Heroes and villains
Posted by Shannon C. on March 8th, 2008 filed in musingsSo I was on the phone with one of my published author friends. (This makes me sound like such a hoity toity little snot, doesn’t it?) and she was telling me about something that I thought was an interesting bit of fodder for discussion.
Apparently, my friend was doing some promo one one of those chat loops. (Incidentally, I hate this form of promo. Mostly because it usually involves a bunch of authors trying to find interesting things to say and maybe 3 readers participating. And those bitches never hold their chat loop things on days when I can make it. And since everyone should naturally conform to my schedule, this is a bad thing.)
Anyway, in this chat, apparently the question was raised about what people consider good romance. My friend said that she got the following responses:
- 1. Internal conflict between the hero and heroine, but not so much that it goes on too long.
- 2. Villains who aren’t too scary.
This caused my friend some consternation, and I can’t blame her, because, while I take 1’s point, 2 and 3 together would practically be the book from Hell for me.
i’m especially interested in talking about the villain thing. Because it seems to me that having truly scary villains (not just cartoony ones that twirl their moustaches menacingly) would enhance the romantic story. For example, one of the things I loved about Bethany Campbell’s See How They Run which I reviewed last week was the fact that the villains were scary as fuck. I really honestly wondered if there was even going to be a HEA with everyone I liked surviving until the end. Even though I knew perfectly well that I was reading a romantic suspense, and of course the hero and heroine were going to end the book happy and alive and together, I liked that feeling of “Oh my God, they’re in danger! Oh noes!”
As for shiny happy people finding shiny happy love, I’m not so much into that. I want flawed characters. Note I said flawed, not tortured. I could write another post on tortured characters, but not today. Mary Sues are as annoying in romanceland as they are in every other genre, and I don’t particularly want to hear about the god and goddess of love personified finding love together. (Of course, there’s also a difference between being flawed enough for the reader to relate to the fact that they aren’t perfect and being complete and utter assholes, but I think that line is probably different for every reader.
So what say you all? How do you like your heroes? How do you like the villains? Am I being too critical again? What authors got it all right?
March 9th, 2008 at 4:30 am
I do enjoy a truly scary villain, but I’m sick to death of the evil psycho who does evil things just because (s)he’s an evil psycho. I want a motivation I can understand a little bit better, maybe even relate to.
I think my favourite would be a villain who’s not necessarily scary because he’s butchering people right and left, but because his actions are something you can see people around you doing. Hmm… I don’t know if I’m being very clear. Just as a for instance, so that you see where I’m going: one of the best “villains” I’ve read is the one in Balogh’s Slightly Scandalous. The hero’s aunt is this truly terrifying woman who ruthlessly manipulates all those around her. She doesn’t… I don’t know… drug people and kidnap them, she just does the kinds of things you could really imagine a 19th century matron doing, and some of the consequences of her actions are pretty bad.
As for heroes, I’m with you. Shiny happy people I find excruciatingly boring. I’m someone who prefers a more character-driven story, but even when you’ve got an external plot driving things, ideally, there should be enough internal issues to keep things interesting.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:34 am
As for shiny happy people finding shiny happy love, I’m not so much into that. I want flawed characters. Note I said flawed, not tortured.
THIS is why I love Meljean’s ladies. Lilith, Savitri, Charlie. THose chicks were incredibly likeable because they had depth and flaws and problems while not being angst filled whiners. Yup.
Shiny Happy People? Who wants to read about the prom king and queen sailing off into the sunset? Blech.
March 9th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I am reading a book now by Sydney Croft. Unleashing the Storm. She has the hero and the villain perfected. This is a series and I haven’t read the first book because my Amazon order got split up and this book came first. The hero is an assassin for the good guys. He has shut his emotions down in order to do his job. He thinks he is a total asshole but he is ok with it…no angst. Which I love. The villain is a rival organization aka the bad guys and yeah, they are scary but the don’t take over the whole story which I also love. The author does a really nice job of balancing everything out. There are a lot of things happening in this book with the secondary characters and all of it felt perfect. I didn’t get lost at all even though I started with the second book.
Anyway, the hero and villain are terrific in this book and I can’t wait to get the first.