by Kris Kennedy
First, I have an admission: I stole this idea from the lovely Maggie Robinson http://romancebandits.blogspot.com/2011/01/meet-mistresses-by-midnight.html Stole it right away like a loaf of bread.. But I stole it because I needed it. Desperately. I love this idea, and wanted to share it today.
Many of us read for character, for the romantic conflict between hero and heroine. Yes, we need a plot, some of us more than others. And we love strong world-building, so we can get lost in a new world, be it a fictional town U.S. town in 2011 or a medieval castle in 1153. We need tension, tough choices, and sensual energy.
But all this is in the service of character we can totally fall in love with. And those become the ‘keepers.’
To get into Keeper status, heroes and heroines have to be remarkable. Not ‘remarkable’ in that they’re performing acrobatic feats of strength or turning on their super-powers to turn rock into molten electricity and solve our power woes forevermore. I mean, they might be doing that, of course. But that I man is that they need to be remarkable insofar as their actions are worthy of being remarked upon. They need to get our attention, then keeping it, page after page, all 350-400 of them. They need to be fascinating, intriguing, compelling. They need to make us sit up and say, “Holy cow, what’s s/he going to do next??”
Heroes, I think, have the biggest part of that load. I hear readers all the time say that even if they didn’t like the heroine, as long as the hero was wonderful, the story can still work for them. Might even make it onto the Keeper shelf with a heroine that doesn’t rate an ‘A+’. I rarely hear it the other way. If the hero is a flop to any particular reader, then for that reader, the book generally is too.
Clearly, we love our heroes.
In my May release, Defiant, the hero and heroine are doing both pretty remarkable things right from the start. The hero, Jamie, is a chief lieutenant for King John. The e-e-e-vil King John of Robin Hood legend. The King John whose paranoid, cunning and mercurial leadership prompted the barons to rise up and demand Magna Carta. And yes, the hero serves him. The reasons are complicated. The appearance of the heroine, Eva, who happens to want the very thing he wants, makes it even more so. (And then Eva steals away, so Jamie has to hunt her down and capture her and…oh, it’s all very complicated and involves ropes. :-) )
The point is, Jamie has a long and winding road ahead of him, what with both being captor and protector to the one woman in all of England who can bring his world—and maybe the kingdom–crashing down around him.
Poor guy. :-)
So, let’s do our own little Mad Libs on those remarkable heroes we love so much.
How would you answer this fill-in-the-blank question?
Heroes should always _________ and should never _________.
My answer: A hero should always be capable of mayhem, and never use it on the heroine.
Let’s hear yours! One commenter wins a signed copy of my new release, DEFIANT!
Kris Kennedy writes sexy, adventure-filled medieval romances for Pocket Books. Visit her website http://www.kriskennedy.net and sign-up for the newsletter, read exclusive excerpts, or just drop Kris a line saying Hi!
At those prices, they are definitely worth a look.
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