ROMANCING THE LIBRARIAN
Cindy, thanks so much for inviting me to visit Muse Interrupted.
Recently I attended a great workshop presented by Susan Wiggs, one of my favorite authors. She illustrated her presentation with examples from her current release, Lakeshore Christmas (which I highly recommend). I’d just finished the book and had noticed a similarity between her heroine, Maureen the librarian, and the heroine of my December release, SEX DRIVE, Theresa the sociology professor.
I knew exactly where my character had come from and I’d wondered about Susan’s, so I was very interested when she said that her Maureen was a librarian archetype. Yes! That’s exactly how I see Theresa.
What’s an archetype? There are certain characters who immediately resonate with readers (or viewers) because we recognize and understand them. They’re often “larger than life,” yet we feel that we know them. These characters, in numerous incarnations and variations, appear over and over again in myths, fairy tales, books, and movies, and we never get tired of them. They’re not stereotypes – e.g., each librarian character is unique – but they share some common features. For example, the following are all 
librarians: Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen, Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, and of course Marian the librarian in The Music Man. Get the picture? (And can’t you just imagine a dashing hero ripping off her glasses, pulling the pins out of her hair, and releasing all the passion that’s hidden inside that buttoned-up exterior?)
Do you know the movie, The Big Easy? It’s one of my favorites. Ellen Barkin plays Anne Osbourne, a repressed rule-bound lawyer who has a hidden sensual side just waiting for the right man to bring it out. The man is Dennis Quaid, playing Remy McSwain, a sexy, charming cop who isn’t much for respecting any rules. She’s a librarian and he’s a charmer archetype.
That’s the same heroine/hero mix I used in SEX DRIVE.
Prof. Theresa Fallon was a child genius who aced her schoolwork and flunked Boys 101. When, on the flight from Sydney to Vancouver, BC, she’s seated beside Damien Black, one of Australia’s ten sexiest bachelors, she’s about to get a crash course in flirting, fooling around, and maybe even love. As typically happens when you put a librarian and a charmer together, she learns how to lighten up and have fun, and discovers her own sensuality and sexuality, and he learns that while games are fun, life’s even more rewarding when you find something – or someone – to get serious about.
There are many different kinds of archetype schemes: e.g., zodiac signs, Jungian archetypes, enneagrams, Myers-Briggs personality types. The one that really clicks for me is the one developed by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, and Sue Viders, in The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes & Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes. This is a fascinating book to read, with examples from classic movies, TV shows, and books. (And of course you have to do your homework by rereading the books and renting the DVDs. Such a tough life, doing all that research.)
If you’d like to see an example of archetypes in action, I hope you’ll check out SEX DRIVE. It’s the first in my four-book Wild Ride to Love series (planes, trains, automobiles and a cruise ship) starring the four Fallon sisters.
Now, how about you? Who are some of the heroines and heroes who stand out in your mind, and what makes them so memorable? If you had to describe them in a word or phrase, what would it be? Let’s come up with more titles of books and movies so we’ll have lots of enjoyable homework to do over our winter holidays!
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To read Susan’s bio and the back cover blurb for SEX DRIVE, please visit yesterday’s post. To learn more about Susan and her books, check out her website.