Is it absolutely required in modern-day movies to include a love interest? It seems that every movie you see there is one, but it just doesn't seem to fit into the screenplay that I'm writing. Should I go back and add one, or do you think I'm in the clear?

My main character doesn't have a love interest- he's 10 years old! I do sort of have a subplot that involves a romantic relationship with some supporting characters, but it's all in flashbacks.

Anyway, I don't think it's necessary. If it doesn't fit in with your script, don't write it! Your audience will be compelled with whatever else is going on.

Some movies that don't have a love interest (or it doesn't involve the main character/plot):

Everything is Illuminated
Whale Rider
The Pursuit of Happyness
Cast Away

Okay, so these might not be GREAT examples, but that's what I could get from just quickly browsing me and my roommates' library here. :-)

I have no love interest either. My screenplay is a horror movie though. I thought about the whole love interest thing, but it doesn't fit. My main character is a reclusive World of Warcraft player. Towards the end it will come out that two of my non main characters were secretly in love with each other, but it's not even a subplot. It's just for dramatic effect.
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"six hours later I still hadn't written a thing, but I did win 7 out of 245 games of Solitaire"

I'm not sure if it is simply a question of 'adding' a love interest to a story that doesn't appear at first glance to have one.

You might have to take the main character of your play out, write a second play, in which his or her love life is revealed.

Then, go back and rewrite the first play, with the love interest integrated into it.

You might want to do that.

Or you might not.

A true character has a life of its own. If it can't love, it is not alive. Perhaps you want to see if that character can love. If the character cannot, then the character cannot be real. Your character should be more real than so called real human beings in so called real life.

People wonder sometimes why fictional characters seem so real. The burning question, if you are into the writing, is how can characters outside your depicted world be real?

After all, Hamlet Prince of Denmark, Dorothy of Oz, and Spartacus of Rome are more real than your next door neighbor, aren't they? And they all experienced love of one kind or another, in addition to their trials and tribulations.

Another way to look at this is:

If a writer does not give his character a love life, WHAT ON EARTH HAS HE DONE? Poor character! You have not loved him enough to allow him to see love.

[Seriously, though. Many great stories do not have love in them in the silly romantic sense, the "Hollywood" sense. But love is usually at least hinted at, obliquely. As in one of the greatest films of all time, The Maltese Falcon, Bogart never actually falls in love, nor is he in love with any of the characters, unless you believe he really loves "Mary Astor." But the IDEA of love is tossed around a great deal. ]

In the original Star Wars, does Luke Skywalker really love the Princess, or does Han? It doesn't really matter (and that's probably a bad example, since the script is not so good, its just luck and not good writing that makes the thing hold together). My point is that love is not really essential, at least not romantic love.

In 2001, love in any meaningful sense, is totally irrelevant. The same is true in War of the Worlds, the Time Machine and the Invisible Man.

But that is science fiction, which can be rather 'cool' and without feeling anyway, at times.

For detective stories, especially Sherlock Holmes dramatisations, no love angle is at all necessary, nor is it needed for historical drama, since the main passion for each of these is the passion for truth and the passion for power, respectively. As long as there is passion, love is not needed in drama (at least not romantic love).

FINAL WORD:

I would, at the very least, go back and make sure that at least one of your characters engages in a brief flirtation. All the more interesting if it looks like it might go somewhere, and does not.

Another thing worth bearing in mind is that most people don't have a love interest in the sense the film world would understand it all the time; indeed, as far as I can tell, the time one is most needed (in other words, the best time to set the film) is the time Murphy's Law decrees its absence.

The other thing to remember is that it doesn't need to be a romantic love interest; in my Screnzy script, the "love interest" is an old and dear friend of the protagonist's, who is killed in the unseen space between acts one and two. The MC is then haunted by memories and dreams through the rest of the film, but there's never any implication of a romantic connection between them.

It all depends how you want to angle your story.

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SF08 - Mary Celeste, horror
Non Levitas Tolero Fatui

Sometimes the story just tells you whether or not it wants your MC to have a love interest. When I started writing Spanner for Screnzy, Shira's love interest was gorgeous but self-destructive Irish goth girl Leila, the same way it had been since 1996. But then Shira's blonde cousin Jennifer, the girl scientist, declared that she has been in love with Shira all her life and is determined to marry her (and also that she's much more of a political activist than Shira is, or would otherwise be without her); when that happened (and Shira told me that her celebrated political pranks are actually magic tricks), the plot (at least for #1) fell perfectly into place. Other times, the intended love interest bows out, or is whacked or turns traitor or just plain ex early, and the story proceeds just fine without a love interest. It all depends on what the story demands.

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Script Frenzy 2008: Spanner
Project Blog: Spanner's World

I think Torak's comments are right on the mark!

The idea of a "love interest," as generally conceived is too narrow. In English the very word "love" is laden with too many meanings. In Greek the words eros (sexual passion), philia (brotherly love), and agape (unconditional love) express the wider range of choices of types of love to depict. And there are many more: the love of a mother for her child, varieties of friendship, platonic love, love-hate, Oedipal love, and the love of Electra for Agammenon (the so called Electra complex) and countless other types. I suppose it would be useful to post the definitions of love here for people to contemplate. Here are twenty eight definitions, plus synonyms. (I suggest a reading of Plato's philosophical dialogue, The Symposium, for people who want a fuller exploration of the issue.)

1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.
4. a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.
5. (used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection, or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?
6. a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.
7. sexual intercourse; copulation.
8. (initial capital letter) a personification of sexual affection, as Eros or Cupid.
9. affectionate concern for the well-being of others: the love of one's neighbor.
10. strong predilection, enthusiasm, or liking for anything: her love of books.
11. the object or thing so liked: The theater was her great love.
12. the benevolent affection of God for His creatures, or the reverent affection due from them to God.
13. Chiefly Tennis. a score of zero; nothing.
14. a word formerly used in communications to represent the letter L.
–verb (used with object)
15. to have love or affection for: All her pupils love her.
16. to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for (another person).
17. to have a strong liking for; take great pleasure in: to love music.
18. to need or require; benefit greatly from: Plants love sunlight.
19. to embrace and kiss (someone), as a lover.
20. to have sexual intercourse with.
–verb (used without object)
21. to have love or affection for another person; be in love.
—Verb phrase
22. love up, to hug and cuddle: She loves him up every chance she gets.
—Idioms
23. for love,
a. out of affection or liking; for pleasure.
b. without compensation; gratuitously: He took care of the poor for love.
24. for the love of, in consideration of; for the sake of: For the love of mercy, stop that noise.
25. in love, infused with or feeling deep affection or passion: a youth always in love.
26. in love with, feeling deep affection or passion for (a person, idea, occupation, etc.); enamored of: in love with the girl next door; in love with one's work.
27. make love,
a. to embrace and kiss as lovers.
b. to engage in sexual activity.
28. no love lost, dislike; animosity: There was no love lost between the two brothers.

[Origin: bef. 900; (n.) ME; OE lufu, c. OFris luve, OHG luba, Goth lubō; (v.) ME lov(i)en, OE lufian; c. OFris luvia, OHG lubōn to love, L lubére (later libére) to be pleasing; akin to lief]

—Synonyms

1. tenderness, fondness, predilection, warmth, passion, adoration. 1, 2. Love, affection, devotion all mean a deep and enduring emotional regard, usually for another person. Love may apply to various kinds of regard: the charity of the Creator, reverent adoration toward God or toward a person, the relation of parent and child, the regard of friends for each other, romantic feelings for another person, etc. Affection is a fondness for others that is enduring and tender, but calm. Devotion is an intense love and steadfast, enduring loyalty to a person; it may also imply consecration to a cause. 2. liking, inclination, regard, friendliness. 15. like. 16. adore, adulate, worship.

—Antonyms 1, 2. hatred, dislike. 15, 16. detest, hate.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Pauwel's spot on.

In fact, I've seen one theory that suggests that far from being an aim in itself, the love interest instead serves the purpose of providing an "anima", a balancing force that supports the protagonist, or balances out their weaknesses. It's usually a romantic connection, but it could be anything; childhood friends (like in my script), parent and child, hero and fan, buddy cops, anything.

On a more prosaic note, it gives you someone for the hero to converse with, which means you can have the protagonist outline his thinking and feeling without having to explain why he's talking to himself...

(By the way, isn't it odd that we've invented the feminine "heroine" for a female hero, when the original Greek character Hero was female? Or maybe I'm just musing at random as i so often do...)

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SF08 - Mary Celeste, horror
Non Levitas Tolero Fatui

Actually, Greek genders the word "hero" (hêrôs), so the feminine of hêrôs is hêrôinê. That's how we get "heroine": the same way we get all those German nouns feminized by the suffix -in.

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Script Frenzy 2008: Spanner
Project Blog: Spanner's World

That's modern Greek, though, isn't it?

Anyway, as far as I can tell, ancient Greek used it both as a term for a demi-god ("heros") and as a given name ("Hero and Leander"). But in both forms it was neither specifically male nor specifically female, which is why it always amuses me that "heroine" has been made up to balance out "hero" in English.

But then, I've always been amused by the strangest things. ;-)

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SF08 - Mary Celeste, horror
Non Levitas Tolero Fatui