For nearly a century, audiences have been watching characters meet and fall in love, make mistakes, overcome them, and through all this, make us laugh. The best rom-coms are timeless, full of insight into people and the world around them, all told through a comedy that’s also a love story.
Created by experienced screenwriter and UBC instructor Zac Hug, these two courses will help you tell your own romantic comedy story. Through insightful lectures, assignments, and interviews with industry experts, you’ll learn how to create the outline, and then the script, for the rom-com that you want to write.
Course Format: Online, asynchronous, non-credit.
Course Level: Open to anyone, suitable for writers new to screenplays and for experienced writers looking to create their first rom-com.
Course Length Five weeks each. 4-6 hours per week.
Cost: $379 CDN ($270 USD approx) each.
Course 1: The Outline
Every script starts with an outline.
In these five modules, we’ll discover the ins and outs of crafting a story that will eventually become your romantic comedy script. We’ll look at your main character and your love interest, as well as the attraction and the conflict between them. After discussing genre, setting, and the secondary characters that will help fill out the world around your main story, we’ll dive into how we can use a three-act or nine-act structure to figure out where to strengthen your stories. We’ll also watch some great movies.
Rom-Com Outline – Course Syllabus (PDF)
Course 2: The Script
Every outline wants to become a script.
In these five modules, you’ll learn how to move from the outline to the script. Or, as we describe it, how to write the outline again, only this time in script form. We’ll discuss topics that include action writing and how a script is much more a visual story than a dialogue story. We’ll show you how to make your characters stand out from not just each other but from other rom-com stock characters, and we’ll do a deep dive into dialogue and rewriting. And, of course, we’ll watch some classic rom-coms.
Rom-Com Script – Course Syllabus (PDF)
About the Instructor
Zac Hug is a television writer, playwright and essayist with a BFA in Theatre from NYU, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. He became a TV writer in 2013, joining the staff of Drop Dead Diva (Lifetime) and later Shadowhunters (Freeform). Zac has written fifteen (and counting!) Movies of the Week for Hallmark, including Road to Christmas, Matching Hearts, The Ghosts of Christmas Always and the Sister Swap and Christmas in Evergreen series. His plays have been produced by the New York Fringe Festival and the Williamstown Theatre Festival Workshop. Zac teaches television writing at UCLA Extension, DePaul University, and the University of British Columbia. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband Dan and an old man dog named Pickles.