THE LOVE-PROMPTS
From: Dawn Turbot
To: Lindsey Erin Asperth
Subject: āThe Love-Promptsā Viability as a Movie Project
Lindseyā
I hope youāre feeling well. It was so nice to meet you at Jacindaās party over the holidays! You were everything Jacinda said you were on the phone to me: sweet, funny, intelligent, enthusiastic for input from your editorial team. You also can keep up with the boozing that happens at these parties, which is not crucial but is a bonus!
As your point-woman dealing with your book project for Jacinda, I have been tasked to review your materials and begin conversations with you prepping you for meetings with potentially interested Hollywood producers who might want to take on āThe Love-Promptsā as a feature film or Netflix series. EXCITING! We all love the novel and feel like it has great potential. However, Jacinda felt like she wanted to begin talks with you about some concerns we have with the story that might need some reconsideration or tweaking as we go forward. Your publication day for the novel is relatively far off in the future so changes could still be made with the novel in time to preemptively fit in with a vision to be presented to other media outlets. Streamlining is key: why not get it right from the beginning?
One major concern Jacinda had with the story as it exists today is that viewers seeing an adaptation might not get it. It would likely go over their heads or bore them, and that would interfere with the love story at the heart of the story, the romantic payoff which viewers would be looking for. We know from past experience how movie and tv reviewers respond to challenging content and how this can spell doom for a property that otherwise was right on target. So Jacinda wanted me to take you through her concerns and see if something could be editorially salvaged before too much damage could be done.
The main plot is great. A love-lorn newspaper reporter, Dan, has a meet-cute with an actress, Hester, on the sidewalk of an unnamed mid-sized city during the holiday shopping season (a plus in romances) while trying to get answers for his āman on the streetā opinion question. The fact that Danās not very good at it and is burnt out, a lot of the demographic of millennial audiences fed up with their job will relate to (I did!). Maybe we could have more scenes where his boomer boss is being a jerk to him and his co-workers at the paper make fun of him for his crappy luck with the ladies. Give him a cute dog that he talks to in his sad apartment.
Hester, as we find out, is an actress with a difficult relationship with reality. Jacinda was concerned that people would be turned off by the suggestion of mental illness you put in the story (necessary? Canāt she just be slightly manic pixie dream girl instead of seriously deluded a la Tom Hanks in Mazes and Monstersādid you ever see it? Disturbing. We donāt want that. Tone it down.) Flighty lovable space cadet is good.
So Dan gets Hester to, in a whirlwind afternoon, pose for pictures as wildly different people in elaborate impromptu disguises to answer his question without the newspaper editors finding out he cheatedālove it! I see a montage with a pop song on the soundtrack and lots of clothes and laughing and comedy. We will get someone to help you with more snappy dialogue. They wind up clicking and having a ball in the festive atmosphere. Maybe we can highlight that the newspaper would be mad about his ethical breach in doing this but who cares, when love is in the air! Then we get the arrival of Pavel, Hesterās boyfriend. Jacinda wanted me to tell you that making him an out-of-shape middle-aged professor type was a mistake. We want Pavel to be mouth-watering for the average lady viewer! Alexander SkarsgĆ„rd should be your model. Foreign is good, villains are always foreign. Pavel interrupts Dan and Hesterās obvious attraction and fun, and maybe you could add something there where Pavel says more insulting things to Dan which donāt fly over the heads of the audience. Weāre not going for lit majors, just women who have absorbed the barest outlines of Jane Austen. Hester and Pavel go off down the sidewalk, have Hester look back over her shoulder and smile at Dan. And crucially, have her make more body language towards Pavel that let you know that in spite of whatever flirtation she may have just had with Dan, she and Pavel will fuck like crazed ferrets when theyāre alone.
Fast-forward to summertime when Dan is assigned to go write a story on the Renaissance faire coming to town. Put in a scene where he doesnāt fit in with his friends who are all romantically attached, with varying degrees of satisfaction and commitment-phobia. The editor at the paper, played by a Stanley Tucci type, gets in some cranky lines.
Ok: the Renaissance faire is all wrong and Iāll tell you why: in the novel you talk down to the people who go to these things with no understanding of history which Iāll tell you Lindsey, is just about everybody who goes. Thatās the point. And itās a rich source of comedy that the players at the faire, of which Hester is a member, should be presented more as stuck-up nerds out-of-touch with the mainstream than as the classy, well-educated and culturally advanced artistes who look down on the ugly American guests who just want to seeĀ jousting and drink beer. You canāt lecture the viewer.
THIS IS THE MAJOR CHANGE THAT MUST HAPPEN IF WE GO FORWARD WITH THIS. Get rid of the story within the story subplots. I know youāre trying to do a Shakespearean meta story thing (I studied the Bard at Bryn Mawr, so I know what youāre doing). You have Dan watch Hester doing a play at the mud theatre with other nerdy theater people, a play called āThe Metaphysical Cock-Block.ā Ok we get it. Hester plays a royal woman named Irene who has only ever exchanged love letters with a faraway man named Garrett. Garrett is deceived by an Angel named Abdiel into becoming a holy man so that Abdiel can steal Irene away by pretending to be Garrett, who sheās never seen even a picture ofāa totally unbelievable contrivance viewers will never buy. And to make matters worse, in the novel you DOUBLE DOWN on the nesting story subplots by having a wise prostitute that Irene and her servant girl Hebe encounter in their trip to go see Garrett tell the story around the campfire of a family of imposters. Let me get this straight: a nurseĀ is hired to take care of an old comatose lady in a castle. The nurse arrives, a woman uncertain of her surroundings in gothic style (gothic came about long after medieval and Renaissance England by the way). The son of the comatose lady, the man of the house named Charles, says heās going to leave the nurse with her charge, and heāll be back in two days time, and to watch out for imposters who want to come to see the old lady and pretend to be her grandchildren and nieces and nephews to find the key to her locked away fortune. Charles warns her that the imposters will be very sneaky. He leaves. People start showing up and putting on a good show of being concerned for the dying lady, while they eat and drink and tell stories of their ownāwhen will the subplots ever end?āand the nurse stands her ground and wonāt let the people near the old lady. It gets really too complicated. The levels of pretending that the imposters go through would boggle the minds of anybody at home on the couch watching the Netflix show we hope comes out of this. Theyāre waiting to see Pavel and Dan face off over Hester! Then you really got too clever by having a man show up and insist on seeing the old lady, saying heās her son Charles. The nurse kicks him out of the house. Granted, itās funny to see him land in a pile of manure, that old trick might appeal to kids watching. How on screen can we reveal your too-subtle point that the true imposter was the original Charles who gave the nurse her instructions, and left the castle with the fortune only an hour after the nurse showed up and before the imposters started invading the home?
It all has to be cut. Yes, even the metaphysical cock-block. That ends with Irene finding the real Garrett and Abdiel being punished by God and sent to hell for lying to Irene. He gets thrown in the mud bog off a tree stump. How are we going to fit all this in the limited time we have?
Pavel can just be shown being a jerk to Hester once or twice. No need to insert yet another ill-advised flashback subplot where he forces her to dress in revealing cosplay fantasy get up and go to nerdy comic cons to do an extended heist thing where she steals rare expensive Magic: the Gathering cards from horny teenagers. This subcultural deep dive will miss the audience completely and derail the pace of the story!
Ok back on target: you must get Dan and Pavel to have a physical confrontation at the faire not a war of wits. This is on screen weāre talking about, not masterpiece theatre. Make Pavel a fight coordinator and they pummel each other with fake war hammers in a pile of hay. Have Dan get Pavel in trouble with Hester by revealing heās sleeping with another babe whoās got two feet on the ground, unlike Hester with her head in the clouds. Now thatās a subplot.
Finally stick the landing with a HEA between Dan and Hester. Thereās a party at the Renaissance faire where Hester and Dan do an old timey dance where they weave in and out and thereās people clapping rhythmically. Instead you have your novel end on a downbeat by implying Dan will have his hands full dealing with a disturbed woman who canāt break character. You have Dan bringing Hester home to meet his parents and ending with a bizarre scene where Hester is talking to Danās mom about the coming of the Dark Empires. What? Whereās the kissing? Whereās the swooning? Hester is not adorable if sheās too checked out. Fade out on her and Dan watching Labyrinth in his apartment on VHS (gotta give the nerds something).
Wrapping up: there is so much potential in your story! Jacinda loved it when she told me about it. But we need to make changes if we want this thing to be a true success. Please get back to me if you have any questions. Try to limit your communications with Jacinda to a minimum, just go through me. Iāll tell her everything you tell me.
I know itās hard to cut things you worked so hard on. But thatās the first rule of good writing: kill your darlings, right? Maybe you could turn those subplots (which Iām sorry but are a little tiresome) into something else: your next two books? Jacinda will know best, and weāll all have that discussion laterāafter we sell this bitch to Hollywood!
Love ya,
Dawn