| My Heroine Can Beat Up Your Heroine |
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| Written by Therese Stenzel | |
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What's wrong with this WIP? At age eighteen, my English born and bred heroine has been lost in a game of cards by her father and wed to a hairy Scottish heathen three times her age. She blubbers and cries all the way north, hoping and praying he'll never touch her. She is then kidnapped by another clan (her new husband is killed) and she cries and blubbers all the way to their Highland castle. Once there, she learns her mother has died and there are more tears. The problem is, I've just written me. I like to pretend I'm not a forty-year-old housewife from Oklahoma, but the truth is I am. That is exactly how I would react if such events (sigh) would happen to me. As it is, I've been happily married to an accountant for thirteen years with no such adventures in sight. (Sigh again) This writing revelation came to me as I was rereading my favorite multi-published author. I LOVE her heroines and was trying to figure out why I liked them so much, when suddenly a light went on. Her heroines are greater than my reality. They are (hard to admit) better than me. In order to be utterly captivating, my heroine needs to survive whatever I throw her way with amazing nerve, valiant character, and an inner strength that I frankly do not possess. I had been writing this story, as I would experience this upheaval--which means I would cry my eyes out, stress, and worry throughout the entire ordeal. My heroine can't think like a forty year old housewife; she has to be spunky, full of moxy--the kind of gal that gives more generously than I do, is much braver than me, can endure harder physical challenges, is smarter, wittier etc., etc. Making a heroine larger than life, requires her to make bigger mistakes, take greater risks, and feel more deeply. She must learn to love more quickly, more passionately, her fears be more gripping than my mundane qualms of my kids having too many cavities or will my son's math grades come up. I need to think of my heroine as seven feet tall instead of five foot, eight and a half inches. To balance her out, I'll give her a flaw or two--make her deathly afraid of spiders, have her chew on her hair, or be constantly hungry. And I'll make her real by causing her to see only her physical flaws, her nose is too stumpy, her frame too skinny, her blue eyes are plain-- when in reality she's drop-dead gorgeous. Then my heroine will be, in a way...perfect. She will be handfasted to another Scottish man, endure another kidnapping, and fall in love, but she won't be me. And if that gets me my first sale, that'll be just fine. |
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