What Can a Romance Heroine Do?

Cleaning off the website, I found an old page that came from a post here many years ago: “If I Am a Romance Heroine, I will never . . .” It was inspired by the wonderful Evil Overlord list, and it really didn’t belong on the website; it wasn’t a serious critique of the romance heroine, it was mostly jokes.

But looking over it again, made me think.

Is there anything a romance heroine can’t do? It’s 2016, aren’t we beyond restricting our heroines? Uh, not really. It’s the Protagonist Problem. There’s nothing a woman can’t do in romance fiction, but there are a lot of things she should avoid if she wants to be a protagonist. Romance is, after all, about an optimistic ending, and it’s hard to root for an HEA for a child-abusing, terrorist, racist, homophobic, puppy mill owner.

So taking as a given that a romance heroine has to be basically a decent person, flawed but not cruel or sociopathic*, what are the things that would make me throw the book against the wall? I took another look at the list. [The comments in brackets are my comments from the original page on the website.]

“If I am ever a romance heroine, I will not…”

1. Go up in my nightie to see what all that screaming in the attic is about. (Jenny) [Don’t be a Darwin Heroine.]

I think the irritation with this one is that it makes her a TDTL (Too Dumb To Live) heroine. It’s great if a protagonist is vulnerable and makes mistakes, not if she says, “Gee, what’s in here?” and puts her head in the lion’s mouth. You want readers saying, “Oh god, I’d do that and I’d be in just as much trouble as she is,” not “WHY WHY WHY would she do that?” One aligns the reader with the heroine, the other distances her from Our Girl.

2. Have a baby and not tell the father to protect him and his future. (Jenny) [Because fathers have rights, too, so she’s not being noble, she’s being selfish. He gets to decide if he wants to abandon a baby.]

This one, I think, has to do with values. Again, heroines should be flawed and make mistakes (like the baby), that’s what makes them human. But the choices they make characterize them, and choosing not to tell a man he’s a father means that Our Girl thinks she can make decisions for him. A heroine who says, “Listen, I’m going to raise this kid on my own, my decision, I don’t want your help, but you should know you’re going to be a father,” is admirable. A heroine who says, “I’m going to raise this kid on my own, he’s not even going to know the kid exists,” is selfish and controlling, unless Dad is a serial killer or rapist, in which case he’s not going to be the hero anyway.

3. Decide to barge into a dangerous situation just to show him! (Corrina) [Actually, don’t have her barge into a dangerous situation at all unless not barging in means she or somebody she loves is gonna die.]

This goes back to the TDTL heroine. Again, we’re not talking about understandable mistakes or actions taken in the heat of the moment for relatable motivations, we’re talking about stupidity walking. Motivation is everything.

4. Tell the hero I’m a virgin as I’m about to have some really incredible sex. (Corrina) [You’d think that would have come up in conversation before that.]

I have no objections to virgin heroines, although they’re harder to explain these days, but I’m not sure how this one happens. That is, I can’t see a lot of men objecting to somebody being a virgin since not being a virgin isn’t a big deal, and it’s useful information to have before hitting the sheets. I’m just trying to figure out how it comes up. There’s the story where she decides to lose her virginity and plans it out; there’s plenty of time to give him a head’s up ahead of time. Or there’s the story where she’s so swept away by passion that she goes for it; but if she’s swept away why is she chatting? I think my big objection here is making virginity a point of contention. That’s so twentieth century.

5. Let my breasts taunt and/or tease the hero. (Jenny) [Most of my heroines are dealing with gravity; their breasts just don’t have that kind of energy.]

This is just “Don’t be a bad writer.”

6. See him talking to another woman and turn it into a Flaming Affair without asking him about it. (Jen) [This is the Big Misunderstanding. You go to Writer Hell if you write the Big Misunderstanding.]

Oh, god, the Big Misunderstanding. I hate the Big Misunderstanding, and it’s so easy to slide into. I’ve done it. I built a whole book on it (Trust Me On This.) It’s a terrible trope. I’ll never do it again, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

7. Go into the basement to see what that strange noise was. (Beth) [More Darwin.]

This is TDTL again.

8. Permit my bosom to heave, especially while wearing a bodice. (Beth) [What is it with all these energetic bosoms?]

This is bad writing again.

9. Ever permit my bodice to be ripped, though I may rip it myself. (Beth) [I’d just avoid the bodice all together.]

I’m okay with this one. At this point, putting your heroine in a bodice and having the hero rip it is so meta, it’s cool again.

10. Wear a bodice. (Beth) [There. What did I say?]

I’ve got to get Zelda into a bodice.

11. Be more beautiful, thin, and/or rich than anyone else on the planet. (Cindy) [It’s so hard to build sympathy for a heroine indistinguishable from Paris Hilton.]

You can actually do all of those things, you just have to make her vulnerable in some other way. (Apologies to Paris Hilton; I must have been going through a Mean Girl stage.)

12. Conceal my identity, or if I already have, put off telling him who I really am. (Darla) [Unless, of course, she’s undercover and targeting him; in certain cases saying, “Hi, I’m Jeannie from the FBI” gets you a Darwin Award.]

Again, motivation. Really, you can have a heroine do damn near anything if you motivate her intelligently.

13. Have the longest legs the hero’s ever seen, especially if I’m only five foot tall. (Darla) [Right up there with being 5’9″ with a great ass and huge breasts and weighing 105 lbs. Look, the breasts alone weigh 105.]

This one still bugs me, the physically perfect heroine, but I think it’s changing. I’m okay with beautiful heroines although I rarely write them, but impossible heroines make me scream. I remember one romance I read ages ago in which the heroine was in a car accident, so the hero carried her inside (it was on a deserted road in the middle of the wilderness and his cabin was nearby, but still SPINAL INJURY, dude), and noticed her tremendous rack and then found her driver’s license and found out that she was 5’9′ and 105 pounds. At the time I was incoherent with rage–my teenage daughter was 5’9 and so skinny that people kept feeding her, and she weighed 140–but looking back on it, I have realized that it was because the heroine had lied to the DMV.

14. Borrow clothes that are too snug in the bosom. (Darla) [Unless they belong to the hero.]

“Oh, no, my breasts are too big,” does not engender sympathy in our culture. If you’re going for vulnerability, this is not the road to take.

15. Be at the absolute pinnacle of my profession when I’m 22. (Darla) [Unless she’s about to be indicted for insider trading or fired for sleeping with the boss.]

Our twenties is when we make our mistakes. And our thirties and forties and fifties, yes, but those early years are when we make banal mistakes because we all have to start somewhere. The idea that somebody who is twenty-two is a master of her domain is off-putting and unbelievable. Now if Dad died and she inherited the company at 22, you’ve got me: this is a woman with problems. The young-person-thrown-in-over-her-or-his-head is a great story premise; the young-person-who-is-a-Master-of-the-Universe is not.

16. Get in front of the hero and his gun when the villain is confronting us. [I might have done this one. I know I had a scene in What the Lady Wants where the bad guy draws a gun and the hero steps behind my heroine, but that was because the bad guy was her cousin and he was 95% sure she wouldn’t get shot.]

I’m not sure about this one, actually. If the heroine knows damn well the guy with the gun won’t shoot her, I’d be fine with it. If she’s sacrificing her life for the hero for a good reason, I’d be fine with it. If she doesn’t have a plan or a willingness to die, then she’s TDTL again. No TDTL heroines.

17. Limit…the breathy pauses in…my sentences…to only one…a phrase. (lslcw) [Unless she’s asthmatic. If she asthmatic, she’s gonna gasp sometimes.]

Bad writing again.

18. Have a “creamy” anything. (cyn/blinky) [I’ll allow a good mayonnaise.]

Eh, it’s a cliche, so bad writing, but not a deal-breaker.

19.Have sex with a hero who has a “velvet covered manhood” because of the annoying lint this would create. (liberryshortcake) [Especially if he’s the one calling a velvet covered manhood. Or Fred. If he’s named it, she leaves.]

Bad writing again.

20. Keep reminding the hero that I am independent and can take care of myself, while constantly getting into situations where he has to “save” me. (Carolyn) [Because the reader wonders how the hell she’s survived up until then.]

TDTL Heroine.

21. Insist I am independent then allow the hero to dictate my life. (Jen) [A variation on the “chase him until he catches you” plan.]

TDTL heroine.

22. Struggle futilely to break free from the hero’s punishing embrace before being overcome with desire. Either I want him, in which case I should not be fighting, or I don’t want him, in which case I should break his nose, foot, finger, and anything else handy. Enough with the wimpy struggles. (Jen) [No playing around with the concept of “no.”].

This is a dicey one. It’s a strong fantasy, so I wouldn’t rule it out, but it’s a really dangerous one, there are so many ways it can go wrong and turn the story into a wallbanger. I’d say “Avoid this.” Also don’t write punishing embraces, that’s just bad writing.

23. Tell all my suspicions to the nice looking, totally sympathetic “other” man only to find out he’s the killer. (TheTwoJeans) [I’m actually on the fence about this one because this is absolutely something I’d do. I collaborated with a Green Beret once who’d had training to withstand torture; he told me I’d never be tortured because all anybody would have to do to get information out of me would be hand me a Diet Coke and say, “So, what’s new?” Some of us are just natural sharers.]

It’s motivation again. If the reader would confide in the character and only finds out later he’s a Bad Guy, then it’s okay for the heroine to do it. I bought it completely in Charade.

So my takeaway from this is:

• Vulnerable heroines who make understandable mistakes are good; TSTL heroines are not.

• Motivation is essential.

• Avoid the Big Misunderstanding like an STD.

• Don’t write bad.

*As soon as I wrote “not cruel or sociopathic,” I thought of Madalena and Gareth on Galavant. I love Maddie and Gar: may they be bad but not evil together forever.

Today’s Good Advice:

Do not ever google Mark of the Beast.

It brings up some of the most batshit insane websites I’ve ever seen. And not good batshit, either.

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