Characters With Scars: Love Or Hate?

There's a rule about telling jokes that is a warning to those who can't tell jokes: "If you have to explain it, it's not funny."

The same rule applies, in many ways, to writing. A writer really only has the length of her story to explain a character's motivations, actions, behaviors and the reasons why those might all change. Much like a marathon, an author has to push those facts into the pace without sacrificing the plot, and cover all the information by the end of the book. For the sake of telling the story as the story needs to be told, the author works with many different, challenging character types from the Mary Sues to the over the top, Kick-Ass heroines to the hard-boiled cop and the tortured hero. All of them must live their character arc and change from someone who is just getting by to someone who has thrown off the yoke of their past and learned to live a full life in spite of their pains.

Of course, not all characters are born equal. Some are happy go lucky, playful folks whose idea of a rough time is having the power go out or having to get a menial job. Then there's the ones who come from truly dark, grueling places. Characters who have to overcome scars that are deep and emotional and ingrained. Their idea of a rough time is not eating for three days and getting the crap beat out of them in an alley and being left to bleed to death. As you can imagine, these folks are going to require different lures to draw them out of their ingrained natures.

In some genres, for some fans, that's understandable. They give the character time to overcome their issues as the plot moves along. And if they sometimes come out of a book with a few of those old reflexes, old issues, still there, like shadows they are still dealing with but can work around, in some genres, for some fans, that's okay.

Some genres. Some fans.

And this is the part in the post when the author says something she probably shouldn't.

Because one of the things I've noticed is that in romance…the expectation is different.

Now, I totally admit, I only really noticed this because I've written a few characters that are "dark". I personally have a hang up, in that if I'm going to give a character a conflict, I want that conflict to have a realistic, generally possible resolution. The same as I would be expected to portray a character with cancer to have certain symptoms, certain health care treatment that has to be expressed or the reader who knows better will call me on it. And rightly so.

When I fit a conflict to a character, I know that no matter how good their love lives, how good the sex even, something has to happen within the character to bring on the change toward a happier future. The rougher the past, the deeper that lesson was learned in the first place, the more time and more requirements those characters are going to need in order to give up the security of the life they currently lead. I want very much to feel that a person who has been in that predicament can read what I write and say, "Yes, that's what I went through. That's what I know is true or close enough that it makes sense."

But in romance, I've seen a reaction to characterizations like these that worry me a little. Readers have, in a notable way, made their confusion by these kinds of characterizations known. They don't like characters who carry their baggage past the initiation of commitment. As if finding romantic interest could cure what is often decades of training. There's a frustration with characters who "waffle", as they worry at the knot of unresolved fears in the face of taking a chance on getting hurt by newest love interest. Generally, the law of inertia applies to people too. If you've had to protect yourself all your life, it's going to be impossible to stop on a dime. But romance expectations–and resulting disappointments in characters–continue.

I've heard some people say that if they wanted reality, they wouldn't read romance. They don't want characters who can't accept a good thing. They want the escapist experience, where true love conquers all and that the right words said at the right time can take all the hurts away.

Or perhaps it's the fact that readers are already aware of the romance-promise of a guaranteed happily ever after. Do they grow impatient with characters who don't realize that this love is the love that will last? Which leads one to wonder, how is the character to know that? To them, this is just one more person who is likely to hurt them. One more person they could hurt, that they don't want on their conscience.

I really puzzle on this and would love to open a dialogue with readers on it. Can you handle a character that doesn't give into love easily? One that has further to go to find their happily ever after? Or is that simply not what you want in your romance?