On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [52]
CREATING A SENSE OF EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT
If you put your main characters in danger before you've let your readers get well acquainted with them, it's harder for the readers to care what happens. If the tornado wipes out the town in the first scene, the readers will be intellectually sorry about the casualties, but they won't be shedding any tears. On the other hand, if the readers have come to know and care about these people, and then the twister sweeps through, they're going to be sitting on the edge of their seats, hoping against hope the characters will be all right.
A wise writer once said, "Show me the pictures in the soldier's wallet before you lull him." A dead soldier on a battlefield is one of many—very sad, but easy to lose track of in the multitude. If, however, the readers know that his pockets contain a picture of his little girl, a letter from his mother, and a lock of hair from his sweetheart, he becomes a real person and his tragedy becomes an emotional upheaval.
Give your readers enough information so they can form an emotional attachment to the character before you put that character in serious physical or psychological danger.
Anne Gracie's hero in The Virtuous Widow is seriously wounded when he first appears. Though we care about his condition, we don't yet have an emotional reaction to the danger he's in. We have, however, gotten emotionally attached to the heroine, and we can quickly understand why having a badly wounded man on her hands is going to threaten her entire way of life.
CREATING A POSITIVE FIRST IMPRESSION
If you want your readers to like your main characters, your main characters need to be likeable. Frequently, beginning writers first present their main characters in a very negative way—the heroine is swearing at her mother, or the hero is throwing things at his secretary. When readers point out that they don't like the characters, the writer is devastated because she knows these people are really wonderful. What she may not realize is that she hasn't given the readers any rea-
son to like the character. If the readers understand why the heroine is swearing at her mother (or better yet, see her wanting to swear but restraining herself), then they'll be more sympathetic.
Main characters can't be perfect, but neither should they be awful. Show a mix of qualities, but bring some of the good ones in early—before showing the readers the characters' warts, or at least at the same time. The readers will then be willing to give the characters the benefit of the doubt, and they'll read further to find out why they're behaving the way they are.
In the example on page 86 from Girls Night, Stef Ann Holm presents Jillene sympathetically by putting her in a situation nearly every woman (and certainly every mother) has faced—having to shut herself in the bathroom to get just a moment of peace and quiet. If a character like Nicola Cornick's Jack, Marquis of Merlin, from The Rake's Bride (page 85), were to come up out of his bed swinging at the valet who is opening his curtains, the author could redeem him by having him apologize, balancing out any injury he'd caused. His action would be more sympathetic, because the readers would understand that post-traumatic stress disorder had him revisiting a battlefield in his nightmares. If he'd merely been hungover, the readers would be less understanding. In the example from Liz Fielding's The Billionaire Takes a Bride (pages 85-86), Ginny is sympathetic because, even though she's trespassing and possibly intending to burglarize, she's obviously not a career criminal—so the readers assume she must have a good reason for her actions, and they're willing to read on to find out what it is.
It doesn't take a lot of positives to make the readers like the main characters. But if the first presentation is entirely negative,