Ahhh, the love triangle. Stephenie Meyer’s favorite plot device. When you’re writing a love triangle from a first person or third person limited perspective, it’s hard to write a lot of multi-directional triangles. However, writing from a third-person omniscient perspective gives you the freedom to explore the other two prongs of the love triangle.
Sunday was one of those rare days in Denver where it rained all day long, which completely justified my decision to lay on the couch, order takeout, and watch Netflix all day. My roommate and I finished the evening with a viewing of I Love You, Man, which I had never seen and am so glad I watched. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are America’s boyfriends.
The main three relationships of the movie are a twist on a classic rom-com trope called the love triangle, with Paul Rudd trying to become friends with Jason Segel while planning his wedding to Rashida Jones. It’s highly entertaining, but it made me think about other plays on the classic three-character relationship models.
Adaptations of classic stories are everywhere. Beyond the usual adaptations of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, some versions give more modern adaptations of the text. For example, everyone’s favorite teen movie of 1999, 10 Things I Hate About You, is based on William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
Why write a modern adaptation of a classic story?
I just started reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower, having already seen the movie and feeling that I would like to do the work justice by also reading the book. I’m maybe 20 pages in and I can already tell that Charlie, the narrator and protagonist, has a lot of feelings. To be fair, he’s also undergoing some pretty intense stuff, so that’s understandable, but it seems like he’s very in tune with his emotions. One might say that he seems like he’d be a Feeler in the context of the Myers-Briggs type, but you’d have a skewed idea of what Feeling actually is.
