Picking your hero

If you’ve got a romantic plot in your book – doesn’t matter if that’s the main plot or a subplot – you’ve got to pick your love interest carefully. Nothing’s worse than an unbelievable romance. For the purposes of not driving myself crazy, I’m going to address this as though you’re writing a straight female main character, whose love interest is a straight male character. But most of this will apply to any combination of people, gay or straight, male or female, so bear with me.

Unless you’re writing a romance novel, and often even in a romance novel, your hero has to have a purpose in the plot other than being the love interest. Otherwise he’s left standing around like a loser waiting for the heroine to come back and get all wibbly about him, then gets put back on the shelf again when anything important is happening. So, for example, maybe your hero is working for the enemy! Oh no! Not only do you have the romantic tension of two opposing sides with attraction to one another, but you can use him as an ‘in’ to the enemy, showing you more about them and telling you more about them without you needing to do so much extra work (read: reaching) to get your heroine the information she needs. This gives him a role in the plot other than ‘stick romantic interest scene here’, which is much better for your novel.

On top of this, you need to pick him himself carefully. It’s no good having two people who are totally unsuited for each other, but forcing them together anyway – there have to be points of connection, of intersection, between them that you can exploit to build emotion into. What does your heroine want in a man? The heroine of my current work-in-progress, Halley, is shy and insecure – so the man she is attracted to is strong and sure, but not loud and overbearing – he makes her feel safe. Could you imagine Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet settling for a man like Mr Collins? Of course not. Because he’s entirely the wrong sort of person for her (besides, of course, being an absurd caricature of a ridiculous and pompous man. But that’s beside the point.)

To take the example of Pride and Prejudice further, but turn it around, Mr Darcy would never have fallen for Jane, no matter how lovely she is. It’s all about matching personalities and lives – just like you would in real-life relationships. You wouldn’t pair up your loudmouthed, extreme-sport-loving younger sister with your quiet, bookish friend unless there was some other connection between them to make it work. And if you can find that connection, fantastic, use it – you’ll probably build a stronger story. Without it, you’re sunk.

In my opinion the most important thing you need to know when making two characters fall in love with one another is why. Why does she love him? What is it about him that she likes, that makes her heart beat faster, that makes her want to spend the rest of her life with him? What is it about her that makes him smile, want to ask her to be with him, to be his wife? How are they going to get there? Will they ever get there? There has to be more ‘why’ than ‘why not’.

Some of the best exercises in building this sort of relationship, I’ve found, come from fanfiction. (I know, I know, in some writing circles it’s a dirty word. But that’s where my roots are, and remain. There are more talented fan authors writing for free on the internet than are published in any five years put together.) In so many TV shows you can feel a connection between two characters that is never explored by the writers – so ask yourself what it is, why you feel that connection, and how could things develop to make that into something else, something more? You don’t have to write it, just think about it – but if you write it, and share it, so much to the better, because you often get not only feedback from online fandom, but constructive feedback too.

Or, if you prefer not to go the route of fanfiction, try this. When you’re out and about walking somewhere by yourself, look at the people on the street around you. (This is probably one more for the girls, if I’m honest, because it takes a certain amount of romantic daydreaming.) Look for people who you find attractive, or who are just generally attractive. Then make up a background for them – university professor, fireman, kick-ass demon hunter – and (this is the girly bit) make up a story as to how you would get together. Where do you meet? How do you start moving towards one another, set yourself in that place where you start to gravitate towards one another? Who kisses who first? Once you can imagine it with yourself, you can put it out a degree of separation and posit characters to put in your place, and work out how they get together with the love interest. It’s all practice.

For instance: today I had to walk down to town to buy some sour cream for a cake I was making. On the way down I spent a lot of time behind this tall man wearing leather trousers – laced up at the sides; a black coat; a black cowboy-style hat; and his black hair tied up behind his head in a small ponytail. Surprisingly, when he turned a little to look before crossing the street, he had a kind face, and a not unattractive one at that. So maybe he’s got a macho sort of job – let’s take that kick-ass demon hunter from the last paragraph – but he’s still got a core of humanity in him, he regrets what he has to do, maybe he’s lonely. Who would I pair him up with? Well, it’s going to have to be a woman who can look after herself, or he would never trust himself to fall for her when his job might get her killed. She’s going to have to be strong enough to force her way into his life, too. How do they meet? Hmm… maybe she’s involved in one of his cases, maybe she’s half-demon but all human and he spares her… do you see what I mean?

Picking the right partner for a character can be hard, but ultimately it’s rewarding. Your plot will be better, your book will be better, and your romantic scenes will zing that much more. Pick the right hero, and you’re made.