Down, Boy!
Ruthie Knox recently wrote a great post about what readers expect from romance heroines. Turns out we allow them a pretty narrow range of acceptable motivations.
I spent twenty-four hours feeling irked on behalf of women, before I realized that I’m personal proof that heroes have it just as bad, if not worse.
I’ve been revising my first manuscript, ILLEGALLY YOURS. At the tweaking stage, a lot of what I’ve been doing is making the hero more, well, heroic. Alpha. Or, since there’s little-to-no chance he’ll ever be called alpha, less beta.
Here are five things I wouldn’t let him do–bits of the book I ruthlessly slashed or rewrote–even though these are all reactions, qualities, emotions, or actions I’d embrace in my husband and want to teach my little boy:
1) Feel embarrassed when someone questioned his parenting.
2) Wish the heroine were there to help him make a decision.
3) Worry about how his son would react when he meted out punishment.
4) Be afraid when confronted with a bully in a dark parking lot.
5) Cry when the heroine broke up with him.
Two things I’m still on the fence about letting him do:
1) Accept regular gifts of socks from his obsessive-compulsive mother who can’t stop herself from procuring this staple wardrobe item.
2) Let his son help him orchestrate the romantic proposal that kicks off the HEA.
If he were an alpha hero to begin with, these would be cute details. But when you’re living in sensitive-man-land, it’s a very thin line between entertaining characterization and disturbingly uber-beta mush.
Feet to the fire, would I rather have to live with the constraints given to the romance hero or the romance heroine?
Hmm. I’d make a great villain, wouldn’t I?
November 2, 2011 @ 9:38 pm
Ooh, I agree with you. A beta hero can’t do these, especially the wishing the girl was there before making a decision – eek! Actually I think it’s cute in real life. But let’s be honest, not very heroic, beta or otherwise.
I read some advice somewhere that you should have your character cry when the reader wouldn’t necessarily expect it, and then not cry when they would be expecting it. So an alpha character crying when his dog Scruffy dies is awwww-dorable (and sad). But a super sensitive beta hero being all strong and stoic when his girlfriend leaves is even sweeter.
November 2, 2011 @ 9:42 pm
I like that advice about crying & reader expectations. I probably also could have left in the scene where the heroine’s extremely alpha brother cries, but I’d already taken it out earlier in response to the fact that, as one astute reader put it, “Everyone cries in this book!”
I found it interesting how much making the hero less beta was about small adjustments–different emotions, stronger reactions, even better speech patterns–as opposed to big stuff (although I may still have to adjust some bigger plot points to make him more alpha at some point). I suspect my heroes will naturally do less of that non-beta stuff in future books because my brain will shut them down before they can even try it.
November 2, 2011 @ 11:56 pm
I was thinking about this post, and about Amber’s comment, and reminding myself that there’s a reason we call them “hero” and “heroine” in the romance-writing field, not just “female protagonist” and “male protagonist.” I mean, duh, but it’s worth the reminder, for me. Any hero must have a flaw — something the book is going to teach him — and readers embrace that imperfection. But only ONE big imperfection, you know? Because more than one, and he’s not a hero anymore. He’s an asshole, or he’s too weak, or he’s too whiny, or what-have-you. And the same goes for heroines, really.
I wonder if a hero is like a boy you had a crush on in high school. Every day, you looked forward to the two times you were going to cross paths with that boy in the hallway, so you could see him say hi to you, and you could check out what he was wearing today. You were so greedy for information about that boy. But if he cried himself to sleep at night, or had a hard time making it through the day without texting his mother for advice, would you have wanted to know? Not so much.
Infatuation requires its blinders, right? So we can just assume that after our characters get their HEA, they settle down and get to learn all about what foods give each other gas, and the hero becomes a guy who cries when he gets scared and feels insecure about his parenting, but he’s got the heroine to turn to, and they can share all their insecurities with each other. Off-page. 🙂
November 3, 2011 @ 10:31 am
I think those are excellent points–that we are talking here about hero & heroine, which are loaded terms to begin with, and that for infatuation to take place, which is the goal of our reading, really, we need enough distance from the characters’ flaws to temporarily believe in a shiny, perfect HEA.
I think ultimately if the constraints are too aggravating, we can opt to write “love stories” instead of romances, where the rules aren’t as strict and the characters are allowed more leeway. (Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife …) But the truth is, I LIKE reading romances, which is why I’m writing romances–so that means accepting the limits with the fun.