Writing a romantic K-drama is easier than you think. Don’t worry about budgets or how you’ll even produce it, just pick your characters.
For this project, we’ll give them authentic Korean names. Our leading protagonist’s name will be Cheon Sun-Hi, a simple girl from a poor home working as a secretary to her love interest, the suave playboy heir to a conglomerate, named Bin Jin-Ho. Now that it’s settled, you can start creating the perfect romantic k-drama. Let’s go.
Pick a theme
It’s important because anyone you choose drastically changes the plot. Is it a fantasy, contemporary, high school, slice-of-life or romantic-detective drama? Choose the gbese you want them to carry for twenty episodes and stick to it. For this series, Sun Hi and Jin-Ho are in a contemporary romance.
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Choose a trope
Think of the trope as the biggest obstacle to their romance. Will one of them have sudden amnesia? Would they have met as kids but magically forgotten? Will one of them have parents who disapprove of their love? Will there be a love triangle, and will it be a Cinderella story? Go crazy with it. Choose two or three tropes and go ham.
In our story, Sun Hi is dirt poor and unattractive, while Jin-Ho is rich and has fallen in love with a girl his parents will not approve of, even though he’s almost always mean to her.
Choose the antagonist
One thing about K-drama, you don’t have to pick one antagonist. They can either be Jin-Ho’s wealthy mother or the girl betrothed to him at birth or Sun-HI’s best friend, who has loved her since they were kids. If you want to do too much, you can introduce a man from their past lives in the Joseon era that wanted to kill them and keeps reincarnating for that one purpose. Go crazy with it.
Make sure they have a meet-cute
Now that you’ve done all that, the movie will write itself. Like this;
Sun-Hi and Jin-Ho have to meet in the most awkward but memorable way. Have her go to buy coffee, and then he cuts the line. She shouts at him and wins, goes to the office and who does she see? The man she shouted at for cutting the line. Or he can just hit her with his car. That works too.
Build tension
Give people a reason to come back week after week even though their love life doesn’t exist. Make sure Sun-Hi and Jin-Ho keep meeting everywhere, and they now lowkey have a love-hate relationship. Make them argue all the time but also, have those moments when they look like they want to swallow each other. For this, you have to make sure someone interrupts them every time.
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Make them become friends
If Sun-Hi and Jin-ho fight forever, how will they fall in love? Create a common enemy like the man from their past they keep dreaming about or put them in a situation that makes them more friendly to each other. By now, Sun-Hi should be in love with Jin-Ho.
Stage the kiss
Now that they’re friends, they’ll have to go drinking so that Jin-Ho can spill all his childhood trauma from growing up rich, and Sun-Hi will try to make him feel better by confessing her love, and then they’ll kiss. At first, they’ll try to pretend like it didn’t happen, but then it’ll happen ten more times, and they’ll finally start dating.
Romance galore
Go all out: make them go on dates and cook together. Make Jin-Ho fulfil all her childhood dreams her family could not afford. You must put that one scene where he takes her shopping and buys her a whole closet and transforms her look so she becomes suddenly more beautiful than the babe his mum wants him to marry.
Give them one final problem
After all, what’s love without its ups and downs? Multiply the problems by six, though. Suddenly, Sun-Hi’s male best friend must confess his love for her. While she is dealing with that, make sure Jin-Ho’s mum forbids him from marrying her. While all this is happening, remember the serial killer man from their past life? he’ll use this opportunity to attempt to kill Sun-HI and almost succeed? but the police will catch him just in time after Jin-Ho has beaten him properly of course.
Perfect happy ending
Make sure that Sun-Hi’s best friend somehow falls in love with Ji-Ho’s betrothed instead. The evil man from the past either dies or goes to jail. Ji-Ho stands up to his mum and chooses to marry Sun-Hi anyway, damning the consequences. Bonus points if he confesses to falling in love with Sun-Hi from the first day they met. Make sure you do the flashback thing. If people do not cry or say, “God when?” one billion times, message us to refund your money.
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