Welcome to Heroine Week! I'm so excited to finally share all the fabulous guest posts with all of you. I know you're dying to get this party started, so here is one of my favorite authors, Sarah Mayberry. Her heroines are admirable, approachable and relatable, and this post pretty much explains why.
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The Care and Feeding of the Everyday Heroine
by Sarah Mayberry
Sometimes I think us contemporary romance authors have it tough, having to spin romance and lust and love out of the ordinary plain cotton of everyday life. Our heroines don’t get awesome swords or fighting skills or backstories that involved magic spells and paranormal powers. We don’t get to dress them up in hats and gloves and petticoats and send them out to roam the streets of London in a high perch phaeton with some gorgeous aristocrat at their side.
It’s a tough one. When I sit down to write my books, I try to turn the very ordinariness of the stories I’m telling into their strength. I want my readers to imagine that this story could happen to them - or perhaps someone they know. And a huge, huge part of that is creating a heroine who is relatable, human and likable.
As a reader, if I’m going to spend several hours living in the heroine’s shoes, I need to like her. She doesn’t need to be perfect - God forbid - but I need to understand her motivations and care for her. Otherwise it’s going to be pretty hard for me to get on board and get emotionally invested in her happiness.
As a writer, I know I’m going to spend months with the hero and heroine of any book I’m working on. Sometimes years. I definitely need to like and relate to these people! When I sit down to plot a story, I spend a lot of time thinking about what my hero and heroine want, where they come from and what they need, as opposed to what they want, because sometimes these can be two very different things and the difference can make for some interesting conflict.
I am a big fan of smart heroines. I also strive to make my heroines self aware - ie they know themselves, and they are honest with themselves. Sure, they might have a blind spot or two, issues that need addressing, but they hold themselves to a standard and try to deal open-handedly with the world. Another big thing for me is that my heroines own their sexuality and their desire. They don’t find desire shameful, and many of them are more than happy to take matters into their own hands, either by flying solo or being the aggressor when it comes to propositioning the hero. Sex is a huge part of romance and a successful relationship, and there is nothing more heady and powerful than those first crazy months of a love affair.
My heroines also are not constrained by traditional ideas of what women can and cannot do, career wise. I have written about a female boxer, a mechanic, a soldier, a lawyer. I have also written about single mums who are struggling to make ends meet and women struggling to come to terms with damaging past relationships. My heroines deal with the kinds of issues that me and my friends and the women I see around me deal with. Low-self-esteem, fear of being hurt again, absentee fathers, teenage trauma, abusive parents, grief and feelings of betrayal or loyalty to a friend or sibling.These are not big stories. They are not epic. No one is going to save the world or prevent an uprising. But - hopefully - they are real and emotional and relatable, and by the last page, my ordinary, everyday heroine has become someone you’d like to have a good chin-wag and a bottle of champagne and a few laughs with. Because she’s interesting, and she’s real, and you care about her happiness.
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Connect with Sarah:
Sarah I would love to have "a good chin wag" with all of your heroines I've read! :)
ReplyDeleteHi Stephanie.That's a high compliment coming from you! I will admit that by the time I've finished a book, the hero and heroine feel so real to me that I almost want to have them over for dinner. But I am aware that that way likes Miss Haversham territory...
DeleteAwesome guest post, Sarah! :)
ReplyDeleteI think that's why your books are so popular and why I enjoy them so much :) You don't stick to patterns... while ordinary, you do infuse variety in your heroines. Whether it's their personalities, issues and jobs. You also don't take the easy way out or over-complicated all the conflicts.
Thanks for being so open with us :)
Hi Nath. I don't consciously avoid patterns - and I'm sure that there are plenty in there if you care to look, because us writers all have our little preoccupations - but I do try to come at all my stories through the characters, and their issues and needs tend to dictate both the story and the conflict.
DeleteBeautiful post :-) I'm a huge fan of your books. And while you do write about everyday people, you infuse warmth, humor, and charm into your books, as well as the frustration, hurt/or irritation that everyone feels. You do it so well, and I always look forward to reading a book by you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by for heroine week!
Hi Readsalot81. Thanks for your kind words. I actually tried to write Regency romances for a long time, since I was desperately in love with Georgette Heyer, but then I discovered Jennifer Crusie's Anyone But You and loved how the hero and heroine were so normal and everyday...and I was off and racing toward getting my first book published.
DeleteI wonder if the constrictions of category romance help create more unique characters and stories by forcing authors to think outside of the box. I find that category heroines tend to push genre boundaries and traditional genre roles, even if it doesn’t look like it at first glance. I’ve been more lucky finding diverse stories in categories than in single-titles, especially now that the small-town contemporary is so popular.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a really interesting idea. Since category has certain limitations, the author is challenged more with "how to make this different/stand out" possibly. This is one of the reasons I really enjoy the Harlequin Superromance line. Authors like Sarah and Karina Bliss create really smart and self aware heroines who are normal but also awesome.
DeleteBut I think there are a lot of single title authors who accomplish having a strong heroine center--Julie James, Victoria Dahl, Courtney Milan come to mind.
I think the thing category romance does is really force the writer to knuckle down and concentrate on the couple at the heart of the story. There's no room for big subplots or extraneous color etc, and I think honing that focus means you really, really delve into your characters. Well, that's the way it works for me, anyway!
DeleteAnd this is what I love about a good category. It's almost all about the couple and there's plenty of character development.
DeleteI think there are quite a few of your heroines I'd like to be friends with - they'd certainly make a great group to have at a dinner party, that's for sure. :)
This post is why I love contemporary romance. These are the kind of women I know, or would like to know. Their struggles are similar to mine. Their dreams and ambitions are ones that I recognise. They can't solve it all by becoming a vampire or whatever. They have to show up for work every day. And so on. I love that these women have romances as deep and amazing as anyone else.
ReplyDeleteHi Ros, I love what you just wrote there, about heroines having to show up for work every day. That's so key to the kind of women I write about. Life goes on, and there are no easy fixes to many of the dilemmas they face - which is just the way it works for most of us in real life, too. A lot of the time when I'm writing, I'm putting myself in my heroine's shoes and wondering what I would do/say/think in their situation. I always try to filter it through their character, but that's always my starting point.
DeleteGreat post. I am so excited for this week. I find that the books I hate to end or immediately re-read are the books with heroines like me or my friends. They have relateable problems and emotions. They live in a world I would love to live in.
ReplyDeleteHi Trish J. I have actually worked out in the last few months that I am often really grumpy and irritable when I've finished an awesome book. And that's because I hate to leave the world of the book and move on from characters that I've fallen in love with. My poor other half! At least now I am more conscious of my crabbiness!! But a bit of bear-with-sore-head-ness is well worth it for a great read as far as I am concerned.
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