Given today’s date, it seems only appropriate that my post should be about “the L word.”
(Love, that is; not lederhosen. We’ll talk about that some other time, when the memory is not so painful. But I digress…)
Back to love. I’m a big fan of it. And I really appreciate when authors get love right. And conversely (a word that in this context has nothing to do with my favorite high-top sneakers), it bugs me when authors get love wrong.
I recently went on a reading binge, devouring a group of novels by a popular author I’ve belatedly discovered. I really enjoy this author’s writing: it’s funny, insightful, cinematic, jam-packed with conflict, and he explores complex issues of family, sexuality, and death.
But after reading several of his books I began to notice one thing: his male protagonists’ “love” for the main female characters in his books really just boils down to physical attraction. In book after book, his first-person narrators describe the aching beauty of these women, but really nothing more. We’re told that the guy loves the girl, and we’re informed repeatedly that she is totally smokin’ hot, but beyond that, we never really see why he loves her.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m also a big fan of totally smokin’ hotness. And I understand and believe in the notion of “chemistry” between people, both fictional and in real life. And no, I don’t think every romantic relationship in a novel needs to be The Greatest, Deepest Love That Could Ever Exist, Ever. Still, I find it odd that an author who is so good at capturing the complexities, dysfunction, tragedy and humor that are inherent in life consistently describes romantic love as something only slightly deeper than flat-out physical objectification.
This ain’t the movies. This is written fiction, dammit.
It could be argued that the love captured in many popular movies is often depicted as little more than physical attraction. But movies are a visual medium – the audience actually sees how achingly beautiful the characters are, and between the stunning photography, professional makeup and filtered lenses, we find it easy to “fall in love” with those perfect people. I mean, when Julia Roberts smiles that big, earnest smile, she’s got me. When Brad Pitt takes his shirt off, I can’t blame anybody of any gender for being willing to cheat on their partners.
But our novels typically don’t have pictures. We can’t see these characters; we can only imagine them. So simply being told somebody is beautiful over and over isn’t necessarily enough to make a reader feel the same love the protagonist feels. And it can also get kind of old – something I noticed while reading this author’s work.
Lessons learned from an amorous hippo
I’m reminded of the movie Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (yes, folks, I am truly steeped in The Classics), where a playboy hippo named Moto Moto starts putting the moves on Gloria, the female hippo who is one of the story’s four main characters. He keeps flattering her and expressing his “love” for her. But when she asks him why he loves her, it always comes down to one thing: because she’s so big. (A clever recurring joke in the movie is that being chunky or “plumpy” is considered a highly attractive trait among hippopotamuses. Or is it hippopotami?)
Ultimately Gloria realizes that Moto Moto doesn’t truly love her, or even know or understand her. He’s simply attracted to her size. And she sadly recognizes that this alone is not enough to build a relationship on.
I think that’s a good lesson for all of us. If we’re writing about sexual or romantic relationships, it makes sense that physical attraction will play a part. But unless we are purposely trying to explore how limited or arbitrary physical attraction can be as a component of love, I think we’d be wise to dig deeper when trying to sweep our readers into “feeling the love.”
That’s not to say we shouldn’t spend some time describing the physical attraction that occurs between characters, and you’ll find that successful authors do this in a wide variety of ways. Barbara O’Neal does this masterfully in her books, even though she is often describing characters who are not conventionally beautiful, which is a nice departure from the more common approach of having all your main characters look like movie stars.
But even when describing ridiculously gorgeous people, we still have the opportunity to really demonstrate the chemistry between them. I recently read a Nora Roberts series set in Ireland, and while her main characters were invariably totally smokin’ hot (and arguably straight out of the Irish central casting office), she also did a great job of capturing their personalities. And it was in the conflict between their physical attraction and their often clashing personalities that some true romantic heat was generated.
A literary vaccination
I’m going to keep reading the author I mentioned at the beginning of my post. He tells great stories where lots of stuff happens, and I feel I have much to learn from studying his work. But I do hope he eventually gets past the stage where a man’s love for a woman is based so exclusively on how she looks. On the upside, reading his work has also served as a “literary vaccination” for me, prompting me to work harder to make sure my own characters’ relationships are based on who they are, not just how they look. I really believe that’s one key to a more satisfying read.
How about you? What makes you start rooting for a pair of main characters to get together? Or what makes you roll your eyes when the “love” described on the pages isn’t connecting with your own heart?
Image licensed from iStockphoto.com.
About Keith Cronin
Author of the novels ME AGAIN, published by Five Star/Gale; and TONY PARTLY CLOUDY (published under his pen name Nick Rollins), Keith Cronin is a corporate speechwriter and professional rock drummer who has performed and recorded with artists including Bruce Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, and Pat Travers. Keith's fiction has appeared in Carve Magazine, Amarillo Bay, The Scruffy Dog Review, Zinos, and a University of Phoenix management course. A native of South Florida, Keith spends his free time serenading local ducks and squirrels with his ukulele.
Keith, thanks for this post. For me love at first sight never works. I put my characters through a sort of verbal dance. For example one character who is attracted to another might needle that person and they go back and forth, possibly not realizing the mutual attraction until later. Making the connnection too soon takes all the air out of the balloon for the reader. Thanks again.
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All I can say is how many people get valentines that say, “I love you because you are soooooo beautiful”? There are cute cards, funny cards, witty cards, serious cards, gushy cards, but few that mention specific physical features. If even Hallmark knows better, then authors should pay attention. Resorting to all-too-frequent mentions of smokin-hotness is just lazy writing.
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I root for a pair of main characters to get together when I think each would make the other a better self in some way–more complete. They are one another’s missing parts, beautiful or not. (And I totally agree with you about Barbara O’Neal’s books.)
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YES! This, exactly.
Also, woot woot for Nora Roberts. I <3 her characterizations. (Even if, yes, her peeps are all usually described as handsome/beautiful. I kind of tune that part out, lol.)
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For me, it’s the description of an emotional connection one character or both see in another — something a character says or does that catches the attention of the other character. To me, the physical attraction to the “the hotness” is more understandable if there’s some kind of emotional tie between the two, an appreciation of that inner characteristic or beauty. I like novels that, just like in real life, physical beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. This is quite helpful today as I enter edits of a love story, thank you! :)
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Call me old-fashioned, but I still love couples who are kept apart by external forces, à la Romeo & Juliet. I consider The Far Pavilions to have one of the most romantic love stories I’ve read. Bonded in youth, when they were both outsiders, Ash returns to India as a British officer, forced to guide his paramore Anjuli to her wedding – an arranged marriage – as an untouchable. Unforgetable. Yeah, they were both physcically attractive, but it was sooo secondary.
Great observation, Keith. Hotness aside, there’s gotta be more, and it should develop over the course of the story in some way. Happy Valentine’s Day.
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Great post, Keith. I agree–the best love stories are the ones that have a natural arc and “depth.”
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Keith, I always love your posts and look forward to them.
What I enjoy about a fictional romantic relationship is the tension of wanting to be together–and I definitely don’t just mean physically. I’m thinking of the Age of Innocence for example, Jane Eyre, and several other novels where the sexual tones are much more subtle yet TOTALLY HOT!
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I am the big UnRomantic (yeah I don’t even like Valentine’s day, and I’ve heard people tell GMR “boy, how’d you get off the hook?” Haw!
Anyway – I like intense subtlety(ha! does that even make sense? does to me! ) – I mean, not that there can’t be some steam coming off the page, but those little things that show a growing like and a growing respect and a growing realization that ‘you can run but you can’t hide’ . . . when one of the characters has that sudden realization that there is just no escaping that force . . .
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Now hold on, Keith. You take male writers to task for their shallow portrayal of love, which boils down to totally smokin’ hotness.
Have you read much romance fiction? I mean, let’s talk about it. The totally smokin’ hotness factor works both ways. I don’t just mean the covers. (Guys, work those pecs and shave your chests!) What else except totally smokin’ hotness can explain how these feisty, smart, capable women keep falling for those persistent, pushy, alpha jerks who don’t stop when all the traffic signals are red.
Now, as a female reader you might say it’s that very persistence that makes them attractive. Romance heroes WANT their women, intensely, them and only them. Nina put it nicely in her comment: the tension of wanting to be together. Except who would want to be with these guys?
They don’t have jobs. In contemporary romances they’re said to be “successful”, sure, but do you ever see one of them at a desk or taking a meeting? No, never. And historicals? Please. They’re all Dukes who haven’t worked a day in their lives.
They don’t send flowers. Nope. Go check. They sweep back into town seven years after breaking the heroine’s heart and force their way back into her life…but flowers? Never. Nor jewelry.
They don’t talk, except to tell the heroine at great length
how wrong she is to reject them. Oh, unless there’s a kid involved. They love the kid. (However, did they send support payments in the intervening seven years? No!)
So what are these alpha romance heroes good at? Take a guess. Yep. You got it.
Totally smokin’ hotness.
Let’s be honest, then: it’s not just male writers who fall back on easy shortcuts to romantic appeal. The problem isn’t totally smokin’ hotness, per se, it’s relying on stereotypes.
Okay, all kidding aside, if you ask me the most romantic moments in literature are not self-gratifying but self-sacrificing. Vaughn, you mentioned The Far Pavilions…agreed. What a romantic story! But when Ash rescues Anjuli from the suttee pyre, it’s a self-sacrifice. He’s throwing away his whole life.
Obviously, what is romantic is a great topic for today. Thanks for bringing it up, Keith. Totally smokin’ hot, man.
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First, I’d like to take a moment to dispel the rampant rumors that I used to work as an “ab model” for romance novel cover artists. It wasn’t me, honest!
But you raise a fair point, Donald: I agree that it’s not just male authors who resort to the total smokin’ hotness shortcut.
Hmmmm – this makes me wonder if TSH (totally smokin’ hotness) needs to join the romance lexicon, along with HEA (happily ever after), HFN (happy for now), OTT (over the top), TSTL (too stupid to live), and numerous other wonderfully evocative acronyms…
Hope you have a day filled with TSH!
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Had to chime in to say how much I enjoyed the Don-and-Keith banter, and cast my vote for TSH.
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It’s too easy to watch movies and think that hotness is what attracts the characters, thus write that way. But, while looks don’t hurt, the actors are also putting in all kinds of emotion and expression. Back to your example of Julia Roberts’s smile – it’s much more than good looks, it’s full of feeling and character. As novelists, we don’t have actors to pick up the slack so we have to write all of that in. Unfortunately, that is my weakest area as a writer! This post comes at a great time for me because my editor wants exactly what you’re talking about – more complexity and detail to help us really feel what is drawing the characters together. Wish me luck!
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Am I the only one wondering who the author is in Keith’s post? Have to admit, it’s roused my curiosity.
More often than not, I find romance and love in many books to be contrived and unconvincing. I want a romantic relationship to feel *right*, to be believable yet I don’t even know how to explain it any better than that.
Enjoyed the post!
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Keetha, the first author that came to my mind was Larry McMurtry. I’ve enjoyed his stories for years, but his romances… meh. There’s no depth.
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Oooh, good answer! I hadn’t thought about him.
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Lest we forget, ‘hotness’ is in the eyes of the beholder. Not all guys want a blond with big boobs. Not all gals want a guy without a shirt. Just look around at the couples you see at Starbucks or having lunch. Sometimes you have to wonder, what does he/she see in him/her? But, they do and will continue to. They groove on one another. They speak the same ‘language’. Their sense of humor jibes. And, they feel lucky to have found the ‘right’ person for them, physical looks be damned.
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I read a lot of romance, and this is one of my pet peeves, along with the shortcut of relationships based on biology and fate, not on true respect. (It’s probably one dynamic I’ll screw up in my own fiction, wouldn’t you know. Darn Dunning-Kruger effect.)
Michael Hauge has a fantastic way of explaining romantic tension. I’m paraphrasing, but he says that whenever a hero and heroine clash, they probably are fighting at the level of the false self — at the level of personas. When they connect, it’s always at the level of essence, or soul. That ability to see and respect essence when others don’t necessarily, is what’s at the heart of true romance for me.
And yes, Barbara’s writing rocks.
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Let me say up front that I think there are some terribly-written romances out there, written by women. There are also some excellent ones. And in the best of them, while the heroes are hot as Hades, that’s not usually the reason women fall in love with them.
The key thing for the heroines of these novels – and I suspect many of the readers as well, myself included – is that the hero understands her, he “gets” the heroine on an intellectual and emotional level in a way that her family and even her friends do not. It’s about connecting with someone who sees the real you, and you also see in him qualities that others overlook. That’s the intimacy that leads to love. And that is as true of Jane Eyre as it is of Suzanne Enoch’s Notorious Gentlemen series. Although Rochester was not, by Jane’s admission, TSH (although you wouldn’t guess it by most of the film/TV versions. Toby Stephens, yum…)
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Toby Stephens….well, he’s the Rochester I imagined, no matter what Charlotte Bronte described!
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…Speaking of Barbara O’Neal, have you been following this? http://theotherlandchronicles.com/2011/10/starthere/
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In my reading experience, a lot of male authors fall into the trap Keith describes. But what bugs me isn’t that the guy falls for the TSH babe. A necessary ingredient is always that she must adore him, in the wide eyed you’re so great, let me put you on a pedestal and worship you for no reasonable reason kind of way. The TSH babes tend not to have big speaking parts, or demonstrate brains that might give our hero a run for his money.
Whereas in genre romance, the hot guy tends to offer power, money or both in addition to his hotness.
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Perhaps I should read more of the books Donald describes but those “alpha heroes” and “feisty” heroines are too predictable, too dull. I haven’t come across the category romance I could read past chapter two.
I’m more interested in humans. I want to read about characters who can be awkward, who make mistakes, who don’t always say the right thing and who don’t always even recognize their own feelings. Getting two interesting, fully-realized characters together can be excruciatingly delicious.
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What a great post, Keith. I agree that it gets really boring, reading about how beautiful a person is and how much in love a couple is when all you’ve read concerns their physicality and nothing about personality. To me, it seems pretty basic and a little obvious that a writer has to delve into more than what two people feel for each other in the bedroom. Your post will serve to make me hyper-aware of how I create relationships between my characters.
Thank you.
Patti
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All true and I would also like to add that these are books, and if they take us away -away to a beautiful world where all these impossible attractions actually work then that is a good read too! Generally i read books to travel somewhere else and see the impossible be made possible and BE that hot chick he is in love with!! just sayin’ (God I hate that expression!) celi
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Actually this bugs me with movies too. Over on the Girlfriends Book Club Alexandra Sokoloff was recently discussing how too many rom-coms don’t show WHY the couple falls for each other.
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You’ve got some great points here.
There are a lot more then just “looks” at play in any romantic relationship, even in a fictional one. (At least there should be.)
And furthermore, in any novel I want to read about the character’s imperfections as well. I know that I grow tired of repeatedly hearing about how “amazing” a certain character is.
Why is that character so amazing? What -imperfections- does that character have? How has the M.C. fallen in love with those imperfections? Etc..
Anyways, great post! Thanks for sharing.
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Great post and ironically it’s about a subject I recently discussed with a fellow writer.
I just finished a series where love was the root of the plot. I found the whole description and display of love completely two dimensional and irritating. The girl regarded the guy as a God and was completely smitten over how perfect he was. Except, perfect meant nothing more than nice skin, beautiful eyes, and a hot body. Every characters was pretty much very shallow and restricted to very uninteresting traits, yet the series did quite well. So why is it that love element making up the bulk of the story was so horridly wrong yet so greatly adored?
There has to be a dimensional meaning and purpose to justify love. If a novel is going to base most of its plot on characters falling in love then there has to be some type of substance somewhere. The physical attribute “She was beautiful” just doesn’t cut to me. What’s beautiful to you, isn’t beautiful to me. As a writer your job is to convey the feeling along with the picture forming in the reader’s mind. Love can’t be formed, respected and acknowledge with the general statement that a character is beautiful. “Beautiful” doesn’t convey “feeling”. Yet, many authors utilize this in their stories.
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