On Writing Romance (21 page)

In any of these variations, the Wrong Man can be thoroughly unpleasant if he doesn't get his way, and he's not above deliberately causing trouble between the hero and heroine.

The heroine may have already realized how bad this man is for her, or she may come to understand this during the story because of the contrast between the Wrong Man and the hero.

The Wrong Man can be just as much fun to create as the Other Woman. But it makes sense to be careful when building the character, especially if you want your heroine to be seriously involved with him before she meets and falls in love with the hero. If he's so bad for her, or he's such a loser, why hasn't your brilliant heroine seen through him already? If you let him show his true colors slowly and subtly, your readers and the heroine will discover together exactly how awful he is.

In her sweet traditional
That Old Feeling
, Cara Colter shows the moment her heroine, while talking to the hero, realizes that the guy she's been dating is the Wrong Man:

Until she compared him with the hero, Colter's heroine thought that Jason was a pretty good guy. But once she spots the contrast between Jason and Clint, she can't ever go back to thinking that Jason might be right for her.

Like the Other Woman, the Wrong Man may try to take over the story, absorbing space and story time. Be wary of letting the focus of the story slide off of the main characters and onto the Wrong Man.

Meddlesome parents, grandparents, and other assorted relatives used to be a staple of the romance novel. Now that young adults are more independent and less concerned about what others think of them, the managing relative is less useful to the romance novelist. But that doesn't mean the breed has died out.

However, the relative plays a different role today than she did in the past. Instead of matchmaking or actively manipulating the hero and heroine, the relative expresses a real problem or need that the hero and heroine get caught up in resolving.

A big temptation when dealing with a parent or grandparent is to let the story drift into details of the past, concentrating on things like the relationship between parent and child during the adolescent years — whether or not it has anything to do with the current story.

Occasionally the parent/grandparent doubles as the villain, as in Jo Beverley's single-title historical
The Devil's Heiress
. In this passage, the hero, Hawk, confronts his father, who he suspects is planning to destroy the family estate:

The father's actions prompt the rest of the story, as Hawk's efforts to save the family home force him to court a woman he doesn't love.

Sometimes it seems that romance heroes and heroines come in just two varieties — those who have no family at all (or at least none that they want to speak to) and those who have enormous, close, warm-and-fuzzy families.

Family members can be terrific tools for giving information to the readers. They're likely to be delightfully and brutally frank, they can act as a catalyst for a main character's action or change of heart, and they know more about the hero's or heroine's past experiences than most friends do.

One danger with using family members as characters is becoming too involved in explaining the family relationships. If you find yourself detailing the birth order of siblings, or how their current quarrels and disagreements hark back to their childhood days, refocus the story on the hero and heroine.

It's tempting sometimes to throw a kid into a story just for the entertainment value — maybe an ornery little brother, the precocious child of the hero or heroine, a cute niece or nephew. But unless this child is an important part of the plot, think twice. Even if the child is an important secondary character, it's easy to allow her to distract you from the main story. Send the kid out to play or put her down for a nap so you can keep the focus on the hero and heroine.

Next to family members, friends are the most likely characters to speak their minds. They're also the characters most able to influence a main character's actions. Unlike heroes and heroines, friends aren't restricted to speaking gently and being polite. Showing a hero or heroine interacting with a friend is one of the best ways to demonstrate what sort of person the main character is.

Friends are also a good source of information for the hero or heroine, allowing the author to share details in an interesting way. In her long contemporary
The Secret Wedding Dress
, Roz Denny Fox shows her heroine, Sylvie, and her best friend as they piece together information about Sylvie's new neighbor:

Through their dialogue, the two characters fill in the reader while the main character also finds out what's going on. (We'll talk more about the use of dialogue in chapter twelve.)

Friends or groups of friends sometimes creep into stories because the author would like to write sequels featuring related characters. New writers often spend so much time and effort setting up such a sequel that they get distracted from the initial story. Or, in an effort to make a secondary character suitable to star in her own books, they try so hard to preserve the heroic qualities of the character that she doesn't fulfill the useful role she should be playing in the first story. Make sure your secondary characters stay in a secondary role.

Tertiary or third-level characters are the walk-ons, the extras who probably have no recurring part in the story. Because they're less important to the plot, they may not have names at all, or they may have only a single name. Examples might be the butler, the waitress, and the secretary, all of whom function in the story without being a critical part of it.

It's a good idea to check all the tertiary characters to see which ones are really necessary. Can you combine several of them into one?

The appearance of large numbers of tertiary characters can be a tip-off to poor scene construction. For instance, if a cab driver appears once in your story, is he really necessary? Unless something important happens during the heroine's cab ride — something that seriously impacts the story — it might be better to begin the scene with the heroine's arrival at the party, rather than with her getting in the cab. Eliminating the cab ride also removes the need for the cab driver.

The goal is not to do away with tertiary characters altogether but to avoid using precious space on them unless they're a real benefit to the story. In her long contemporary
Cinderella Christmas
, Shelley Galloway's heroine meets a shoe salesman, a tertiary character who will fill the role of fairy godmother:

Later the heroine finds out that the salesman's first name is Warren. Notice, however, that we know little else about him — despite the fact that his assistance is what allows the heroine to have her very successful evening at the ball.

Now that you've gotten to know your character options, how can you best convey your characters to your readers? You can tell the readers about them. That's the easiest — and least effective — way. Saying to the readers, “Sally was a nice and compassionate person” really doesn't convey much information. For one thing, definitions of
nice
and
compassionate
differ from individual to individual. And for another, you're asking the readers to accept without question your judgment of Sally rather than coming to their own conclusion.

Alternatively, if the character is an important one, you can use the character's thoughts, words, and actions to
show
the kind of person she is. And you can say a lot about a character through what she
doesn't
say or do. If, for example, she has the opportunity to make a perfectly justified sarcastic comment — the kind it's very hard to resist — but restrains herself instead of speaking, the readers suddenly know a lot about the sort of person this character is.

The most effective ways of illustrating character allow the readers to see the evidence, then reach the conclusion for themselves.
Showing
your characters draws readers into the story and keeps them fully engaged in figuring out these people. Slowly sharing the pertinent information about important people — as opposed to just dumping it all in one long passage — adds a sense of realism to your story.

Think of how you learn about the new people you meet. You usually don't exchange complete life stories on first introduction. Often, after knowing someone for years, you find yourself saying, “I never knew that! You never told me that!” Your characters should reveal themselves the same way — gradually, sometimes without even realizing what they're revealing.

There are a number of devices through which you can reveal character traits in a way that makes the readers feel they're right there — watching, listening, and making their own judgments about the people they're getting to know. The more personally involved with the characters the readers feel, the more absorbed they will be in the story.

And the more important the characters are to the story, the more crucial it is to
show
, rather than tell, the details that matter most. Each of the following techniques can be used alone or in combination with others to make your characters unforgettable. You can show a character:

• Through the character's own thoughts.
  This doesn't mean the character psychoanalyzes himself or thinks, “I'm a really considerate and intelligent person.” The way your mind works illustrates the kind of person you are. If a character thinks compassionately of another person, the readers get the message. In her inspirational romance
  Deck the Halls
  , Arlene James's hero thinks about himself in a slightly self-deprecating manner, leading us to believe he's better looking than he gives himself credit for, but also that he's humble:
  

  Vince didn't know about being “tall, dark and delish,” but he didn't think he was a “bald warthog,” either. He'd happily give up the single state the moment that God brought the right woman into his life.
  

  If Vince had said to himself, “I'm good-looking and I'm positive God's spending his time finding a woman for me,” we'd have an entirely different view of him.
  

• Through the character's own words.
  This technique isn't usually used directly — in the form of “I'm a charming and modest person” — unless it's to prove the opposite of what's being said. But what a person says about her actions, intentions, and history can be very revealing — often unintentionally so. And a person who defends another says something important about them both. In her romantic comedy
  Catch and Keep
  , Hannah Bernard uses irony to show the hero's female friend as anything but the Other Woman she's trying to sound like:
  

  “You know what they say,” she said as she grabbed her small suitcase and they walked together to the plane. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Someday I will get back at you for rejecting me. I won't rest until I find you the love of your life and bring you to your knees.”
  

  By showing this snippet of humor from the friend, the author also characterizes the hero, an unusual man to have a female friend close enough to talk to him like this.
  

• Through the character's own actions.
  If the character acts in a down-to-earth, practical way, chances are she's a down-to-earth, practical person. Or if she draws back a fist to hit a child, she's painted herself as a villain. In her chick-lit novel
  Can You Keep a Secret?
  , Sophie Kinsella shows her heroine as warm and caring, despite being somewhat ditzy, when she rescues a toy for a child she's never met before:
  

  The guy with the laptop is still typing. Behind him is a little blond boy of maybe two, sitting with a beautiful dark girl. As I watch, the boy drops a plastic wheel on the floor. It rolls away, and immediately he starts to wail. …
  

  Suddenly my eye is caught by a patch of bright color on the floor. It's the wheel. It's rolled under a row of empty seats, right over to the window. … I unbuckle my seat belt. Somehow I force myself to my feet. Then, with everyone's eyes on me, I bend coolly down to retrieve the wheel.
  

  OK. Now I can't reach the bloody thing.
  

  Well, I'm not giving up, after I've made this big deal about it. Without looking at anyone, I lie right down on the plane floor. … I shuffle forward, stretch as far as possible … and at last my fingers close around the plastic wheel. As nonchalantly as I can, I get to my feet, banging my elbow on a seat tray, and hand the plastic wheel to the little boy.
  

  “Here,” I say in my best Superman, all-in-a-day's-work voice. “I think this is yours.”
  

  He clasps it tightly to his chest, and I glow with pride.
  

  A moment later, he hurls the wheel on the floor, and it rolls away, to almost exactly the same place. …
  

  “Right,” I say after a pause. “Right. Well … enjoy your flight.”
  

  This woman proves herself a heroine when the kid flings the toy a second time, and she doesn't lose her temper. (She also doesn't fetch it a second time, which makes it pretty clear she's not a wimp.)
  

• Through another character's thoughts.
  This technique is easy and tempting, but the character doing the thinking should be a major character, not a minor one. Having the hero think about the heroine can be useful, but allowing the heroine's hairdresser to characterize her takes the focus off the main story. In Deborah Hale's Regency novella
  Cupid Goes to Gretna
  , the hero's thoughts linger over the heroine just as his gaze does:
  

  As he let his gaze linger over Miss Ivy, Oliver wasn't so sure. In sleep her features had taken on a soft, ingenuous caste that accorded well with her temperament. Like a child, she was full to the brim of high spirits and sunny optimism without a thought to spare for the harsh practicalities of life or the troublesome consequences of her impulsive actions.
  

  Elsewhere in the story, we've seen Miss Ivy's high spirits and sunny optimism for ourselves, but now we know how the hero views her, too.
  

• Through another character's words.
  What one person says about another can't always be taken at face value, but the opinion is likely to be straightforward and reasonably honest. Whether it's true is a different matter, because that depends on the insight of the person who's talking. In either case, however, the readers get a better picture of the person who's the subject of the conversation. In her single-title contemporary
  First Lady
  , Susan Elizabeth Phillips gives a thumbnail characterization of a character through the hero's words:
  

  The attorney glanced at the folder, then looked back up at Mat. “You admit your ex-wife was pregnant with the older girl when you married her.”
  

  “… Sandy told me the kid was mine, and I believed her until … one of her girlfriends told me the truth. …”
  

  “You sent her money for a number of years.”…
  

  “Sentiment. Sandy had a good heart; she just wasn't too discriminating about who she slept with.”
  

  Of course, while Mat's telling us about his late ex-wife, he's saying quite a bit about himself as well.
  

• Through another character's actions.
  If a character walks through a room and the dog cringes to get out of her way, nobody needs to say much about the kind of person that character is. Without resorting to graphic violence, Roxanne Rustand uses a daughter's reactions to her abusive father to give us a clear picture of him in her long contemporary category romance
  A Montana Family
  :
  

  He turned and started down the hill, one meaty hand clenched tight as a tourniquet around her arm.
  

  She tried to escape into that secret place where she didn't feel the pain. … She knew all too well what awaited her in that house. … She charged forward and rammed into her father's back. …
  

  And then she ran for her life.
  

  This daughter's reaction — first attempting to mentally distance herself, then resorting to physical violence, and then fleeing — clearly shows what sort of man her father is.
  

• Through physical description.
  This is probably the most-used characterization technique — especially by inexperienced authors — and one of the least effective. It's particularly useless when the description is phrased in generalities or when it is overly detailed. Standards of beauty vary, so merely saying, “She was beautiful” will mean very different things to different people. But listing the details that mean beauty to you may turn off readers with a different definition.
  

  When a point-of-view character describes another character, the readers get a picture of both of them, as shown in Arlene James's inspirational romance
  Deck the Halls
  :
  

  He backed up a step … and took in the whole of her oval face.
  

  It was a bit too long to be labeled classically pretty, just as her nose seemed a bit too prominent to be called pert. But those eyes and the lush contours of a generous mouth, along with high, prominent cheekbones and the sultry sweep of eyebrows a shade darker than her golden-brown hair made a very striking, very feminine picture, indeed. The hair was the finishing touch, her “crowning glory,” as the Scriptures said. Thick and straight with a healthy, satiny shine, it hung well past her shoulders, almost to her elbows.
  

  In this passage we see the heroine, but we also get to know a lot more about the hero because of the specific details he notices and chooses to describe.
  

• Through habits or individual traits.
  Bad habits are often more illustrative than good ones, though either can be used to characterize. A man who issues a lunch invitation and then dodges the check creates a lasting impression. In her chick-lit novel
  Can You Keep a Secret?
  , Sophie Kinsella paints a quick but effective portrait of the heroine's grandfather:
  

  “I never throw away cards.” Grandpa gives me a long look. “When you get to my age; when the people you've known and loved all your life start to pass away … you want to hang onto any memento. However small.” …
  

  I reach for the nearest card and open it. … “Grandpa! This is from Smith's Electrical Maintenance, 1965!”
  

  In just a few words, Kinsella has shown us a guy who's not only got a collection of stuff but a sense of humor about it.
  

• Through the props that surround the character.
  A character who clings to a favorite ratty sweater, her mother's teddy bear, or a scrapbook full of clippings gives the readers a view of the things she thinks are important — and thus of the kind of person she is. If the hero walks in carrying a tennis racquet or a shotgun or a Bible, the readers will know quite a bit about him before he says a word.
  

  Lots of women like chocolate, but in her chick-lit novel
  Third Time Lucky
  , Claire Cross shows us a heroine who's almost defined by chocolate:
  

  I know the fundamental right of every mortal to eat chocolate is in the Geneva Convention. …
  

  Many foods have been banished from my kitchen and diet because of their betrayal of me in those dark teenage years … but my relationship with chocolate is beyond such restrictions.
  

  Our love affair borders on the divine. … I handle chocolate as a controlled substance, since prolonged exposure results in extreme lateral growth. One chocolate bar every month and not one bite more is my allotment. …
  

  I buy the chocolate on the first of the month … and ogle it in the fridge for as long as I can stand it. …
  

  After that introduction, any time the heroine mentions chocolate the readers get an instant picture of the character's state of mind.
  

• Through the character's name.
  A man named Sylvester creates a much different picture in the mind than one named Jake. A woman named Elizabeth is a whole different creature than one named Betsy. Does the name you've chosen for your character fit her personality, her time period, her job, her background? How does the name affect and reflect her personality? In her historical single title
  The Warrior
  , Claire Delacroix captures not only the personality but the time period as her hero and heroine discuss what she should call him.
  

  “I would not have matters so formal between us. … You need not address me as your lord when we are alone.”
  

  “Shall I call you Magnus? … Or Michael?”
  

  “The choice is yours, lady mine.”
  

  “Then I shall call you Hawk. … For your repute seems to fit your nature well. Does the hawk not tear out the heart of what it kills, then leave the rest as carrion?”
  

  Here we also get a picture of this historical hero's willingness to compromise, unusual for a real man of his time, and also of the historical heroine's typical independence. Even when she's in his power, she can't resist tweaking him.
  

• Through narrative description.
  Simply stating a character's type or traits, without showing examples of behavior or thoughts to illustrate the statement, requires the readers to take your word rather than drawing conclusions of their own. Writing something like, “She was efficient at her job and thoughtful of everyone” is among the least effective ways of showing a character. When dealing with secondary characters, however, narrative description is sometimes the fastest and most efficient way to make the point,
  as when Arlene James introduces us to the hero's small niece in her inspirational romance
  Deck the Halls
  :
  

  Four-year-old Elizabeth Ann, known affectionately to the family as Bets, effectively commanded the coterie of Cutler grandchildren, numbering six in all. An only child, to the growing dismay of her parents, she'd never had any trouble holding her own against her five older cousins, four of whom were boys.
  

  Since Elizabeth Ann isn't a main character or even a significant third, showing her in action with all those boy cousins would take up space better spent on developing the romantic relationship.
  

  All of these techniques for showing characters work as well in other genres as in romance, but in romance novels it's particularly important to show rather than tell whenever possible, so the readers will feel like an important part of the story as they draw conclusions of their own about what sort of people the characters are.