Heroes You Can Believe In

I have a confession to make.

I’m cheating on my husband.

Okay, not really, but it can start to feel that way when I’m heavily embroiled in the writing process and am spending hours each day in the company of a man who sometimes seems more familiar to me than the man I married. Not surprising, I suppose -- after all, my characters have come out of my own head, whereas my husband is his own person (boy, is he) and still leaves me baffled as to why he thinks the floor is a better place for dirty socks than the hamper.

At any rate, I know I have to feel a good deal of emotional investment in my characters, and possibly the most invested in my heroes, even if I may be telling the story completely from the point of view of my heroines (as is the case in my contemporary romance, Fringe Benefits, and a fantasy/romance WIP I have in the hopper). After all, I’m going to be spending months and possibly even years (gulp!) in the company of these men, so I’d better do my darnedest to make sure they’re as fascinating and smart and three-dimensional as the man I’ve chosen to spend my life with.

It’s not enough to know intellectually that the hero and heroine are going to end up together; I have to understand at a gut level why they complement one another, and how their individual strengths and weaknesses make them uniquely perfect for each other and no one else. I want my readers to root for the characters’ eventual happiness, even though there will be plenty of bumps along the way. Writing complex, believable characters isn’t easy, but I know if I get bored with them somewhere in the middle of that months-long project, then my readers probably will, too.

But when I sit down at the computer, and I’m genuinely excited to write that next scene -- when I can practically hear my leading man’s voice in my head, or see his eyebrow lift in a particular way at something the heroine has said -- all right, it’s not exactly cheating, but it’s definitely an emotional reaction to a man who isn’t my husband…

Well, I won’t tell him if you won’t!

~Christine Pope
www.christinepope.com
Love letters from the City of Angels...