500 days of summer, a romantic comedy, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael h weber, puts us in the life of a man named Tom Hansen in his mid-twenties, who meets a girl named summer Finn, who he believes is the love of his life. during their time together she gets him out of his comfort zone and gives him a different perspective on life. Summer becomes close with Tom, but in the process takes him on a roller coaster of emotions, and makes him question everything he thought about love, life, and the true meaning of happiness. While reading the screenplay, I’d have to say I really enjoyed the way the writer gave life to the characters.
Within the first ten pages, I was intrigued to learn more about tom and his situation. Why was he breaking things in an unresponsive manner? Why would his friends call his 12-year-old sister? According to Screenwriting 101(Script lab) developing a character’s backstory and learning every nuance about the character backward and forward is essential to the story process. I felt it exceeded the expectations of the articles standards and made it interesting from the start when we learned about Tom and summer’s upbringing and how it molded their thoughts and ideas.
Beginning with Tom the protagonist, he’s such a universal character. Every experience that develops throughout the screenplay is something that has either happened or we’ve witnessed in our lives, from meeting someone we thought was the so-called one or experiencing heartbreak from an unstable relationship. Throughout the script, it builds tom up to the point where You begin to root for him to get the girl and live a happy life, but the script has this way of frustrating you with all the challenges he faces trying to get the girl and live a happy life.
Summer the love interest is an interesting character. So different that most girls portrayed in most romantic comedies. Her views on love being a fairy tale or something far-fetched, and life taken one day at a time, but also filled with chances and risks are something we learn early on in the script. For example, at the time when Tom and Summer begin their conversation at the bar she’s adamant on her stance about love. with statements such as “There’s no such thing as “love”. It’s a fantasy” (Neustadter) A big part of the character build up is also established through the script.
Writers Digest explains how characters “need to sound different” and need time to develop in order to grasp their personality (writers digest). with that you learn about toms life as an unhappy greeting card writer whose true passion lies with architecture but is too afraid to quit his job as a card writer. And then theirs Tom’s friends, who support and try to bring him back to his senses in the instances where he’s being irrational with the strange signs that summer gives off with him during his time with her.
The conflict is illustrated from the start, and it does a good job of bringing interest to tom and summers strange relationship. In the article, writing act 1 of your screenplay, Laura schellhardt talks about a strong premise being established and gives different examples of how they can be written in. one of which is being an action that plunges the character into conflict (for dummies) which she describes as being the inciting incident marking the stories first turning point (for dummies) With how Tom and summers relationship is not all that great, to the point where summer doesn’t even know what to call it. com not getting his way becomes a little frustrating at some points and how tom is chasing this dream relationship that he never truly gets “It tilts the story from order to chaos, from complacency to combat. It’s the point of no return”.
One of the best examples would be my actually be my favorite part of the screenplay is when tom is invited to a party thrown by summer. which he believes is an opportunity to win back summer. you get the chance to see his expectations of how he plans the night to turn out in his mind. ut ultimately is surprised when he sees summer wearing an engagement ring. it was written creatively with a split screen showing “reality tom on the left and expectation tom on the right. although most websites such as screenwriting . info suggest using an intercut instead of a split screen because split screens are not common in today’s world of script writing(screenwriting. info).
Even though it wasn’t a direct conversation between summer and tom it was still revamped in a creative way to get inside the mind of tom during that time. he plot is simply tom Hansen remembering from different points of the past year and a half long, strenuous so called relationship he had time with summer Finn and him fighting to make a relationship work with a summer who clearly doesn’t have a romantic connection with him ultimately leaving him to make tough decisions in his life such as quitting his job that he despises and pursuing his passion as an architect that help him grow as a person and better his life. the point of view is told from the third person. you have a narrator guide you in both Tom and summers lives.
He takes you from their upbringing and highlights both their the theme presented throughout the script is unpredictable and what I feel is a true representation of what relationships are. right from the start when you read that tom and summer are hand in hand looking at the city while the writer points out the wedding ring on summers finger. to later on in the story when tom is explaining to his twelve-year-old sister how summer just broke up with him out of nowhere. this story takes many turns that leaves the reader wanting more.