On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [34]
9. What character traits or habits make you not want to know a person better? What traits and habits do you want to avoid when you create your heroic couple?
10. How can you maintain a balance between your characters so neither overwhelms the other? How will they talk to each other? How will they treat each other?
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS
Now that you're familiar with the various heroines and heroes who appear in successful romance novels, take a closer look at how to develop your characters and make them come to life for your readers.
What makes these characters live on long after readers have finished their stories? The more realistic they are, the more believable—and the more memorable. So you must endow your hero and heroine with real attributes and—even more important—real motives.
What does your heroine want or need badly enough that she would put herself at risk in order to get it? What makes this character tick? What is her motivation?
People don't take actions without cause. They aren't nasty just for the sake of being nasty. With rare exceptions, even a person's most misguided actions result from a deep belief that she is doing the right thing, the best thing under the circumstances. Every character, then, has to have good reason for her actions, so the most important question you can ask about the character you're creating is why. But if you begin with that question, you're almost certain to come up with a stereotypical and predictable answer.
Start building your character from the basics—but keep asking why. Question even the smallest of details, like the origin of a name. For instance, is your heroine named after an aunt? Did her quirky mother make it up? How has carrying that name affected her life? Where does your character live? In a condo? A mobile home? Does she live alone? Why did she choose that location and living arrangement? (Or was her home chosen for her, as it often is with historical heroines?)
Ask about her education and her job. What attracted her to that career? How does she feel about her work? (Even a heroine who doesn't hold an actual job— the heroine of a historical novel, for instance—will have some sort of occupation.) What does she want to be doing in twenty years?
Think about how your character relates to others. How does she feel about the opposite sex, and why? What experiences have made her feel that way? If your heroine has sworn never to marry, what made her decide that? What factors in her life make her want a big family—or not want a family at all?
Who is her best friend, and why? Who is her worst enemy, and why? (And please don't say herself. We are all our own worst enemies, but that doesn't lead us far in story development.) What does she like most about her life, and why? What does she dislike most about her life, and why?
And then go on to more important questions that further probe your character's mindset and past: What does she want to keep secret from the world? What would she die to defend?
And possibly the most important of these questions: What single event in her life has made your heroine who she is today? What opportunity, success, trauma, or loss was the turning point in your character's life?
All of these are why questions, and each can lead you down new paths in finding out what this person is all about. Answers to the latter questions may send you back to change or expand answers to the earlier ones.
Once you've completed the heroine, repeat this questioning process with your hero. Many writers create a tailored list of questions in a worksheet they can print and fill out for each significant character in a new story.
As you get a clearer picture of your two main characters, start asking yourself what makes the two of them perfect for each other. What gaps or weaknesses does one have that the other can balance? Equally important, what makes them seem to be the worst possible combination for each other? What is there about him that's going to drive her up the nearest wall, and vice versa?
You may be wondering if it's really necessary