| Creating the Heart in Romantic Fiction:Characterization by Ann Durand copyright 2005 |
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| click here to order from Double Dragon Publishing |
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Find out about Ann's latest book: FLIGHT OF THE GRYPHON A SCI FI ROMANCE |
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| HEART BEAT ARCHIVE AUGUST 2005 |
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looking forward to curling up and starting another romance novel. This one, called it
doesn’t matter. If the book is a worthy read, she’ll not only take note and remember
Love on the Run, is a romantic suspense by that new author, what’s her name? Well,
the author’s name, but the characters, too, as if they’re all old friends.
it doesn’t matter. If the book is a worthy read, she’ll not only take note and remember
the author’s name, but the characters, too, as if they’re all old friends.
After dinner and a bath, Marilyn settles down on her divan, stretching the full length of
it with a plethora of pillows to support her back and head. Within the minute, she’s
immersed in the new book. Drawn immediately by a heroine-on-the-run who’s just
witnessed a murder, she forgets the world around her as a new one rises in its
stead. Marilyn hits Chapter Two at break neck speed. Now the hero, fingered by the
villain in another random event, is running with the heroine. Danger threatens them at
every turn. Sadly, the breathless pace leaves little room for them to discover each
other beyond cursory comments and stolen glances, let alone witty repartee. So far,
it’s “Quick, over the bridge before it blows!” and “Watch that boa! There…in the
tree!” By Chapter Four, Marilyn is skipping paragraphs, wondering when and if this
hero and heroine will ever connect on a deeper level.
By the time she reaches Chapter Five, she’s ripe for scanning. Though her
expectations wane, she still holds out hope for striking pay dirt—that is, the makings
of a romance. She stumbles across a sex scene, but it feels hollow, unsubstantiated.
Discouraged, she puts the book down, ambles off to the family room, and switches
on the TV.
For Marilyn, Love on the Run ran out of love and is likely doomed for the recycle bin.
And this after the author made it past the submission desk at her publishing house,
past the editors, promotional team, and distributors, all the way into Marilyn’s hands.
So why couldn’t Marilyn make it past Chapter Five? Especially when she was
primed for a good read. How and why did this book fail? What caused Marilyn to
desert her favorite pastime in exchange for a dull night of television?
Obviously, she ceased to care. Somewhere after Chapter One, she began to
suspect that this book wasn’t going to deliver. Yes, a riveting suspense unraveled
with feverish pacing, but it didn’t hold the magic she wanted. Not that the suspense
didn’t grab her, it did…but she’d picked a romance for a different reason, and this
book didn’t satisfy. A quality was missing. What was it?
The absent ingredient can be summed up in one word: Characterization. There was
little of it in this book, little about the danger-infested setting and autonomous
characters that felt intimate. The extreme circumstances without the revelation of
ordinary thoughts, fears and hopes—without ample internal and external dialog
between the hero and heroine—painted a surreal adventure that belonged in the
realm of comic books, one complete with untouchable characters, bigger than life
itself. Only gods, goddesses and super humans could respond to the same level of
peril with the undisturbed courage and fearlessness of this hero and heroine. If
Marilyn had wanted Batman or Catwoman, she’d have bought something from DC
Comics.
This author and her editors did not understand their audience. They did not realize
the hero and heroine appeared as two-dimensional beings, flat and unrealistic. They
allowed the plot to drive the story instead of the characters, which may better
describe a straight suspense than a romantic suspense. Good characterization is
required of all stories of course, no matter how brief the treatment, but it’s especially
important for a romance—it is, in fact, the essence, the heart of the romance, the
foundation on which all else is built. Plot, setting, conflict, resolution—all of it is cast
within the mold of characterization. Nothing else carries a romance with equal
import. The characters in Love on the Run did not feel real, so it hardly mattered to
Marilyn how compelling the setting or circumstances were. A hurricane at sea is only
mildly interesting compared to one on land. The havoc wreaked on human lives
takes on meaning through the responses of those involved. It’s the interaction with
their environment and each other that generates a higher level of interest. The setting
becomes defined through the characterization.
So how do we create compelling and multi-dimensional characters that feel real, that
allow our readers to care about them? For starters, it’s unwise to create
superheroes and heroines—readers don’t want them. They want flawed characters,
blemished and recognizable. This does not imply that integrity, courage,
compassion and other related traits should be sacrificed. Not at all—those qualities
are important for establishing likeability. The flaws in question relate more to
characteristics acquired through the accumulation of human baggage or personal
garbage collected from previous bad experiences. These experiences can include
rejection, betrayal, lies, deceit, parental abuse, death, divorce and a host of other
misfortunes. Any one or two of these painful experiences can lead a hero or heroine
toward the understandable acquisition of acceptable flaws. Among these, we may
find distrust, secretiveness, suspiciousness, rebelliousness, rudeness, hostility,
surliness, aloofness, stubbornness, fear, sarcasm, anger, anxiety, even social
ineptitude…but not all displayed in the same character, of course, and each attribute
exercised within limits. We want to create a human being, not a monster. If we
employ too much of a bad thing, our characters will feel pathological. This, we can
save for our villain, along with more grievous flaws such as cowardice, deceit,
malevolence…any trait that might describe a morally or ethically challenged
individual. There are also middle-of-the-road negative traits that are best missed in
a hero or heroine because they cross the boundary from understandable emotions
to unlikable characters. These traits may include pretension, miserliness, insincerity,
dishonesty, unreliability, complacency, unkindness, pettiness, and
unresponsiveness, to name a few.
The proportion of weakness to strength for the hero and heroine should reflect an
attractive personality—in other words, more heart and courage than internal pain.
With the right balance, our characters will feel authentic, fallible yet good-hearted in
spite of their painful pasts. This allows readers to imagine that romance may
conceivably happen to them, people who are also fallible and good-hearted. It
blesses them with the idea that they, too, are deserving of love and romance.
The author of Love on the Run might have captured Marilyn’s deeper interest if her
characters had displayed personality traits within the context of events in the story. If
the heroine had frozen momentarily in front of the boa, unable to look away with her
heart hammering in her throat, Marilyn might have bonded with the character,
especially if she saw herself reacting in the same way. If the hero had struggled with
his growing attraction to the heroine and, in fearing detection, had insulted her in an
effort to conceal it, Marilyn might have delighted in his dilemma and cheered on the
unsuspecting heroine as she hissed back at her reluctant admirer. Embedding
characters with such commonplace fears would have gone a long way toward
exposing them as vulnerable human beings.
Characterization can add another layer of emotion to the story through the clashing
of opposites. Tension results when personalities are crafted to create polarities
between the hero and heroine. If she is gregarious and open, he can be taciturn and
gloomy. If he is wild and spontaneous, she can be prim and proper, a determined
planner. This creates conflict that at once appears real yet insoluble. Add attraction
and chemistry to the mix, and the result is irresistible. It can be enough to keep them
apart for nearly the entire book. They can grapple futilely against the inevitable
pairing—a pairing that usually arrives as a surprise to the characters, but not the
readers, who have been privy to their separate points of view.
That brings us to another tool for creating emotion through characterization: Dialog
and point of view. There are two kinds, internal and external. The former involves a
character’s point of view, or their private thoughts. Living deep within the mind of the
hero and heroine allows for internal dialog that can breathe life into our characters.
When their thoughts, fears, dreams and hopes are identifiable as the reader’s own,
the reader is able to adopt the mindset of a character, to feel as the character feels.
Care should be taken to stick with one point of view long enough for the reader to
complete the identification. If the reader is allowed to know what each character is
thinking at all times, the tension is usually compromised. If our heroine is in doubt for
example, the reader will carry that doubt for as long as we don’t give away the
solution through the eyes of another character, which in a romance is usually the
hero. As soon as the reader understands her doubt is unfounded, the tension is
relieved, and without it, the scene may fall flat. Tension and conflict are the props that
keep the action alive. For the most part, it’s smart to use another chapter or setting
to hop into another character’s head. Let the reader guess what other characters are
thinking, just as the character whose head is being explored must do. A successful
writer will allow the reader and the character to experience the anxiety together.
While internal dialog offers a direct opportunity for readers to connect and identify
with the characters, external dialog allows them to assess any growth or evolution in
terms of their relationship. Conversation is the medium used for developing
intimacy. Through it, the reader may understand any emotional progress or bonding
between the hero and heroine, especially in their willingness to reveal themselves to
each other, to offer their vulnerability. Mood, temperament, personality, intelligence,
and intent may all be demonstrated through dialog. Through its artful construction, a
romance may unfold.
The author of Love on the Run had many things going for her, including a compelling
voice and an uncanny ability to forward the action. Unfortunately, she missed the
main ingredient for writing a romance – the construction of feeling and emotion
through characterization. As it is, she’ll have to garner her lesson through lack of
sales, an expensive way to learn. Hopefully, other romance writers will do their
homework before spending weeks, months, even years crafting a story that doesn’t
fit the genre. When writing a romance, it wouldn’t hurt for writers to begin the process
with character building—molding a complete profile for both hero and heroine until
they are understood in intimate detail. From this vantage point, the what-ifs, the
setting, conflict, resolution…all may develop and manifest as the characters tell their
stories.
In the next article, we’ll take a look at the publishing industry for romance, both
traditional and electronic. We’ll look at the advantages, disadvantages and
conditions for each. I am open to questions and suggestions about anything at all
relating to the arena of writing and romance. When I hear from you, I know how to
direct my articles. Please feel free to email me at AnnDurand@TRI-Studio.com.
Please come back for the next installment of Heart Beat. I will close with a few RWA
contests for September available for members and non-members alike to
participate. Until next time…
Happy Heart Beats!
Ann
doesn’t matter. If the book is a worthy read, she’ll not only take note and remember
Love on the Run, is a romantic suspense by that new author, what’s her name? Well,
the author’s name, but the characters, too, as if they’re all old friends.
it doesn’t matter. If the book is a worthy read, she’ll not only take note and remember
the author’s name, but the characters, too, as if they’re all old friends.
After dinner and a bath, Marilyn settles down on her divan, stretching the full length of
it with a plethora of pillows to support her back and head. Within the minute, she’s
immersed in the new book. Drawn immediately by a heroine-on-the-run who’s just
witnessed a murder, she forgets the world around her as a new one rises in its
stead. Marilyn hits Chapter Two at break neck speed. Now the hero, fingered by the
villain in another random event, is running with the heroine. Danger threatens them at
every turn. Sadly, the breathless pace leaves little room for them to discover each
other beyond cursory comments and stolen glances, let alone witty repartee. So far,
it’s “Quick, over the bridge before it blows!” and “Watch that boa! There…in the
tree!” By Chapter Four, Marilyn is skipping paragraphs, wondering when and if this
hero and heroine will ever connect on a deeper level.
By the time she reaches Chapter Five, she’s ripe for scanning. Though her
expectations wane, she still holds out hope for striking pay dirt—that is, the makings
of a romance. She stumbles across a sex scene, but it feels hollow, unsubstantiated.
Discouraged, she puts the book down, ambles off to the family room, and switches
on the TV.
For Marilyn, Love on the Run ran out of love and is likely doomed for the recycle bin.
And this after the author made it past the submission desk at her publishing house,
past the editors, promotional team, and distributors, all the way into Marilyn’s hands.
So why couldn’t Marilyn make it past Chapter Five? Especially when she was
primed for a good read. How and why did this book fail? What caused Marilyn to
desert her favorite pastime in exchange for a dull night of television?
Obviously, she ceased to care. Somewhere after Chapter One, she began to
suspect that this book wasn’t going to deliver. Yes, a riveting suspense unraveled
with feverish pacing, but it didn’t hold the magic she wanted. Not that the suspense
didn’t grab her, it did…but she’d picked a romance for a different reason, and this
book didn’t satisfy. A quality was missing. What was it?
The absent ingredient can be summed up in one word: Characterization. There was
little of it in this book, little about the danger-infested setting and autonomous
characters that felt intimate. The extreme circumstances without the revelation of
ordinary thoughts, fears and hopes—without ample internal and external dialog
between the hero and heroine—painted a surreal adventure that belonged in the
realm of comic books, one complete with untouchable characters, bigger than life
itself. Only gods, goddesses and super humans could respond to the same level of
peril with the undisturbed courage and fearlessness of this hero and heroine. If
Marilyn had wanted Batman or Catwoman, she’d have bought something from DC
Comics.
This author and her editors did not understand their audience. They did not realize
the hero and heroine appeared as two-dimensional beings, flat and unrealistic. They
allowed the plot to drive the story instead of the characters, which may better
describe a straight suspense than a romantic suspense. Good characterization is
required of all stories of course, no matter how brief the treatment, but it’s especially
important for a romance—it is, in fact, the essence, the heart of the romance, the
foundation on which all else is built. Plot, setting, conflict, resolution—all of it is cast
within the mold of characterization. Nothing else carries a romance with equal
import. The characters in Love on the Run did not feel real, so it hardly mattered to
Marilyn how compelling the setting or circumstances were. A hurricane at sea is only
mildly interesting compared to one on land. The havoc wreaked on human lives
takes on meaning through the responses of those involved. It’s the interaction with
their environment and each other that generates a higher level of interest. The setting
becomes defined through the characterization.
So how do we create compelling and multi-dimensional characters that feel real, that
allow our readers to care about them? For starters, it’s unwise to create
superheroes and heroines—readers don’t want them. They want flawed characters,
blemished and recognizable. This does not imply that integrity, courage,
compassion and other related traits should be sacrificed. Not at all—those qualities
are important for establishing likeability. The flaws in question relate more to
characteristics acquired through the accumulation of human baggage or personal
garbage collected from previous bad experiences. These experiences can include
rejection, betrayal, lies, deceit, parental abuse, death, divorce and a host of other
misfortunes. Any one or two of these painful experiences can lead a hero or heroine
toward the understandable acquisition of acceptable flaws. Among these, we may
find distrust, secretiveness, suspiciousness, rebelliousness, rudeness, hostility,
surliness, aloofness, stubbornness, fear, sarcasm, anger, anxiety, even social
ineptitude…but not all displayed in the same character, of course, and each attribute
exercised within limits. We want to create a human being, not a monster. If we
employ too much of a bad thing, our characters will feel pathological. This, we can
save for our villain, along with more grievous flaws such as cowardice, deceit,
malevolence…any trait that might describe a morally or ethically challenged
individual. There are also middle-of-the-road negative traits that are best missed in
a hero or heroine because they cross the boundary from understandable emotions
to unlikable characters. These traits may include pretension, miserliness, insincerity,
dishonesty, unreliability, complacency, unkindness, pettiness, and
unresponsiveness, to name a few.
The proportion of weakness to strength for the hero and heroine should reflect an
attractive personality—in other words, more heart and courage than internal pain.
With the right balance, our characters will feel authentic, fallible yet good-hearted in
spite of their painful pasts. This allows readers to imagine that romance may
conceivably happen to them, people who are also fallible and good-hearted. It
blesses them with the idea that they, too, are deserving of love and romance.
The author of Love on the Run might have captured Marilyn’s deeper interest if her
characters had displayed personality traits within the context of events in the story. If
the heroine had frozen momentarily in front of the boa, unable to look away with her
heart hammering in her throat, Marilyn might have bonded with the character,
especially if she saw herself reacting in the same way. If the hero had struggled with
his growing attraction to the heroine and, in fearing detection, had insulted her in an
effort to conceal it, Marilyn might have delighted in his dilemma and cheered on the
unsuspecting heroine as she hissed back at her reluctant admirer. Embedding
characters with such commonplace fears would have gone a long way toward
exposing them as vulnerable human beings.
Characterization can add another layer of emotion to the story through the clashing
of opposites. Tension results when personalities are crafted to create polarities
between the hero and heroine. If she is gregarious and open, he can be taciturn and
gloomy. If he is wild and spontaneous, she can be prim and proper, a determined
planner. This creates conflict that at once appears real yet insoluble. Add attraction
and chemistry to the mix, and the result is irresistible. It can be enough to keep them
apart for nearly the entire book. They can grapple futilely against the inevitable
pairing—a pairing that usually arrives as a surprise to the characters, but not the
readers, who have been privy to their separate points of view.
That brings us to another tool for creating emotion through characterization: Dialog
and point of view. There are two kinds, internal and external. The former involves a
character’s point of view, or their private thoughts. Living deep within the mind of the
hero and heroine allows for internal dialog that can breathe life into our characters.
When their thoughts, fears, dreams and hopes are identifiable as the reader’s own,
the reader is able to adopt the mindset of a character, to feel as the character feels.
Care should be taken to stick with one point of view long enough for the reader to
complete the identification. If the reader is allowed to know what each character is
thinking at all times, the tension is usually compromised. If our heroine is in doubt for
example, the reader will carry that doubt for as long as we don’t give away the
solution through the eyes of another character, which in a romance is usually the
hero. As soon as the reader understands her doubt is unfounded, the tension is
relieved, and without it, the scene may fall flat. Tension and conflict are the props that
keep the action alive. For the most part, it’s smart to use another chapter or setting
to hop into another character’s head. Let the reader guess what other characters are
thinking, just as the character whose head is being explored must do. A successful
writer will allow the reader and the character to experience the anxiety together.
While internal dialog offers a direct opportunity for readers to connect and identify
with the characters, external dialog allows them to assess any growth or evolution in
terms of their relationship. Conversation is the medium used for developing
intimacy. Through it, the reader may understand any emotional progress or bonding
between the hero and heroine, especially in their willingness to reveal themselves to
each other, to offer their vulnerability. Mood, temperament, personality, intelligence,
and intent may all be demonstrated through dialog. Through its artful construction, a
romance may unfold.
The author of Love on the Run had many things going for her, including a compelling
voice and an uncanny ability to forward the action. Unfortunately, she missed the
main ingredient for writing a romance – the construction of feeling and emotion
through characterization. As it is, she’ll have to garner her lesson through lack of
sales, an expensive way to learn. Hopefully, other romance writers will do their
homework before spending weeks, months, even years crafting a story that doesn’t
fit the genre. When writing a romance, it wouldn’t hurt for writers to begin the process
with character building—molding a complete profile for both hero and heroine until
they are understood in intimate detail. From this vantage point, the what-ifs, the
setting, conflict, resolution…all may develop and manifest as the characters tell their
stories.
In the next article, we’ll take a look at the publishing industry for romance, both
traditional and electronic. We’ll look at the advantages, disadvantages and
conditions for each. I am open to questions and suggestions about anything at all
relating to the arena of writing and romance. When I hear from you, I know how to
direct my articles. Please feel free to email me at AnnDurand@TRI-Studio.com.
Please come back for the next installment of Heart Beat. I will close with a few RWA
contests for September available for members and non-members alike to
participate. Until next time…
Happy Heart Beats!
Ann