Likeable doesn’t mean passive

Characters in romances must be likeable. I think we all accept that. Hard to pull off an insufferable character in such a character-based novel.

Your reader must be drawn to read on by caring what happens to your characters. Your plot depends more on changes of attitude between your two lovers than on great sweeping events. But Richard and I have been mentoring a new romance writer and it struck me that, in making characters nice, it’s easy to be tempted into creating a heroine who is too passive.

Our student’s character had things happen around her – and she was nice. She was swept along by powerful characters and events around her – and she continued to be nice.

We advised her to make her heroine more assertive. She must be pro-active in her own life, even if she’s wrong-headed, or if her actions lead her into trouble. Although we don’t like a bitch, we are equally put off by someone who can’t take a stand or make her own decisions.

We generally like characters with spirit. Passivity makes us lose patience with them. We long to give them a slap and tell them to get a life. We’d much rather your character got into trouble because she ran headlong into it, than that she got into a tight-spot because events overwhelmed her and she did nothing to prevent them.

We also don’t take to characters who lack flaws. Perfection is boring – and irritating. We enjoy complex characters with quirks.

But Richard and I believe that a romantic heroine’s flaws should be those of generosity. She loves too much, she struggles with her finances, she rushes off to help someone and leaves her affairs in a mess, she loses her temper because she’s passionate about something … we won’t take to someone whose flaws make her stingy – with her money, her life and her love.

I once advised a would-be romantic writer on a manuscript. She had her heroine take up with a powerful man, only to discover that he was controlling and abusive. At one point, he kidnapped her and kept her more or less imprisoned. Even when he released her, she stayed with him endlessly, seemingly unable to take the decision to leave, mainly because staying “was good for her career”.

Well, besides the fact that the man was certainly no hero, that was the point I finally lost patience with the heroine. I thought she deserved the bastard. She lost all my sympathy.

Not only was she passive and incapable of making a decisive move, it seemed that her flaw was one of greed – a form of meanness. She stays for her career? Please!