On Writing Romance (11 page)
To be real, your characters have to be imperfect. They must have problems or no one will be interested in reading about them. But while heroes and heroines have almost certainly created some of their own problems, they can't have done so out of stupidity or shortsightedness, or readers will have trouble empathizing. There is usually a good motive â sometimes even a noble one â for the actions that lead them into trouble. If, for example, the heroine's credit cards are maxed, it's probably not because she has a closet full of clothes and shoes. She might, on the other hand, have been buying clothes and shoes for the occupants of a homeless shelter. If the hero's about to declare bankruptcy, it's not because he's been buying yachts and diamonds â but he might have been pouring money into a faltering business so his employees could continue to draw a paycheck.
The problems the characters face are important to them â life changing, in fact â but they must also be important to the readers. A story about whether Susie can get Joe to improve his table manners isn't likely to keep the readers on the edge of their seats.
Main characters should grow and change during the course of a story. Since they are facing life-altering problems and situations, it makes sense that these difficulties will change their perspectives, attitudes, and outlooks on life. The too-perfect character has no room to grow and mature as he deals with problems. But even in their imperfection, main characters have to remain likeable, even admirable, in order to be worthy of a story.
Heroes and heroines are unfailingly kind to those who are less powerful then they are. They are gentle; even if Aunt Agnes talks incessantly about her health, they don't snap at her or treat her like a nuisance. Heroes and heroines don't kick the dog, no matter how angry they are. And every last one of them has an honorary degree in how to get along with a kid while raising him to be a genius.
Heroes and heroines don't gossip, and they don't generally take delight in the troubles of others, even when it's the Other Woman and she deserves it.
They're only rude to each other, and even then, they're not hateful or vicious. Wisecracks and smart remarks are acceptable; cruel taunts are another thing entirely.
Heroes and heroines don't lie, but they are allowed to be tightfisted with the truth. The hero, in particular, can be deliberately misleading if his motive in not telling all the facts is to protect the heroine.
The heroine can be equally careful with her level of frankness, sometimes telling the literal truth but implying something entirely different, as Sara does in Miranda Jarrett's historical novella
A Gift Most Rare
:
“I trust you would confide in me if something were truly wrong, my dear, wouldn't you?” asked Lady Fordyce gently. ⦠“You would tell me if there was a matter I could remedy?”
Oh, yes, thought Sara unhappily, of course she'd confide in Lady Fordyce. Governesses for young ladies were supposed to possess unblemished and virginal reputations. She'd never told the Fordyces that she'd spent most of her life in India, or that she'd been forced to leave in a rush of disgrace, let alone spoken of her unfortunate entanglement with Lord Revell Claremont. How could she, when any part of her sorry tale could cost her her place â a place she couldn't afford to lose â even with a kindhearted mistress like Lady Fordyce?
“If there were any ills you could remedy, my lady,” she said with careful truth, “then I should always come to you.”
Sara doesn't lie â she just allows her employer to believe that she's denied there's any trouble.
Heroes and heroines don't commit adultery. While they may have divorced, they do not enter into a new love relationship while still bound by a legal or moral commitment to a previous partner. This restriction is largely a matter of common sense. If a person has so little respect for a spouse that he has an affair â whether it's physical or emotional â with someone new, then it's difficult to believe that he would be any more faithful to the new love.
To a lesser degree, the same rule applies to other emotional commitments. A hero who is engaged is most likeable if the engagement is broken off as soon as he recognizes the attraction to the new partner.
Whether the previous relationship was ended by a divorce, a broken engagement, a jilting, or a partner's death, the character does not enter a new relationship until there has been adequate time to heal. Rebound relationships often don't last in real life, and they're not convincing in fiction.
The length of time needed to recover will depend on the nature of the relationship. It will take much longer to grieve the death of a beloved spouse than it will to get over a steady date who suddenly decided he wanted to see other women.
Main characters who are similar in style, in the amount of power they have over their situation, and in their degree of outspokenness create a nice balance in the structure of the romance. That doesn't mean they should act the same, or that they must be absolutely equal in every way â just that they should both have areas and times where one is stronger than the other.
If the hero has the heroine completely under his thumb, if she's helpless to act or to put him in his place, then he may look more sadistic than heroic. Pairing a heroine who's an in-your-face screamer with a hero who's the silent type may make the heroine look verbally abusive. A hero who makes patronizing remarks about a heroine who simply absorbs the insults is annoying, but if she talks back to him in the same sort of way, they're in proportion. (They may both be annoying in that case, but at least the readers can be equally annoyed by each.)
If one of your characters has a great deal of power over the other, look for ways to even things up. The romance is far more satisfying when the power between the characters is like a teeter-totter â sometimes she's on the high end, sometimes he is, but readers don't know from minute to minute who's going to have the upper hand.
In my sweet traditional romance
Maybe Married
, the hero wants the heroine, his ex-wife, to pretend for three months that their divorce hasn't actually gone through so he can pull off a business deal:
He picked up his coffee mug. “So tell me what you want in return for three months of your life.”
Dana drew her knees up and folded her arms around them. She looked across the street instead of at him, and said, “A conference center.”
Zeke spit his coffee all the way to the sidewalk. “You want what? You have to be talking a couple of million dollars. Five, maybe.”
“Actually, a nice round ten would be better.”
“Dana, darling, I know I said something last night about a payoff, but you are talking serious money.”
“I know,” Dana said serenely. “You can afford it â or at least you will be able to ⦠your business is worth hundreds of millions.”
In the first version I wrote of this scene, Zeke stated his demands and Dana, though she wasn't happy about it, simply conceded; he moved in and they took up their charade. But the scene didn't work â the hero appeared to be a selfish jerk and the heroine a wimp. In the revision, encouraging Dana to be true to her personality balanced the power struggle. Now that the characters each have a big stake in their bargain, and a hammer to hold over each other, the entire scenario is more enticing.
N
R
EVIEW
: Studying the Heroic Couple
Think about the main characters in books you've recently read. In what ways were they heroic, in the sense of being larger than life? In what ways were they imperfect?
Were the characters realistic? Sympathetic?
How did the characters grow and change during the course of the story?
Which heroes were alpha types, and which were beta types? Did any fit some other profile?
Would you like to be friends with these characters?
How do the heroes and heroines vary in different kinds of books?
What are some things the hero or heroine of a single-title book could do that a category romance character couldn't?
What character traits or habits draw you to a person? What traits and habits do you want your main characters to exhibit?
What character traits or habits make you not want to know a person better? What traits and habits do you want to avoid when you create your heroic couple?
How can you maintain a balance between your characters so neither overwhelms the other? How will they talk to each other? How will they treat each other?
Now that you're familiar with the various heroines and heroes who appear in successful romance novels, take a closer look at how to develop your characters and make them come to life for your readers.
What makes these characters live on long after readers have finished their stories? The more realistic they are, the more believable â and the more memorable. So you must endow your hero and heroine with real attributes and â even more important â real motives.
What does your heroine want or need badly enough that she would put herself at risk in order to get it? What makes this character tick? What is her motivation?
People don't take actions without cause. They aren't nasty just for the sake of being nasty. With rare exceptions, even a person's most misguided actions result from a deep belief that she is doing the right thing, the best thing under the circumstances. Every character, then, has to have good reason for her actions, so the most important question you can ask about the character you're creating is
why
. But if you begin with that question, you're almost certain to come up with a stereotypical and predictable answer.
Start building your character from the basics â but keep asking why. Question even the smallest of details, like the origin of a name. For instance, is your heroine named after an aunt? Did her quirky mother make it up? How has carrying that name affected her life? Where does your character live? In a condo? A mobile home? Does she live alone? Why did she choose that location and living arrangement? (Or was her home chosen for her, as it often is with historical heroines?)
Ask about her education and her job. What attracted her to that career? How does she feel about her work? (Even a heroine who doesn't hold an actual job â the heroine of a historical novel, for instance â will have some sort of occupation.)What does she want to be doing in twenty years?
Think about how your character relates to others. How does she feel about the opposite sex, and why? What experiences have made her feel that way? If your heroine has sworn never to marry, what made her decide that? What factors in her life make her want a big family â or not want a family at all?
Who is her best friend, and why? Who is her worst enemy, and why? (And please don't say herself. We are all our own worst enemies, but that doesn't lead us far in story development.) What does she like most about her life, and why? What does she dislike most about her life, and why?
And then go on to more important questions that further probe your character's mindset and past: What does she want to keep secret from the world? What would she die to defend?
And possibly the most important of these questions: What single event in her life has made your heroine who she is today? What opportunity, success, trauma, or loss was the turning point in your character's life?
All of these are
why
questions, and each can lead you down new paths in finding out what this person is all about. Answers to the latter questions may send you back to change or expand answers to the earlier ones.
Once you've completed the heroine, repeat this questioning process with your hero. Many writers create a tailored list of questions in a worksheet they can print and fill out for each significant character in a new story.
As you get a clearer picture of your two main characters, start asking yourself what makes the two of them perfect for each other. What gaps or weaknesses does one have that the other can balance? Equally important, what makes them seem to be the worst possible combination for each other? What is there about him that's going to drive her up the nearest wall, and vice versa?
You may be wondering if it's really necessary to go to these lengths. Not every one of these questions will reveal critical information about each hero or heroine. Some will be more important than others. It's difficult to tell ahead of time, however, which ones are crucial â and asking them all gives you every opportunity to learn the hidden facets of the characters you're creating.
Often the real advantage of asking and answering these questions is simply to make the characters more real to the author. That's a sense that carries over to the readers almost automatically, even if the information from the answers is never revealed in the story. Exploring your main characters fully will help you establish their heroic qualities, problems, and conflicts, and will help you develop satisfying outcomes.