Characters and Their Inconvenient Truths or Why Do you TORMENT ME SO?

Can you see I had a mild disagreement with a character again? This seems to happen to me a lot. It happened with Maddy from The Petrov Proposal. It happened with Blaise from Highest Price to Pay. It happened with Carlotta from Princess From the Shadows and now…it’s happening with another heroine.

I love hero (and heroine!) torture. Gimme drama. Scars. Whatever. I love it when life has thrown a ton of CRAP their way and they withstand it, even if they are a bit (or a lot cough cough) emotionally screwed up as a result. I love the healing that comes with that. I love the reward. Sad backstories R us.

What I don’t like quite as much is when they make a mess of it themselves. When everything is screwed up (and maybe some other people are too) and it was MY character’s fault. Well, that’s not entirely true, I always end up liking it, but as I’m sort of starting a book and trying to really FIND it, I don’t. Take Blaise from Highest Price. I started him out with a really sad backstory. He’d made a mistake (one that wasn’t REALLY his fault) and he was carrying the guilt of it. And it never settled well with me. I had a great character with all kinds of guilt, but he really didn’t deserve to be carrying it. Unless…oh no. Nononononono…please, Blaise, tell me you didn’t do THAT. PLEASE. You did? Well…frick.

Turned out he was very much the author of his own issues. They were his creation, the consequence of his mistakes. And in the end, I liked it, but I always struggle with that at the outset. I want my characters to be GOOD and for everyone to LIKE THEM. So the idea of giving them these sort of sticky issues in their past is always a bit frightening.

My brand new shiny heroine is insisting she’s just not all that shiny. I tried to ignore the niggling idea I had about her past because I found it a bit…well, tricky. I want her to be GOOD. But really, she’s better than good. She’s interesting. And she was an active participant in where she is in her life because of both good and bad decisions.

And I think that’s really the issue. It’s easier, on some levels, to write a character who is tossed around by the storms of life, and is in hard times because LIFE IS HARD. First of all, that’s a relatable feeling. Second, it makes the character easier to write and…easier to like in some ways. And I’ve written those characters, several of them. Because they’re interesting too. What someone does with the bad things in their life is telling of the kind of person they are, and there is nothing wrong with writing that sort of H or h.

What’s harder though, is the character who made their own bed. But that’s true in life too. We make mistakes, and we have fallout for those mistakes. But just because someone makes a mistake, doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to move on from it and find a happily ever after. I’ve said it before, I tend to look at love as a cure, a balm for the soul. Who needs that more than someone that’s dying? (metaphorically 🙂 )

All that whole blog post to encourage you not to be afraid to explore characters who have made some mistakes. Who have a past. Who very much had a hand in their own undoing. It’s interesting, and, as much as I fight in the beginning, I find it rewarding in the end. (This post is partly a reminder to me as I try to deal with this shady new heroine of mine!)

Also, to let you all know, The Highest Price to Pay is currently 99p in the Amazon UK Kindle store…you can check that out here!

And for my North American friends The Petrov Proposal is now available at eharlequin! (wide release coming in Feb!)