Are you Christmased out, watching Christmas romances on TV? Does your Christmas movie have cookie-making, hot cocoa with marshmallow drinking, ice skating, snowballing, snowman making, caroling, tree searching, tree decorating, mistletoe mingling, present wrapping, magical moments brought on by Santa, elves, angels, holiday calendars? Did you know much of this is required? It’s a recipe, just like ginger bread. Sprinkle on the tropes but do write a good script and have wonderful actors to carry it off.
You can write all or some of these into an original script with your brilliance showing. You can go your own way and write something different around Christmas.
My favorite Christmas movie had very little to do with Christmas. It has a misleading title, Christmas with Holly (Hallmark 2012, Eloise Mumford, Sean Faris, Josie Gallina based on a five book series by Lisa Kleypas known as the Friday Harbor series). The movie is about a little girl who cannot speak and the people who try to help her. A present does show up in the end, only because the journey took months landing us at the doorstep of Christmas, but it could have been any holiday or none for that matter, because it went to the little girl.
I’m not saying that I don’t like the gingerbread cookie cutter approach, or creative tweaks and twists. I do, if done well. Remember there is no story that hasn’t been told, because we are in the business of love. Love finds a way. There is a happy ending rather than a depressing one. The journey is yours and your fans, my fellow writer.
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