Heroine hates

I have been thinking a lot in the last little while about what's makes the heroine that I hate. And I'll be honest. I hate a lot of heroines. As long as I can relate to and appreciate the Hero I usually can deal with an annoying heroine. So here are the things I hate in a heroine. Chime in and tell me yours.

-An absurd level of physical attractiveness. This is just so annoying. When paragraph upon paragraph and page upon page are dedicated to rhapsodizing about the heroines lips and eyes and hair and perfect size four body. And how they are all so gaggingly perfect that strangers on the street stop and fall immediately in love based on her amazing boobs and innate goodness. Gag.

-A total inability to function outside of her role as the ultimate sacrificer for the good of everyone she's ever met. Because without her constantly hovering on the edge of giving up all that is good and holy so that those she loves can hang on to all that they consider good and holy the whole book, nay the whole world, would collapse.

-Being perpetually too stupid to live. And I don't just mean sneaking off from the DEA hero hoping to use only your sorrily lacking wits and your perfectly manicured nails to save the day but also continually misinterpreting every single thing the hero does as an offense against all that you believe. Both are nails on a chalkboard level of grating. No one that stupid deserves to live. I think they should be allowed to try and save themselves and see what happens. I think that would make a better book. And anyone who goes along merrily being insulted by every breath the hero takes when all could be resolved in five minutes of non-hysteria-induced conversation doesn't deserve to be in a relationship.

Tell me yours. What ruins a heroine for you? I look forward to hearing about it.


Song of the day--I'd Do Anything For Love, Meatloaf. Speaking of things that are annoying, this could be the theme song of idiot heroines. I'll do anything for love except for that one thing. See this list for details.

Quote of the day-- There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. -Friedrich Nietzsche. (Again speaking of things that are annoying...)

Amber

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Tell me a story

Because I have been working so much with all these different writers I have been seeing so many different styles of doing essential the same thing, telling a story that people want to hear. But I have also been seeing people who have been getting locked into the eternal torment of "getting it right." They are so imbued with advice from every direction that some of them are afraid to make a move for fear of it being the wrong one.

I don't know what puts me in the position to say these things but I am going to say them anyway. If you feel compelled to know my qualifications I have written extensively as a journalist and also have been published in magazines. I have been a scriptwriter for two sit-coms and have published a children's book. I have been writing for seventeen years and have written five book length works of fiction.

And I have never sold one of them. And up until recently I've never even tried preferring, instead, to use my writing time for writing rather than what I viewed as pandering.

So what qualifies me? Pretty much nothing but I'm gonna say what I think. I think that the point of writing is to tell a story. There are some rules you absulutely have to follow but I think that any writer who is anywhere near publishing knows what those are. Otherwise I say, as I did in my other blog, make your own rules. This is your story and you are telling it for two people who live in your head and will live on your computer screen so that maybe one day they can live for other people too.

The only person you owe when you write a story is you, those characters and that reader on the other end. I say pretend that no one else exists when you're writing and then you can worry about those other people later. You can't live in fear of doing the wrong thing because no matter what you do it will be wrong to someone in the business. And fear will ruin your writing. It just will and once you've lost that ability to craft you have nothing left even if you follow every rule. What you produce will be correct and empty.

This business is about telling a story, and for those of us in the romance genre and I think almost in any genre anymore, it's about telling a story about relationships and the things that affect them whether those things are murder, or aliens, or something else entirely. That's where your focus has to be.

Then again, I remain unpublished so do whatever you want. I do.

Too tired for a song and a quote but not for a rant---A

The measure of a man

I haven't blogged in about a week because I have been overwhelmingly busy with this writing website that I have been running. Tales From the Crit. I would totally recommend it (and not just because I'm running it.) It has some really interesting issues that pertain to writing being blogged about everyday. Head on over and read back blog posts too. You might see something that you've really been wondering about or struggling with. But the best thing about it, I think, is that it is driven by five very different writers who value different styles of writing and put emphasis on different things. So you're very likely to find a writing soul mate, as it were, to help answer your questions.

But, to get to the real point of this post...One of the posts we had last week is from our paranormal writer Bridget Locke and she mentioned men. Fictional men although real ones can certainly keep us busy for the rest of our lives. The topic seemed innocuous enough but spawned about thirty responses. Apparently heroes are something that writers feel pretty strongly about. Go figure.

And while I was reading and commenting myself I had a thought about the mistake that so many of us make when developing our hero. One dimensional men are just not that interesting. We had to be so careful not to fall into the trap of idealizing with just the things that we want a man to be instead of the reality of what they are really like. I was fortunate enough to be one of those girls who was more often just one of the boys until I was at least seventeen so I think I have a pretty good insight into the average male brain but if you're a girly girl and the best you've ever known a man has entirely to do with the biblical sense and nothing to do with male psyche I recommend that you find a way to immerse yourself in man culture.

Take a crash course and spend some time with men being men. A good place to look would be your local fire station (which is frankly just a good place to look, come on.), police station or enlisted club on your nearest military base. Then make sure you see the other end too. Go to the park and observe suburban fathers in their natural habitat. Seek out some smart but not geeky men and see what they think and do.

The biggest killer for me in a book is when I can't relate to a soulless hero. Some of them are more like Johnny Paper than someone I feel like I could understand why I or any other reader, let alone the heroine, would want to, or at least understand doing so, fall in love with. That is all. Go forth and write yummy heroes.

Song of the Day: It's Raining Men, The Weather Girl's. Hallelujah.

Quote of the Day:

For all their strength, men were sometimes like little children. --Lawana Blackwell, The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark, 1999

Amber