Category: Books & Authors

By Jeanmarie Hamilton

In romance, the tortured hero, or probably more accurately, the tormented hero, provides a main character with a dark, and possibly mysterious past. He may also have a physical problem, or in the case of werewolves and other shape shifters, an other-worldly characteristic, as in MOONLIGHT DESPERADO.

We want to know how in the world he deals with his challenges, how the heroine responds to him and his actions, and how the story problem is resolved at the end with a happily ever after ending. 

At the start of the story, he has shown us at least one good quality, and his dark moods and sometimes harsh words for the heroine don’t fool us. Deep down, he’s a good guy with big problems to overcome.

What drives him? His problems usually stem from something that happened to him in the past. Most of the torment for the hero is mental and emotional. His past keeps him from enjoying the life and love others around him seem to have.

What happened to him? We readers, and writers, want to know. How will he overcome his past that’s still tormenting him? How will the heroine save him, or prove to him that he’s worthy of love and can love her?

What conflict keeps the hero and heroine apart? Usually a tortured/tormented hero doesn’t feel anywhere near worthy of the heroine. The hero’s torment will influence his life on many levels including decisions he makes regarding his behavior toward the heroine, and what he mistakenly believes is “best” for her.

He wants to protect her. He pushes her away for that very reason, to protect her. She deserves the best, which he isn’t in his eyes. He doesn’t believe he deserves her.

The hero fights his demons but doesn‘t believe he can conquer them. The reader hopes he will be successful and the heroine will win her man. Why? When the characters reach success, it makes us feel good and maybe even gives us a sense of everything is possible if we try.

The tortured hero provides the writer and reader escape from daily routines of life, like washing the laundry. (Mine is in the dryer now.) Characters sparring with each other may have you gripping your book, asking the question, “Will they find happiness together?”

The escape for many readers takes the emotional form of angst which is eventually eased with that sense of  success and emotional relief.

When the tortured hero makes the decision to leave the heroine in order to protect her, the heroine will fight against all odds, no matter what they face, to bring the hero back to her side where he belongs.   

The tortured hero drives the journey toward success, for both the hero and heroine, and makes for an edge of your seat emotional experience with an awesome conclusion.

What is your take on tortured heroes? Or heroines? Have you written one recently? Are they your favorite read?

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Please leave a comment to enter to win MOONLIGHT DESPERADO. If you’re reading this blog through a feed at Facebook, Goodreads or another social network, please note you need to leave your comment at www.museinterrupted.com to enter.

To read the back cover blurb for MOONLIGHT DESPERADO or to read Jeanmarie’s bio, see yesterday’s post. Visit www.jeanmariehamilton.com to learn more about Jeanmarie and her books.

By Kris Kennedy

The thing that can’t be undone. Ringing the bell that can’t be unrung. It means you’re committed. In for the long haul. The act, however unconsidered it was at the start, is now binding.

I believe this is one of the things we seek in our stories. Oh, it’s among other things, of course. But one of the reasons great fiction moves us is because we see characters doing things that we ourselves often back away from: being irrevocable. Doing the thing that can’t be undone.

For good or ill, that’s one of the most exciting parts of reading—and writing—fiction.

It’s part of the reason why the characters in novels don’t do the mundane tasks of their lives on stage. Things like cleaning the house don’t matter, in terms of Story. (Did you hear that? Just tell your family cleaning the toilet doesn’t have a fundamental turning point within, so you’re giving it up.) Most of the mundane tasks of daily life are revocable. Nothing ‘turns’ on them. You could take them back, and no one would know or care. Nothing is fundamentally different as a result. They’re forgettable.

They never make a difference.

(In fact, cleaning is the the antithesis of irrevocable. At least in my house.)

You can walk away from a clean OR a dirty toilet. That is…unless you found a diamond ring resting there, after you’d pushed back the hair from your sweaty forehead with a forearm and knelt to scrub your 20th toilet of the week. And then you saw it. Sparkling. A diamond ring. Diamond rings don’t grow in toilet bowls, so that means someone lost it. Or tossed it. And you found it. And your rent is a month overdue.

NOW you have a story. Now you have a protagonist. Someone with a choice to make.

Make the right ones and you have a hero. Or a heroine.

In all our ‘keeper’ books, one of the things we generally find is characters actively getting themselves deeper and deeper into worse and worse trouble, particularly with the hero/heroine, and there’s simply no backing out. Nothing they do can be reversed.

Sometimes this is hard for us as authors. We like our heroes and heroines. We know their histories, their full potential and their pathetic pitfalls. We love them. Or at least really like them.

In any event, we want them to have a happy life. We don’t want them to be thrown to the wolves. To feel despair. To have Dark Nights of the Soul. To say ‘no’ when it’d be safer to say ‘okay, fine.’ To walk the plank. To face the witch in her very own castle, surrounded by guards, with nothing but a scarecrow to protect them.

But we’ll do it.

For you, the reader.

Because in the end, we’re storytellers. We know heroes and heroines have to walk through the fire. Happy, easy things happening to nice, good people, all of which can be taken back at the first sign of discomfort, is not drama.

Drama means conflict. And that means being committed. Doing, at least once, something that cannot be undone, ever.

Check out the books on your ‘keeper’ shelves. I’ll bet you can find at places the characters made irrevocable, un-take-back-able choices. Decisions that, even if done in the spur of the moment—especially if done in the spur of the moment—pushed them closer to the dark edge of What They Known, then straight off the cliff, into peril and danger and their own worst fears. Right in the other person’s arms.

Come share a moment of irrevocable choice in a book you’re reading or have read. A classic or an unknown. And to the writers out there, how about from a story you’re writing? Why does that moment feel powerful to you, as the reader? What is irrevocably different after that choice, and why do you think it makes the story better?

Or, if you could re-write a scene from a story you’ve read, to include an irrevocable choice, what would it be? Something they can’t take back, and will change everything to come after.

I’m giving away a copy of my latest release, THE IRISH WARRIOR, to someone who gives a great example of irrevocability in romance fiction!!

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Please leave a comment to enter to win THE IRISH WARRIOR. If you’re reading this blog through a feed at Facebook, Goodreads or another social network, please note you need to leave your comment at www.museinterrupted.com to enter.