and forcing the tailor to take the dress up and down an eighth of an inch. Her first line is “I have everything under control.” (HERO/INE’S PROBLEM and SET UP of CHARACTER ARC).
We then see Anna and her boyfriend Jeremy being interviewed by the board of a luxury Boston apartment building that they’ve both always wanted to live in. We learn he’s a cardiologist (some painfully overt symbolism, there) and that she stages apartments for realtors (“staging” indicates superficiality of her life: making pretend homes when what she truly desires is a real one.) When they walk out of the building they’re both talking on their Blackberries. Not too difficult to figure out where there’s room for growth, here. (Setting up HEROINE’S CHARACTER ARC, and all of this is showing the heroine in her ORDINARY WORLD - the urban and arguably uptight world of Boston. Boston of course has a large Irish population…)
Obviously this is one of those stories in which it’s clear the initial couple is not meant for each other. (And how Hollywood loves these “Executive woman forced to fend for herself without her Smartphone” stories … )
Jeremy drops a hint that he’s planning a surprise for dinner, and then at the tailor’s Anna’s best friend says she saw Jeremy coming out of a famous jewelry store with a “little red bag.” We see Anna really wants to be engaged.
OUTER DESIRE: Anna wants to marry Jeremy.
Anna meets her Irish father in a bar, and he’s thrilled that she’s going to be married. When he hears Jeremy is going to Dublin the next day for a cardiology convention he tells Anna she could always join him there and propose to him on Leap Day, just like her grandmother did with her grandfather back in the auld country. This is a story element I call THE FAMILY LEGEND; it’s usually a love story, passed down by the generations. The scene also introduces the concept of the MAGICAL DAY, which is also a TICKING CLOCK that will run throughout the movie. In Ireland, if a woman proposes to a man on Leap Day, the man has to accept.
This is Anna’s CALL TO ADVENTURE (the INCITING INCIDENT), although it takes her a few beats to act on it.
Anna goes to her elegant dinner with Jeremy and he very unromantically hands her a jewelry box – with earrings inside, rather than the engagement ring she was expecting. Anna is clearly devastated but pretends to be happy. Jeremy shows her a photo of a damaged heart on his cell phone (very overt symbolism) and tells her he has to leave to assist in surgery then will go straight to the airport. (I’ll call this the COULD IT BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS THAT HE’S NO GOOD FOR YOU? scene.)
Alone in bed at home, Anna hears her father’s words about Leap Day in her head, then gets up and Googles it. It really is a tradition in Ireland. She starts packing a suitcase. (9:54 minutes)
So we already know the HEROINE’S OUTER DESIRE – she wants to marry Jeremy – and her PLAN: She’s going to go to Dublin and propose to him on Leap Day when he has to say yes.
INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD: we cut to Anna on the plane. Anna tells the priest in the seat beside her the plan to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day. The priest looks skeptical (and he should know, right?). The plane hits a storm and extreme turbulence and is forced to land in Wales. (This is a very common trope in romantic comedy: the Fates seem to intervene in the form of the weather, forcing the hero/ine onto a path she hadn’t planned for. Another example is New in Town; a much better example is Groundhog Day. ) (11:40 minutes)
The Cardiff airport is jammed and there are no flights out that day. Anna next tries the ferry; it’s also shut down because of the storm, so she hires a fishing boat. The water is so rough they’re forced to land in Dingle (the opposite side of Ireland from Dublin). Clearly the Fates are not in favor of this match, but that’s not about to stop Anna. (Let’s face it – how often do we get all the signs that we’re in the wrong relationship and just barrel right on?)
Anna walks from the beach into the village with her Vuitton suitcase and teetering heels. (Can I just say that I personally don’t ever need to see that scene/shot again in my entire life? Enough already. After Romancing the Stone, if you’re not going to undercut this cliché with something as fun as Jack chopping Joan Wilder’s heels off with a machete, just forget it.)
I’d say that beautiful shot of Ireland is the climax of a rolling INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD series of scenes.
14:07 minutes
SEQUENCE TWO
Anna makes it into the village at sunset, and heads for the pub. (The Tavern of course is the traditional jumping-off point for a Journey/Road Trip story; see Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter #1, Romancing the Stone, etc.)
There are all older Irish men in the pub, except for the ruggedly handsome bartender, Declan. INTRODUCTION TO HERO/ANTAGONIST. Anna learns there hasn’t been a taxi or train from Dingle to Dublin for 20 years or more. She asks the bartender about a taxi; he gives her a number, which she calls from the payphone, only to realize she’s talking to him on another phone – he’s also the taxi driver. However, he says he loathes Dublin (“City of wastrels and cheats” - hints at backstory) and wouldn’t drive her there for 500 Euro. (HATE AT FIRST SIGHT.) She decides to stay in town and deal with her situation in the morning. It turns out Declan owns the pub, which is also the only hotel in town. (KEEP THE HERO AND HEROINE IN CLOSE PROXIMITY.)
So, yes, from here on we have a fairly equal heroine and hero story, but it’s not quite a Dual POV story. It’s Anna’s POV, and technically Anna is the protagonist and Declan is the antagonist; the lover is usually the antagonist, or at least a main antagonist, in a love story. Remember, Anna wants to marry Jeremy, and Declan does nothing but stand in her way!
In the tiny room upstairs, Anna moves the bed to plug her phone in, destroying the room in the process and then shorting out the electricity in the hotel and subsequently the whole village. Declan comes up (GET THE HERO INTO THE HEROINE’S BEDROOM) and they yell at each other. He snatches away a personal photo she’s found of him with a beautiful blond woman and another man. (Hint of his GHOST – doesn’t take a genius to guess what happened there.) (21 min.)
It’s a lovely dawn in the village. Anna calls Jeremy to tell him she’s in Ireland, and he’s excited that she came. Anna sees Declan haggling with a man outside and overhears that he needs 1000 Euros to save his pub from foreclosure. (So driving Anna to Dublin becomes THE OFFER HE CAN’T REFUSE.)
Declan comes into Anna’s room while she’s dressing (GET THE HERO AND/OR HEROINE NAKED) and offers to drive her to Dublin for 500 Euros, plus 100 for the room and damages. Anna agrees, if only to get him out of her room.
The two pile into Declan’s microscopic car (the too-small car seems to be a staple of romantic comedy) – after Declan mocks the fact that Anna’s boyfriend gave her a suitcase. (Love interest tells THE AWFUL TRUTH.) They’re on the road at 25 min. into the movie.
Anna tells Declan she’s going to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day and Declan says it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard – clearly if the bf had wanted to marry her he’d already have asked. (Love interest tells THE AWFUL TRUTH.) Enraged, Anna throws Declan’s food and cassette tape out the window. Declan stops the car to retrieve the tape and they fight in the road; Anna accuses Declan of being a bitter, lonely cynic (Heroine tells THE AWFUL TRUTH).
While they’ve been fighting, a herd of cows has blocked the car. Anna successfully moves them but then leans on the car to try to scrape cow dung off her heels and the car rolls down the hill and lands in a lake (comedy technique of a win to set up a loss.)
ACT I CLIMAX (30:12)
(In a Road Trip story, especially in a comedy, we often see the characters having to change vehicles or modes of transportation frequently.)
Full story breakdown of Leap Year in Writing Love
Let’s hear it! Are you watching/reading One Day? Did you see the Anne Hathaway film version? What do you think of Leap Year?
Alex
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