Build the Obstacle From Your Own Family
How to write a romantic comedy comes down to one question before any cute dialogue: what keeps these two people apart? Every rom-com has two people who clearly belong together. The good ones make the thing standing between them personal, and a little bit funny.
And in India we don't have to look far for that obstacle. It's usually sitting at the dining table.
What defines a romantic comedy?
Two people meet. They want each other. Something stops them. We laugh while they push against it, and we stay because we want them to win.
That middle part is the engine. Take away the obstacle and you have a love story that's over in ten minutes. Make the obstacle vague, like a misunderstanding that one honest conversation would fix, and the audience gets impatient with your leads instead of rooting for them.
The strongest obstacle is someone the lovers can't simply walk away from. Someone they love too.
That is why family works so well, and why it's the most Indian version of the form. Shaadi yahan do logon ki nahi, do khandaanon ki hoti hai. Our audience already knows that tension from their own homes, so half your work is done before the first scene.
The Indian example: 2 States
2 States (2014) was directed by Abhishek Varman, who also wrote the screenplay, adapted from Chetan Bhagat's 2009 novel. Hussain Dalal wrote the dialogues. Bhagat's book is described as autobiographical, which matters, because the obstacle comes from real life.
Krish Malhotra (Arjun Kapoor) is Punjabi, from Delhi. Ananya Swaminathan (Alia Bhatt) is a Tamil Brahmin from Chennai. They meet at IIM Ahmedabad and fall in love. That part is easy. Then comes the convocation, where the two families meet for the first time.
It goes badly. Krish's mother, Kavita, is loud and blunt. Ananya's parents are quiet and reserved. Nobody is a villain here. They're just two families who each think their way of living is the normal one, and the scene gets its comedy from that clash.
Look at what Varman's screenplay does next. It doesn't let the obstacle sit there. It makes each lead go and work on the other family.
Krish takes a job in Chennai and starts winning over Ananya's parents through small, practical favours. He tutors her younger brother for the IIT entrance exam. He arranges for her mother to sing at an event. He helps her father make his first PowerPoint presentation. Each one is funny, and each one is tailored to that particular person.
Ananya faces Kavita's hostility in Delhi. She wins the family over by stepping in when a wedding in Krish's family is about to be called off over a dowry dispute.
Spoiler note: the next paragraph touches on how 2 States ends.
The families don't magically become one family. There is a breakup and real hurt, and his father makes a quiet trip of his own before the wedding happens. The obstacle shifts and softens. It never fully disappears, and that's why the ending feels earned.
The same technique in another cinema
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) was written by Nia Vardalos, who also plays the lead, Toula. It began as her one-woman stage show, drawn from her own Greek family, and the screenplay was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Toula's family is huge, loud and Greek. Ian Miller, the man she falls for, is a quiet teacher with quiet parents. Same obstacle as 2 States, in a completely different city.
The scene to study is the dinner where Ian's parents meet Toula's entire family. Ian's mother arrives with a Bundt cake, and Toula's mother has never seen one. Roger Ebert noted that no one in the Greek family knows what it is. Atlas Obscura recalls her line: "There's a hole in this cake."
That small detail does more work than a page of explaining. It tells you these families don't even share a dessert.
And Toula's father, Gus, sprays Windex on every ailment, convinced it cures anything. You'd never invent that. It sounds like something a real uncle does, which is exactly why it's funny.
Spoiler note: the next line reveals the ending.
At the reception Gus gives a speech built on the two surnames. Miller, he says, comes from the Greek word for apple, and Portokalos from the word for orange. Different fruit, but in the end, all fruit. The differences are still there. He has simply found a way to hold both families in one sentence.
How to write a good romantic comedy?
Three steps that both films follow.
Name what keeps them apart, and make it someone they love. A misunderstanding can be cleared up in one phone call. A mother who wants a Punjabi bahu can't. Write down the person or people standing between your leads, and what each of them is afraid of losing.
Give each family one specific, funny, true detail. A Bundt cake nobody recognises. A bottle of Windex. A father who has never made a PowerPoint. Specific beats exaggerated every time. If you can picture someone in your own mohalla doing it, you're close.
Let the obstacle change by the end, not vanish. The families in both films are still themselves at the wedding. What changes is how they see each other. If your ending simply deletes the problem, the audience will feel the writer's hand.
How to write a romantic script?
Start with the families, not the couple. Most first drafts give the lovers all the attention and leave the parents as cardboard. In advertising, we learned that the audience believes a product when the small details are right, and a rom-com works the same way. The love story is the promise, and the families are what make it believable.
Write your leads clearly too, of course. But spend real time creating each character at that table, and give each one a voice that's uniquely theirs. A Tamil father and a Punjabi mother should not sound alike on the page. Our piece on writing dialogue goes into more detail on that.
Try this
Write the scene where the two families meet for the first time. One page only.
Before you write a line, list everyone at the table and what each person wants from this dinner. The mother wants to show off her cooking. The father wants to find out what the boy earns. The younger sister wants to leave early. The couple wants nobody to say anything embarrassing. Every person should want something different, and at least one of those wants should clash openly before the page ends.
Then add one detail that only your family would have. That's where the laugh lives.
Quick answers
What makes a good rom-com obstacle? One the lovers can't walk away from. Family, culture and duty work better than a misunderstanding, because the characters love the very people keeping them apart.
Should a romantic comedy end with a wedding? It doesn't have to. It should end with the obstacle changed, so we believe the couple can last.
Can a rom-com be set in a small town? Yes, and it often helps. Small towns come with close families and neighbours who have opinions, which gives you obstacles for free.
Building characters and conflict is part of The Foundation of Storytelling, my live online course in Hindi and English.
Send me your one-page family dinner scene on WhatsApp. I'll tell you whose want is coming through and who still needs a sharper detail.
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