To Torture Your Hero, or Not to Torture, That is the Question.

As a writer, I enjoy torturing my main characters.

You might be saying to yourself right now, “Did she just say she enjoys torturing her heroes?” “You betcha,” I answer.  Of course, I do not mean torture in the physical sense.  I’m referring to what Dictionary.com defines as — “to give mental anguish to”.

In every romance novel, the hero and heroine must each have a goal, motivation and conflict (GMC).  In the romance genre, there are both internal and external GMC. What I’m referring to is the “internal” world of the characters; their internal motivation and conflict.  This is the emotional aspect of the characters, and it involves the development of the romantic relationship between the hero and heroine.  If the main characters have no internal conflict, i. e., emotional baggage to contend with, there is no challenge to the romance, and thus a shallow story.

The basic premise of a solid love story is: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back.  Without the conflict of the boy losing the girl, and his motivation to win her back, he has no goal.  The story would instead be reduced down to simply: boy meets girl, boy wins girl. Who cares to read such a shallow story?

So, in order for main characters to have an emotionally satisfying happily ever after, character growth or change must occur.  In my opinion, the more emotionally tortured the main characters are, the more difficult it is for growth to occur within them.  But when they overcome that, and their change finally does happen, the resolution of their romantic conflict feels so much more emotionally satisfying.

Okay, I emotionally torture my hero and heroine.  What does this say about me as a person?  Am I a warped individual for taking pride in doing this?  Am I sick for giving them tormented pasts, be it from the death of a loved one, an act of betrayal, a traumatic accident, or some sort of abuse? I think not.   Actually, in real life, I consider myself to be a compassionate and caring person.  One who empathizes with people less fortunate.  But this is fiction.

I hear some authors say, “Oh, I don’t like to inflict harm on my characters…I’m too emotionally invested in them.”  And I totally understand that viewpoint because as a writer, once you’ve lived and breathed, cared for and nurtured your main characters for many months, they become very real to you, and you love them.  And in real life, no one enjoys inflicting pain on the people they love, unless they’re a sociopath.  But fictional characters are not real.  So as a writer, we do what is necessary to create great conflict and characters.  We might even relish in giving our characters painful pasts, which lead to deep-seeded fears and weaknesses.  And we do it because we know they will ultimately overcome these things.  They must, in order to achieve a happily ever after.

For example, in the following scene in Vow of Deception, King Edward has sent Rand to Ayleston Castle to escort Rose to court so she can marry one of Edward’s knights.  But Rand has been sworn to silence regarding the reason for his task.  In this scene, I reveal a hint of the  emotional scars Rose and Rand carry, which each must come to terms with in the course of the story to achieve their happily ever after.:

Rose jerked awake.  Panic beat like the wings of a bird inside her chest.  Her mouth was open, a scream deep in the back of her throat.  But no sound escaped.  It wasn’t that she could not scream, but she knew better than to voice her discontent.

Rose blinked, but the solid blanket of darkness surrounding her did not lessen.  She crawled across the soft mattress, gripped the velvet bed curtain, and yanked it aside.  A glimmer of moonlight from her open shutters illuminated the disheveled sheets and coverlet of her canopy bed.  Her medical books were on her table too.

A sigh of relief escaped her.

It was only a nightmare.  She was safe in her own bed.  Alone.  Taking deep breaths, she willed her fear to recede.  With her husband dead nigh onto three years, her degradation and humiliation at his hands was a thing of the past.  But deep inside, she knew she would never be the innocent, naïve, happy young woman she was when she married Bertram.  Her heart was a hard cold lump—she was a frigid woman who despised a man’s touch. . . . . . . . . .

An instinctual sensation tugged at her soul, drawing her into the adjoining chamber.  A small bed, a chest, and a stool were the only furniture in the room.  No one could enter her son’s chamber unless first coming through her bedchamber.  Next to the small bed in the corner, Jason’s nurse and fierce protector lay curled up on a pallet snoring loudly.  Rose quietly approached the foot of the bed and stared down at her sweet, innocent son.  He lay on his side facing her, with his thumb stuck in his pursed lips and his other dimpled hand clutching a curly lock of light blond hair.

Her heart seized with love, and she could not keep a huge smile from forming on her lips.  It was a side of herself she revealed to only a few people.  Though she adored her son, she took care never to indulge in sentimental excess.  She controlled her inappropriate passions behind a stoic manner befitting a widow.

Jason’s cherub lips drew down, and he kicked off his quilt.   Rose pulled it back up under his chin, kissed his warm temple.  She trembled with a sudden urge to grab her son and escape into the night.  But her maternal instinct was stronger.  Jason would be the one to suffer—loss of his inheritance, his title, and all the privileges it accompanied.

Did she have the right to steal it from him because of her fears, her insecurities, her cowardice?

Rose started at a loud bang that echoed from her chamber.  She left Jason and went in the other room.  The door rattled on its hinges.  The sound of a deep voice, a soft giggle drew her curiosity.  Rose opened the chamber door and peeked out.

Near a lit torch, Rand trapped Lisbeth up against the wall, his face pillowed between her indecently exposed plump breasts.  The maid’s hose-clad thigh curled around Rand’s hip like a coiled serpent, pulling him flush against her, seeking to devour him inside her.

Rose inhaled sharply in surprise.  A quiver of repulsion raced through her.  The man was an incorrigible lecher.  As far as she knew, Lady Elena was his current mistress, or was when Rose was at court a couple of months ago.  Apparently not content with Elena, Rand had to debauch Rose’s castle servants too.

Rand glanced up just then, and stared, gaze glittering.  He winked at her, a wolfish grin on his face.  Flashing him a look of contempt, Rose pulled back and slammed the door shut.

Her gaze blurred as she stared at the oaken door.  She regretted ever . . .  Rose shook her head.  The past was unalterable; she could only learn from her mistakes and never repeat them.  Not that she had any desire to repeat them.  Rubbing her arms, she turned and stared at her rumpled bed.

She should get some more rest before the long trip on the morrow.  But she could not bear the separation from Jason, so she went to his chamber, crawled into bed beside him, and wrapped her arms around his sweet-smelling form.

***

When the oaken door to Rose’s chamber slammed shut, Rand jerked.  His vision blurred with too much drink, yet the fog of desire dissipated with the rapidity born of . . . what?   Shame?  Embarrassment?  Certainly not, Rand assured himself.  A man had a right to indulge his baser instincts when a comely maid showed an interest in his manly attributes.

Yet, his rock-hard shaft shriveled beneath his braies.

Lisbeth reached out and palmed him with her hand, with dismal results.  Rand drew back and patted her derriere, winking.  “Too much drink, sweet.”

Lisbeth huffed and, tugging up her bodice, she flounced away and down the stairwell.

He refused to acknowledge the real culprit of his shrunken cock: guilt.  It niggled at the edges of his drink-induced haze as he recalled the fiery determination that sparked in Rose’s gaze when she’d declared her aversion to marrying again.  It’d been nigh on four years since he’d beheld such passion blazing in her eyes, albeit for a different purpose altogether.

It was a clear indication of the fear she bore, and he was leading her down the path of her affliction without any warning.  But there was naught he could do to change the outcome.  Rand groaned and leaned his forehead against his forearm, which he braced against the rough wall.  He was torn between the duty he owed his king, and the loyalty he owed Rose for their past friendship and what they’d once meant to each other.

He could offer for her instead—the thought slipped unbidden from the recesses of his sluggish mind.   Rand jerked back and stared at the flickering torch. Jesu.  He must have drunk more than he thought.  Rose would abhor marrying him as much as anyone else.  Probably even more so considering the heated parting they’d had several years ago, which she pretended never occurred.

Even if Rose would agree to marry Rand, he’d never inflict himself upon the lady he admired above all others.  She deserved a man who was not haunted by the demons of his past failures.

As he stared at the torch flame, images flashed before his eyes.  His body jolted as he felt the burning beam fall on his back, felt the searing pain scorch his skin.  Trapped, he stared wide-eyed in horror as his mother ran, flames engulfing her.  The stench of burning flesh filled his nostrils, while his mother’s agonized screams echoed in his ears, damning him.

God, would the nightmare never cease.  He jammed the heels of his hands painfully into his eyes to dispel the grotesque image of his mother’s charred body.  But he could never escape the guilt he lived with every day, for it was his fault that she had died in the stable fire.

His sister was dead, too, because he’d let her drown to save himself.

Rand had even failed to protect Alex from being abducted in the Holy Land after they’d sworn an oath to protect each other as comrades in arms.

Anyone he loved was cursed to suffer abominably.  For that reason, he could never marry Rose and risk growing emotionally attached to her.

Golan was not an ogre.  Rand was sure once Rose married Golan she would come to see there were good men who would not wield their superior strength as a weapon over their wives.

Rand stumbled to his bedchamber door, shoved it open, and collapsed onto the bed fully dressed.  Unable to sleep, he stared unseeing up at the canopy.

***

In summary, all of what I have stated above does not mean I only believe in stories with a deep, dark conflict, or that they are necessarily superior to the more lighthearted and funny romance stories that are often popular.  I enjoy reading these kinds of stories too.  But for some reason, I tend to respond and connect to a good, dramatic tear-jerker more often. I suppose it all comes down to your mood at the time of selection. Do you want to read a romance novel that makes you laugh, or makes you cry?  If you’re lucky, perhaps you’ll get a satisfying dose of both.

Giveaway Alert!  Two winners. First prize: an autograph copy of Vow of Seduction and Vow of Deception.

Second prize: autographed copy of Vow of Deception.