JENN McKINLAY: I have just started writing the next romcom which will come out in May of 2027...God willing and the creeks don't rise.
My process is to start on page one and write all the way through until the last sentence which will end with a happily ever after for our intrepid couple, fulfilling the unspoken pact I have with my readers.
Now, in my opinion, the opening meet cute is the key to a solid romcom. It sets the tone for the entire book. In the past, I've had initial meetings that include an office dust up between work rivals in PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA, another was an incident on a ferry on the way to Martha's Vineyard where our heroine accidentally knocks the hero's book overboard in SUMMER READING. A recent opener was the heroine's very rocky first day of work at a bookshop in Ireland in LOVE AT FIRST BOOK. But my current favorite happens in THE SUMMER SHARE, coming out this May, when the heroine's Great Dane, Dude, knocks the hero off a fishing dock and then lands on top of him, knocking the wind out of him and forcing our heroine to jump into the water and save him from drowning. Despite the brush with death, it's hilarious. I promise.
But now I am staring at the blank screen, wondering how to throw my next couple together in a way that won't make them hate each other...permanently. And so I turn to famous meet cutes in books and films to inspire me. My job is brutal, I know.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it's explained brilliantly in The Holiday by Eli Wallach who plays Arthur the neighbor to Kate Winslet's Iris when she gives him a ride home. "Well, this was some meet-cute," Arthur observes. Iris doesn't know the term, so he explains, "It's how two characters meet in a movie. Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same men's pajama department. And the man says to the salesman, 'I just need bottoms.' The woman says, 'I just need a top.' They look at each other, and that's the meet-cute."
At the moment, my musician hero Chance Whitaker has arrived home to the Outer Banks to find Lorelei O'Malley has taken up residence in his long neglected cottage as she nurses his elderly landlord Tilly Goodwin back to health after hip replacement surgery. The middle of the night meet cute would likely be less fraught if Chance and Lorelei hadn't had a summer fling gone wrong ten years before which neither of them has managed to forget...
So, Reds and Readers, hit me! What are some of your favorite film and book meet cutes or even better, do you know of any in real life?
"Singing in the Rain" and "When Harry Met Sally" have meet cutes that always make me smile . . . .
ReplyDeleteI'd forgotten Singing int he Rain must revisit.
DeleteI love your romcoms, Jenn, and can't wait for these new ones! I'm terrible at remembering things from movies or books, and my story isn't exactly a meet cute, but sort of.
ReplyDeleteI had two hours to wait while my ninth grader volunteered at a local hospital. Hugh and I had already met once (via match.com) for a walk, so I asked him if he wanted to walk on the beach with me. We were having a great conversation as we walked and he made me laugh. Then I looked at my watch and realized I had to pick up my son in fifteen minutes! We were WAY down the beach and walked really fast back (while still laughing). He's still ribbing me about the Forced March twenty-two years ago...
That's lovely, Edith, and hilarious.
DeleteJenn, your "meet cutes" are spectacular! My favorite is in SUMMER READING. I raved about that one. You also have a great one, make that two, in BOOKED. In fact, you may be the queen of "meet cutes."
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I had a terrific real life meet cute. He bought the condo across the street from mine and lived there for a couple months without us meeting, although we were certainly looking at one another as we came and went. I had an enormous GS cross breed whom I'd taken for off-leash training. He was amazing. I had met Irwin's roommate and the two guys were returning from a bike ride, so my dog and I went over to say hi. Irwin smiled (melt) and said, "I've always wanted a dog like that." And I thought, (sigh) "Easy enough. "
Adorable, Judy. I love it when dogs bring people together.
DeleteI know I have told this story before, but I love it! My parents met in 1950 when my mom had gotten a job for a year in Leeds. She was a children's librarian. My dad was a librarian in one of the branches. Mom's boss was taking her around to all the different branches to meet the other librarians. He introduced them, then asked Dad to read some poetry to demonstrate the Yorkshire dialect to the recently arrived American. My dad complied, but mom said she saw the red rise up his neck to his face as he shared the love poem from the book. She said she felt sorry for him, but didn't understand a single word of what he had read.
ReplyDeleteOh, that is fantastic, Gillian!
DeleteI love this Jenn, and can't wait for the May book! I rewatched Sleepless in Seattle when I was sick in the fall, but that's not technically a meet cute is it? Unless you count the heroine hearing him on the radio?
ReplyDeleteLucy - I was coming here to propose Sleepless in Seattle and to ask if it meets the meet cute criteria. But, really, does it matter? I could watch that film over and over, it's such good fun.
DeleteOh it totally counts!
DeleteIt counts! Definitely one of my faves.
DeleteHmmmm, reading the comments I am wondering if my own real-life meeting of my partner counts as a meet cute: A mutual friend introduced us because she thought that Val and my then partner would hit it off for both being sporty women-with-boats (canoeing and rowing). Hmmm. Not so much, but I felt the spark from the first time I met Val. And her Scandinavian red hair didn't hurt! 32 years later, here we are. Minus all boats.
ReplyDeleteNo boats! LOL. I love it, Amanda. A fated coupledom, for sure.
DeleteLike Edith, I will give you a meet-cute from my life. Blind date. Date-fellow takes us to see Charlie Chaplin movies. Entrance to movie (in brasserie) is a quart bottle of beer EACH. Sit down, girls facing screen. BLUE MOVIES – full frontal exposure! (oops!)
ReplyDeleteMarried 21 dating days later.
Forget Harry meets Sally…
HA! Margo, I am dying!!!!
DeleteI always loved the story of my parents. They met in New York City in the spring of 1946. Dad was 29 years old, from Birmingham, Alabama, and had just left the army as a major. Mom was 22, from rural Alabama, and had come to NY after college to work for LOOK magazine. They met on a blind date set up by mutual friends, who said: "I know someone who talks just like you!" At their date they were partners in a bridge game. They married 8 months later. On their 30th anniversary, Dad gave Mom a gold pendant engraved with her married monogram on one side and on the other, "I bid two hearts." (Selden)
ReplyDeleteAwwwwww so cute!
DeleteAwwww, how wonderful.
DeleteIn the mid-1960s, when my cat Oedipus and I were living in a rundown apartment building on Nob Hill in San Francisco, I met a nice woman named Anna in the building laundry room. A couple of days before I moved out, I asked Anna if she would watch Oedipus while my friends and I loaded the U-Haul trailer. She agreed and I dropped off the cat at her apartment the morning of moving day. When I came to pick up Oedipus, Anna introduced me to her son, Boyd, who happened to be visiting her. Boyd told me he hoped I didn't mind, but he had taken some photos of Oedipus because (I forget what he said exactly, but something about Oedipus being an unusually handsome cat). Boyd said he'd be happy to print the photos if I'd like to see them. Of course I wanted to, so I gave Boyd my phone number. He called, brought me several 8x10 photos of Oedipus, we began dating, and four months later we were married by a judge in San Francisco City Hall.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great one!
DeleteA cat as the matchmaker! I love it.
DeleteThe cute meet may not have been the intro of my parents, but the engagement was unusual.
ReplyDeleteMy mom was a sec'y at Cal Tech. She was asked by her roommate to be a third girl for a blind date with three Naval pilots (this was around 1945) who were temporarily stationed nearby. They hit it off and dated a few times when my mom found out he was being deployed to Oahu, HI. Meanwhile, back at her office her girlfriends kept asking about this cute pilot and how things might be progressing? To prepare for April Fool's Day my mom had bought a fake, gaudy diamond as a joke that they were engaged even though he was in Hawaii. Before she could show the fake diamond, she also received a note from the post office to pick up a package. Her girlfriend drove her over and when my mom opened the package there was a real diamond ring. My mom was crying so hard her girlfriend had to read the proposal letter. Of course, she said yes and she couldn't believe she was on a plane to Hawaii. They married in Honolulu when Hawaii was just a territory. And honeymooned at the Royal Hawaiian when it was just one of two or three hotels on Waikiki.
A diamond ring and a proposal in the mail?! Best Non-April Fools EVER!
DeleteMy fav was my parents' meet cute story. It was in the early 1940s. Mom moonlighted as a cabaret singer in Yonkers NY. My dad and his friends stopped by for a drink. Intrigued, dad invited mom for a drink, but mom had another set and she didn't drink. She strategically chose a booth over a heating register and surreptitiously poured every beer he bought her down the register. They had a great time, and Dad was impressed with what he called her 'hollow leg'. He said it took years before she confessed.
ReplyDeleteLOL! Your mom was a sharp cookie!
DeleteSuch wonderful stories about real life meeting cute. The best I can do is as a high school senior in a small class in a small school, we all knew each other. There was this one guy who never cauf=ght my eye at all, at least not until the voting was done for Senior Superlatives. Schools no longer do that, from what I can tell. He and I were both chosen as Class Flirts, which is how we finally noticed each other. He was also chosen Best Looking (boy.)I was not chosen best girl. We had a terrific year together!
ReplyDeleteI am now watching While You Were Sleeping and there is definitely a meet-cute, in more ways than one.
Love that movie. And what a perfect meet cute, Judi!
DeleteOh yes, I watched a Sleepless Seattle the other day too! It was so good, we loved it. And fun fact, the two main characters are only on screen together for two minutes! So interesting.
ReplyDeleteI adore a good meet -cute—-It was always so reassuring to single-person me to know that such a thing could happen at any moment.
I always thought a laundromat would be a good place—has that been used?
Born Yesterday, one of my faves, has a great one. (Not in a laundromat of course…)
Cannot wait to hear what you come up with! You are the queen!
Thank you, Hank! I love hearing all of these stories. So many great ideas.
DeleteWow Hank, your fun fact is staggering! We assume the two characters are together a lot, but they aren't!
DeleteOkay, I've just got to kick in with my parental meet-cute. In 1955, my mom was a single parent with two kids. One day she got a cold call from a vacuum cleaner salesman (yeah, cliché, I know) who somehow talked her into letting him come round and demonstrate his product that evening. My brother and I (8 and 5) were already in bed, and Mom got Maureen, the upstairs neighbour, to come down, just in cases.
ReplyDeleteWell. In demonstrating the vacuum, he somehow knocked over an ashtray--a cute little thing with an elf sitting on a leaf--and it broke. He offered to take it home and fix it, which he did, and so they were married. She did not buy the vacuum.
We always wondered.... Did he break it on purpose, for a chance to meet her again?
Ooooh, I wonder if he did? Very clever.
DeleteNot a meet cute but a laundromat story. We were in Milan, Italy (about 20 years ago now) and my hub went across the street to the laundromat. As he was pulling clothes out of the dryer, he heard someone say his name. Not knowing anyone in Milan he thought someone had the same name as he did. But, he heard his name repeated. He looked around and it was the 20 something year old son of dear friends of ours from LA. We had no idea he was there and vise versa. It was such a great surprise.
ReplyDeleteThis could be made into a meet cute and it has Hank's suggested laundromat as a back ground.
DeleteJust finished a reread of your Library mystery, MERRY LITTLE PLOT, last night.
ReplyDeleteTHE HOLIDAY is one of my favorite meet cute movies. Trying to recall other meet cute movies.
In real life, I had a meet cute story. This was in the early stages of the Internet when some people had computers or emails or both. I had email though at that time I was still dependent on using the cumbersome Relay Service *. I went to an event at a bookstore for Gloria Stuart from the Titanic movie. She was the older Rose. There was no interpreter. I got to meet this really cute guy after the talk. He apologized for not having an email address. He wanted to exchange phone numbers and I explained that I do not talk on the phone. The timing was wrong! If we had met when it was possible to send and receive texts, then we could have exchanged phone numbers!
* Relay Service was a way for deaf and hearing people to communicate on the phone via a third party (the operator). Unfortunately operators were low paid and often not fluent in English. There were many English words spelled differently and I had to use my detective skills to figure out what my friends actually said on the phone!
How frustrating that must have been, Diana! I'm glad technology is so much better. I wonder whatever happened to the guy? Hmm.
DeleteIndeed, it was frustrating! I'm glad technology is better. I wonder what happened to the guy - I hope he is well. It would be interesting if I met him again in the future....
DeleteAll these parental meet cute stories remind me of mine. My mom's sorority at Cal (UC Berkley when it was the only campus) threw a dance for the soldiers in about 1944. Daddy had been sent there to study Italian. These two shy intellectuals fell for each other, but neither were wearing their glasses, and Daddy wasn't entirely sure what she looked like before the next time they met! When he was posted to a remote information relay station in India, he asked if she would write to him. Later she told me she didn't realize he meant every DAY. They were married after he came back, and I still have a folder full of those letters.
ReplyDeleteThey weren't wearing their glasses--that is GREAT!
DeleteI have a real fondness for Cinderella story meet-cutes. I know this movie got dragged, but I really like Maid in Manhattan, where sexy politician Ralph Fines first bumps into Jennifer Lopez while she's cleaning his hotel room, and then falls for her when she "borrows" a rich guest's wardrobe.
ReplyDeleteA more recent one is Upgrade, where our third-tier assistant heroine is upgraded to first class on her flight to London after the sympathetic airline clerk hears her getting dissed by her richer and more fashionable colleagues. On the flight, she gets chatting with a handsome Englishman, and to impress him, she says she's the director of the art auction house. It's only for a few hours, what can it hurt?
Until she gets to London and discovers HIS mother is considering using HER auction house to sell of a multi-million-pound collection...
That sounds fun (London...). Will look it up! Who's in it, Julia, because the only thing I'm seeing with that title is a horror film.
DeleteLooks like it is UPGRADED.
DeleteDEBS, Lisa is right it is called
Delete"Upgraded, the 2024 rom-com starring Camila Mendes and Archie Renaux, is a Prime Video film where an ambitious intern's life changes after being upgraded to first class on a work trip to London, leading to romance and mistaken identity with a wealthy Brit. While set in London and featuring scenes with famous locations like Harrods and London hotels, much of the "New York airport" filming used Teesside Airport in the UK, and some scenes were shot at Pinewood Studios/Leavesden Studios in the UK, with London providing the glamorous backdrop for the story.
Key Details"
Jenn, I have the utmost faith that whatever meet-cute you come up with will be adorable and laugh-out-loud funny.
ReplyDeleteI think you can't beat the Jude Law/Cameron Diaz meet cute in The Holiday. Which I didn't not make Rick watch with me (again) on NYE. Maybe I can sneak it in sometime soon...
When I was in college, you attended football games with a date. Period. So there were a lot of blind dates. My nextdoor neighbors in the dorm added me in when one of them was asked to the game by a student in her math class. And oh by the way, can you ask two girls for my roommates? My date called and we talked and arranged to meet. He came to the dorm, we went to the Student Union to have a bite to eat, and talked on the phone daily. Come game day, we were on our own. For unknown reasons the other two girls had bailed, leaving just me and my date. We continued going out that Fall, he goofed around and got poor grades, and joined the Army after the semester ended. Wound up in Vietnam. What a doofus! Readers, I married that doofus eventually and I've still got him.
ReplyDeleteNot the most romantic or uncommon way to meet...via the workplace...but I well remember that giddy feeling of "falling in love at first sight". For the two of us that feeling was mutual but life happened along with its complexities. Rudi returned to university to complete his architectural degree that had been interrupted by his being drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam and I, unfortunately, made the mistake of getting married at 20 when I had no idea of what I was doing. Six years later while driving on Rt. 128 Rudi passed the office building where we had first met and something urged him to take the next exit. He wondered if I still worked there. At the same time he thought I was most likely happily married with children. Neither of which was true ~ No longer married and no children. I was miserably unhappy, confused and had zero direction in my life. I remember the moment he walked through the door of my office those same feelings of sparkle and spiritness returned one hundred fold along with the gobsmacked surprise of seeing him there so many years later. He was still single and the knight in shining armor who would eventually rescue me from the deep rabbit hole into which I had fallen. I was so overwhelmed I was speechless. I knew I had struck gold. Nearly a half century later the "yumph" lives on in our marriage. :) P.S. William Powell used the word "yumph" in the film "Double Wedding"...Such a great actor; such a great word.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great story Evelyn.
DeleteMeet not-so-cute: a man and a woman wear police uniform shirts they have laundered at the same dry cleaner. The dry cleaner mixes up their orders, giving the woman's shirts to the man and vv. When they rip the plastic off and grab a clean shirt, it's the wrong size.
ReplyDeleteMy husband-to-be was 22 and vacationing in Provence (France). He was sitting at one end of a long park bench on a hill, watching a beautiful sunset, and I sat down at the other end of the bench for the same reason. Each of us assumed the other was French and started talking high-school French to each other. It's a cute-ish start, but since it took us seven more years to get married (we lived in different countries), I don't think it works very well for a romantic comedy!
ReplyDelete