Adding a Romantic Partner

 QUESTION:  I’m writing an action adventure novel and someone told me I needed to add a girlfriend for my hero so he could save her and win her love.  What do you think?

One of the problems with the hero getting the girl/love object in the end is that it harkens back to the idea that the girl is only a sex partner/thing to be won, not an active participant who deserves the happy ending.  The passive love/sex partner really annoys most readers who find it either sexist or boring.  

If you put the girl/sex partner in, you have to make this character a participant in the story in a very important way, and she must be more than a sex object/prize.

My own advice is that it isn't romance but love that makes a novel stand above others.  The main character must love— be it a romantic partner, his family, or some ideal like his country.  That love must drive what the character does and what the character is, or the novel lacks the something that makes it more than a quick read that is quickly forgotten. 

Goal, Motivatin, and Cost

Have you ever started reading a novel where the main character decides to face an impossible task and an implacable enemy with the odds so far in favor of the bad guys that success, let alone survival, is minimal at best?

Sounds like a great novel, doesn't it?

I've just finished two novels where the main character is in that impossible situation.  In one novel, the hero must face these impossible odds to save his young daughter from a very ugly death.  In the second, the heroine must find out the truth about the death of a young woman she's never met, and the outcome appears to have no real value to her.  She's not even working for money.

I zipped through the first novel like a speed-reading lunatic to find out how the hero managed to save his little girl.  I cared about the results from page one to “The End.” 

The second novel I very nearly tossed away after the first few chapters because I hate stupid and suicidal main characters who have no real reason to go forward in an impossible situation, but I persevered out of curiosity and a fondness for dissecting author mistakes.  

After over half the novel, the author of the second novel finally lets the reader know why the heroine has continued forward in the investigation, but by then, the damage has been done to the novel and the reader's reactions to the heroine.  The reader also realizes that the author has cheated by withholding vital information which a fair author would not.  At this point, the odds of the reader picking up the next book by this author are slimmer than the original chance of the hero's survival.

As an author, you must balance the main character’s goal, its cost to him, and his motivation.  If the goal and the probable cost for the main character is great, the character must have motivation that equals both.  

World Building and the Passive Main Character

In a novel I read recently, the heroine is in the middle of a paranormal political mess.  Some of the supernatural races want to control her power, others want to kill her because they can’t control her power, and all of them are fighting against the others to gain the upper hand in controlling the world.  Meanwhile, the big bad mythological super villain is in the wings waiting to strike at all them.  

Sounds like the recipe for an exciting novel, doesn’t it?  It wasn’t.  I struggled to keep reading because the heroine was like a ball on a field being bashed around in different directions with no real goal or control on her part.  She spent the entire novel fighting to stay alive or keep her friends alive at each new attack.  She was reacting, not acting, which made her a passive and boring heroine.  

No matter how complex the world building in your novel is and no matter how Byzantine the politics are, they aren’t the plot of your novel.  The main character’s struggle to obtain her goal is the major plot of your novel.  Don’t forget that as you create the complexity of the world that main character lives in. 

Reaction versus Goal in Plot

When I started plotting my romantic suspense novel, GUARDIAN ANGEL, I decided that my plot line would be the following--

(Back story) High-powered defense attorney Lauton O’Brien hires Gard Gardner to protect his adult daughter Desta if one of the organized crime lords or killers he defends decides to go after him or his family.

(Book plot) Lauton realizes one of his clients is out to kill him. He sends Desta and information about who is out to kill him to Gard, and he disappears. Desta comes by boat to Gard’s lake home. The boat blows up with the information, but Gard saves Desta. 

Desta and Gard go on the run with hired killers hot on their trail.

At first glance, the plot sounded great. Lots of action, adrenaline, scary bad guys, and a perfect situation for two people very suited to each other to find love and a happily-ever-after.

Then I realized the plot had a fatal flaw. The two main characters spend the whole novel reacting to what others are doing to them. Reaction is passive, and passive creates less than stellar main characters and a much weaker book. 

I needed to give the characters a goal which is active. 

I wanted to keep the hired killers hot on their trail, but I decided that Gard and Desta weren’t running away, they were working toward their goal -- following clues to find Lauton so they can figure out who is trying to kill them then stopping that person so they can have a life together. 

When you are creating your main plot, you also need to be sure that your main character or characters have an active goal instead of being swept along by circumstances or by someone’s actions against them.

Make them heroes, not victims.

NOTE:  This book is going out of print next month because the publisher is closing down. RIP, GUARDIAN ANGEL.  

The Selfish Goal

A powerful novel needs a main character with an important goal he must achieve by the end of the novel. At all costs, the main character must achieve that goal or fail utterly with devastating cost to him and those around him.

A recent novel I tried to read reminded me of when that goal won't work.

Here's the premise. The heroine is the standard urban fantasy woman-- incredible supernatural abilities, snappy leather outfit and dialogue, sharp weapons, and a supernatural boyfriend. So far, so good.

Even better, she is the prophesied warrior who can stop the supernatural baddies before they can start the Apocalypse by opening the gates to Hell.

The Big Bad holds her innocent kid sister hostage, and the ransom is the keys to open all of Hell's gates to Earth.

The heroine must decide whether to save her kid sister by helping the demons of Hell wipe out human life or lose her sister and save everyone else.

A no-brainer, right? She'd choose to save humanity.

Instead, she chooses to help the demons end life on Earth with the very faint possibility she may be able to stop them.

At this point in the novel, I said some rude things about the stupidity and selfishness of the heroine and stopped reading because this wasn't a heroine I could root for.

When you are thinking about your main character's goal for the novel, remember that it must be a goal the reader can root for. Saving a sibling is a good thing but saving a sibling at the cost of everyone else's life is a bad thing.

A hero's goal is selfless, not selfish.

Thinking Through a Minor Character

 You are an old and powerful fae (fairy) with lots of human money and your own retainers.  You discover a powerful magical artifact, and others want to kill you and take it.  Do you

1.  Hire fae warriors to protect you the moment you realize you are in trouble.

2. Contact other powerful and friendly fae for help to get you to your own protected domain.

3. A long time after you find the artifact and have done nothing to protect yourself and the artifact, you leave a message on the answering machine of a half-fae private detective who has neither the power nor the skill to protect you.  Then you don’t bother to tell her who is after you or why even though the assassins have just broken in the door.  You do, however, ask her to solve your murder.

Unfortunately, in a novel I recently read, the author chose #3.  She obviously hadn’t given any thought to the background, skills, and options of her murder victim so she created this whooper of a ridiculous storyline.  

If she’d wanted a victim who had no means of protection or power, she could have created someone to fit the bill.  

Creating a believable story requires not only a good viewpoint character with her strengths and weakness fitting the storyline; it also requires the same careful thought about minor characters who influence her and the storyline.

A Dollar of Trust

Imagine that a reader gives you a dollar’s worth of trust by reading your book. That trust means she expects you to give her certain things like a good story, interesting characters, and competent craft, among other things.

Every time your story fails in one of these elements, the reader takes away a bit of that money, and, when there is no money left, the reader tosses the book without finishing it and will no longer trust you enough to buy the next book.

The really tricky problem is you don't know what will irk each reader. Maybe it's grammatical mistakes. She may take a nickel out of that dollar, or, if she really hates grammatical errors, that error may cost you a quarter or the whole dollar. Or it could be plot problems, bad science, or faltering viewpoint to lower that dollar to nothing.  

Do you really want to risk losing that reader by being sloppy about any part of your writing? It's just pretend is not an excuse many readers will accept.