Ask Annie: How to Write the Perfect Hero

You may recall that I've been taking questions from the Ideas Jar of late, and the most recent one I've received is this:

Following on from your post on point of view – how exactly do you approach characterisation between the genders?  i.e. male point of view and female.  How do you research the male psyche?

Well, I had to have a bit of a think about this question, because it immediately made me feel as if I ought to research the male psyche.

But after a bit, I decided to ‘fess up.  I don’t really hold to the prevalent view that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.  We are all from planet earth.  We all react to the trials and tribulations that life throws in our paths according to many factors apart from our gender.  Our personality, background, previous experience of similar situation, the state of our health, stress levels, or even whether we’re hungry or tired or just plain in a bad mood for some other reason.  And while I find articles like this one, that is supposed to highlight the difference between the way men and women think very amusing, I don’t believe it really does demonstrate basic differences between the sexes.

I don’t hold to the view that women, as a rule, would spend that much time dissecting their relationships – at least, not the kind of women I want to write about.

Nor would any hero of mine be so inattentive to the woman he is dating that he loses the thread of the conversation entirely.

When I write a hero, he will think, and behave, far better than that.  If he is going to be a swoon-worthy romantic hero, then he is going to have real goals, and a compelling motivation for thinking the way he does, for saying what he says, and for acting the way he does.  Because any heroine I write is most certainly not going to be feeble enough to fall for a man who is not worthy of her.

Having got that off my chest, I have to admit that when I write a story, I do tend to find it easier to imagine what my heroine is thinking and feeling, and often start by writing the romance almost entirely from her point of view.  And the hero I write for her has to be what she needs, specifically, rather than being a stereotypical hero in any way.

He also needs to have goals in which a modern reader can sympathise, and motivations that make sense.  He needs to be, first and foremost, a person.  A person that readers can relate to, and cheer for, and want to find a happy ever after.

Now that, actually, is where I do face having to make some tricky choices.  My hero needs to be the kind of man that will make a modern reader swoon, yet he also has to be a believable Regency male.  And because of the era in which he lived, he would have had a very different outlook in many ways, to a modern man.

Both he and his female counterpart would have known their place in the social hierarchy, which was much more rigid than ours today.  He might well have known what kind of life he would have lived, from his birth, particularly if he was born into the peerage.  He would have been closer to the land, more aware of the passing of the seasons, and familiar with handling animals.  He would have known how to ride horses and how to shoot pigeons, and would not have thought either pastime anything out of the ordinary.  He would have attended brutal bare-knuckle fights, and cock fights, but he would also have gone to church as a matter of course every Sunday, and been proud of being English (not British).  If he was from the upper classes he would have also had a working knowledge of Greek and Latin.  He would not have been ashamed of believing he was innately superior to women, (and most other men).  Nor would he have thought it unreasonable to pay a skilled man to spend his entire life taking care of his clothes, or spending a small fortune on getting a jacket that moulded to his shoulders, and breeches that outlined his fine, muscular legs.  He would also have consumed so much alcohol – since water wasn’t often fit to drink – that nowadays he might be deemed to have a bit of a problem!

And yet I still need to portray him as a person with whom modern day readers can empathise.

And so I draw a veil over the cock fights he attends, and don’t let the reader in on the fact that he probably consumes so much alcohol that he is slowly but surely pickling his liver.  Instead, I concentrate on his reaction to, and his treatment of, my heroine.

If ever he acts badly towards the heroine, the reader needs to see that his motives are not from sheer unpleasantness, but because he is damaged in some way by the blows life has dealt him.  And be able to believe that the heroine I write for him will be capable of bringing him healing, through the love he develops for her.  And that she bestows on him.

So, to sum up, when I write a hero, I want him to be believable as a character from his time period.

I want him to have the kind of character that a woman, from any time period, could find totally swoon-worthy.

And I also want him to be a perfect match for my heroine.

And it won’t hurt if he also looks like this!

Annie's next hero is Lord Ashenden, whose story will be told in "The Debutante's Daring Proposal" which is released in June, but is already available for pre-order through Amazon (and other retailers)

Whose line is it anyway? By Annie Burrows

On the first Friday of each month, Novelista Annie Burrows will be drawing a question out of the jar where we've been putting all the questions about the writing process posed by readers –

This month, the question posed by…(wait for it…yes, it’s Cheryl again!) is actually two questions:
1 How many points of view in a novel?
And
2 How to weave two or three points of view into novel – by Chapter?  Or paragraph?
The first question is easy for me to answer now, because I write for Harlequin Mills & Boon, who have very definite guidelines on this.

Because the stories feature a strong, central romance, the story needs to be told from the point of view of the hero and heroine.  To put anyone else’s point of view would take the focus away from the main characters, and have the effect of diluting the emotional experience.

 However, when I first started writing, I fairly often told sections of the (unpublished) stories from the points of view of all sorts of characters.  This would be ok for a lot of types of story.  For example, in thrillers there are quite often huge chunks of the story told from the point of view of a villain, sometimes an un-named and unknown villain who is gradually discovered by the hero and/or heroine.  And this works well.

But for romance, which is all about feelings, it is important to stick very closely to the main two protagonists, so that the reader gets quickly caught up and then swept along in their emotional journey.

The second question, about handling point of view, is a bit more tricky to answer, since it deals with the nuts and bolts of writing.

I don’t find that it is as simple as thinking, “oh, I will write this paragraph from Mildred’s point of view, and then have one from Derek.”  The action of a story usually plays out in my head like a film, first and foremost, so that I break down the action into scenes.  And, as in a film, sometimes the camera angle changes, so that the viewer (or reader) can see the action unfolding from a different perspective.

And generally, I will write a scene from the point of view of whichever character it affects the most.

So, a typical scene for me, since I write Regency romances, might deal with a marriage proposal, and its rejection by the heroine of my story.  If I want the reader to know why the dashing Lord Rothermere is so nervous about going to propose to plain and plump, and immensely wealthy Miss Grinling, I would open the scene from his point of view.  He is worried about his six younger sisters, the tenants on his estate, and his mother who is prostrate with her nerves after learning that his father gambled away all the money.  He knows Miss Grinling – the daughter of a wealthy merchant - has been half in love with him for as long as they’ve known each other.  And he assumes she will be thrilled to finally get a proposal of marriage from him.  By getting inside his head at this point I would get the reader rooting for him.  We admire him for sacrificing himself for the sake of his family, and hope he succeeds.  And we can then feel his shock and dismay when Miss Grinling turns him down in a cold, almost hostile manner.

At this point, as a writer, I have two choices.  Either to continue in Lord Rothermere’s point of view, or to switch to Miss Grinling’s.  If I were to stay inside Lord Rothermere’s head, though, I would run into the danger of making Miss Grinling seem unsympathetic.  All we would see would be the devastating fate that Lord Rothermere foresees for his family because of her refusal to bail them out.

So, even though the proposal, and refusal, may have only taken a few sentences, it is important to see why plain, plump Miss Grinling has turned down a flattering proposal from a man who is far above her, socially.

And learn that she has, indeed, been in love with Lord Rothermere ever since she first went to live in the village of which his father was the local lord.  And how painful it has been for her to watch him flirting with all the prettier, better-born girls in the area, whilst never being more than polite to her.  Since the death of his father, she has also learned of his ever more desperate attempts to rescue his family from the results of his father’s gambling.  Far from finding his proposal flattering, she is deeply hurt that he has only come to her as a last resort, particularly since his attitude is that of a man making the ultimate sacrifice in lowering himself to her level.

I have to be ultra careful when changing from one character’s point of view to another in such rapid succession, to make sure that the reader will know exactly who is doing the thinking, and talking.  With talking, it is easier, because I can always put “he said” after any comment, so that it is clear who has just spoken.  But making it absolutely clear who is doing the thinking can be trickier.

One way to make it clear that there has been a point of view change is to put a gap in the text.  However, when it is a scene such as this, putting breaks in the text every time the viewpoint shifts would look very odd.  So it has to be done through the actual writing.  One neat way to do this is to change the viewpoint immediately after someone speaks.  So, for example, there can be a section from the hero’s viewpoint, at the end of which he can say something like, "And that is your final answer, Miss Grinling?”
And then it almost invites the reader to look at Miss Grinling, to see what she is going to reply.
And I can make the transition by putting something like:
Mildred had an answer ready on her tongue.  “It is,” she declared grimly.  Because there was no way she was going to agree to marry a man who would never, and had never respected her.

From that point, I could delve into Mildred’s shared past with Lord Rothermere from her standpoint, so that the reader will see exactly why she has turned him down.  She can foresee only hurt if she marries a man she loves, who will probably carry on flirting with prettier, better-born women because all he wants from marriage is her enormous wealth.  Had he only given the slightest hint that he felt even the tiniest bit of affection, or even respect for her, her answer might have been different.
In this way, during the course of one scene, the conflict has been set up between two characters, both of whom the reader understands and wishes well.

Next question!

Annie's latest release is a novella in an anthology of Regency set Christmas stories: