With the holiday season upon us, have you been watching Hallmark Christmas movies? With wine (or eggnog) in hand have you said confidently aloud to yourself, “Hey! I could write one of these things!”?

Well, if you’ve made this proclamation, you’re not alone. We know because every December, we get a bevy of requests around the library from patrons wanting to read Hallmark Christmas scripts to study the formatting and see how it’s done.

If you’ve ever had the holiday-time burst of tenacity to say, “Hey! I could write a Hallmark Christmas movie!” and want a deeper glimpse at the structure and conventions, we’ve created this primer for you.

As many an online publication or TikTok account are quick to point out, there is a definite recipe for these movies. With nearly 40 of them produced every year plus a stalwart and passionate viewing audience, Hallmark Christmas movies are a serious business. Some writers make fruitful careers writing primarily Hallmark Christmas movies. While many feature writers can languish in years of development waiting for their rom-com script to get made, writers of Hallmark Christmas movies see their dialogue spoken, their tinsel-y worlds realized, their work produced.

This post is part of our ongoing “TV Format Fundamentals” series whereby we breakdown the act structure and elements of different script TV formats. Information presented here is based on looking at the handful of Hallmark scripts we have in the library and from talking to friends who’ve written Hallmark Christmas movies. For further reading, check out this article by Tom Nolan for Written By in 2019.

While we won’t break down a full script in this post (it would make it too long), we will offer pointers along the way. It’s part of how we’re making script information accessible beyond our WGF Library doors. Plus, it’s the holidays and this is fun—so grab that eggnog glass and let’s go.

Hallmark Christmas movies have a history that goes all the way back to the beginning of television. Perhaps knowing the history can help a fledgling Hallmark Christmas movie writer better understand the contours of the format… the recipe. To know where you’re going, it’s best to know where you’ve been.

What we now know as the “Hallmark Christmas movie” is descended from the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Hallmark, the greeting card company, used to sponsor radio shows like Radio Reader’s Digest in the late 1940s, then moved to sponsoring the television program Hallmark Television Playhouse.

Hallmark Television Playhouse began on Christmas Eve 1951. The inaugural broadcast featured the first opera ever written for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors. Later in the 1950s, Hallmark Television Playhouse became Hallmark Hall of Fame. Like a lot of nascent television, these programs were essentially filmed versions of classic plays. Lots of Shakespeare.

Later still in the 50s, Hallmark Hall of Fame evolved into television movies that aired 4 to 8 times a year. As a greeting card company, Hallmark wanted to sell cards. These prestigious TV films — based on novels or plays and starring top-level actors — aired around the major holidays to keep GREETING CARDS at the top of the audience’s mind. Check out UCLA Film & Television Archive’s book Hallmark Hall of Fame: The First Fifty Years next time you’re in the library.

Hallmark Hall of Fame continues even to this day — except now the movies don’t air on the major networks like CBS or NBC. Rather, they air on the Hallmark Channel, which began in earnest in 2001. Hallmark and The Jim Henson Company became co-owners of what was then a Christian cable channel, The Odyssey Network. Their aim was to make a network anchored by family friendly and family oriented content.

With emphasis on family values, optimism and not taking on particularly heavy, political or controversial subjects, Christmas movies quickly became a staple of the Hallmark Channel’s programming. With these movies, Hallmark stays true to the original modus operandi of Hallmark Hall of Fame — to sell us on Christmas… the mother of all greeting card holidays. (That’s why they make Valentine’s Day movies too.)

FORMATTING

Hallmark movies are made for television NOT streaming. This means commercial breaks factor heavily into the script structure and formatting.

Remember from previous TV Format Fundamentals posts, act breaks in a TV script typically denote where the commercial breaks are. Scripts from the heyday of Hallmark Hall of Fame on network TV are broken into three acts. This works well if you’re using traditional three-act movie structure:

Later in the 1980s and 90s, the scripts gained additional acts, bringing the total to six:

Current scripts for Hallmark Christmas movies have NINE ACTS. Watch any current Hallmark movie and you’ll probably clock eight commercial breaks. Looking at the Hallmark scripts we have in the library, the first act is the longest, sometimes totaling as many as 30 pages.

In the first act, we meet the main characters. Hallmark Christmas movies are rom-coms most of the time, so we meet the characters in their day-to-day lives; we learn their dreams and aspirations (and, of course, their feelings on Christmas), then they meet each other… and probably don’t like each other. The following eight acts run 8-12 pages. These smaller acts pile on complications and higher stakes for the couple and their belief in Christmas magic until the inevitable happy conclusion where lovers unite, families come together and Christmas is gloriously saved:

If you’re wondering how the act breaks look on the page, it’s just as if you are writing an episode of network TV. At the start of any new act, you put ACT TWO at the top of the page and END OF ACT TWO at the end. Most of the time, text is centered and CAPITALIZED, but we’ve seen act breaks on the left-hand side of the page and bolded, so we’re guessing you don’t have to feel totally beholden to the act formatting.

OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER:

Hallmark Channel knows its audience. They don’t hide that they make movies mostly for suburban women in middle America (even if they’re not the only people who watch them). The movies follow a certain trajectory and rarely stray from it. In the present day, the form has been pushed a tiny bit forward in terms of casting and trying slightly different storylines…. but if you’re looking to blow-up tropes, this might not be the type of movie you should endeavor to write.

Either way, you’ve got to know the tropes to break or conform to them:

FEMALE PROTAGONISTS. In the great Written By article by Tom Nolan, writer Robin Bernheim explains: “The most standard story is girl-meets-boy not boy-meets-girl.” The lead is typically a woman with a white collar job, whose profession puts her at odds with her former small-town life, etc.
CLASSIC ROMANTIC COMEDIES. Know them. Breathe them — the movies where the two main characters are totally at odds with each other and totally wrong for one another. When they’re together, it’s instant banter and chemistry. Another thing that’s been re-iterated to us is that both characters should have a viewpoint on Christmas. This is another place where the two leads can diverge. One might LOVE Christmas; the other might HATE it. Of course, the one who hates it will come around by the conclusion of the story. If they love or hate it, they’ve also got to have a good reason for it.
CONFLICT. Where does it come from in Hallmark Christmas movies? It usually bubbles up around the lead character’s commitment to family or small-town values vs. her commitment to her career or “big city values.” As in any great romantic film, these values are often embodied by her potential suitors, e.g. a small-town carpenter vs. a big city lawyer. This is an over-simplification, of course, to make a point.
THEME. A Hallmark Christmas movie is no place for cynicism. Despite accusations of being cliched or cheesy, the movies resonate because they’re one place in our divisive world where togetherness and tradition and fun are guaranteed. Think of older classic Christmas films like It’s a Wonderful Life and The Bishop’s Wife. It’s all about heart and miracles and family.
CHRISTMAS! CHRISTMAS! CHRISTMAS! If you look at a script for a Hallmark Christmas movie, there’s hardly a sentence in the description that doesn’t mention tinsel or scarves or ice skating or snow. If you think you’re talking about Christmas too much, you’re simply not talking about it enough. Remember: the whole point is to pump viewers full of Christmas joy — to literally sell them on the greeting card holiday.
HAPPY ENDINGS. Duh.

Well, we hope this year — or next — when you proclaim that YOU could write a Hallmark Christmas movie that this blog post jumpstarts the process of shaping your idea.

Until next time, CHEERS! Happy writing and happy holidays!