I write a lot of romance.
The romance market calls for a very specific type of character for the male lead who will become the female lead’s love interest.
This male character is physically strong and healthy—usually muscular with broad shoulders and washboard abs. He’s determined, commanding, authoritative, dominant, ambitious, decisive, and he has clear boundaries for everything, especially with the woman in his life.
He’s a direct communicator and doesn’t beat around the bush when making it clear what he wants and how he plans to get it.
The hero in any romantic love story is also protective, caring, and selfless. He has strong connections to family even if he’s been hurt or abandoned in the past. He likes children and wants to have children of his own with the right woman.
This is the kind of man that all woman want and all men want to be. He’s the kind of man we all want to rely on because he’s dependable, honorable, and keeps his word. He’s hard-working and understands what’s important in life.
He’s a leader that people who aren’t as decisive and certain as he is are happy to follow. He shows the way and usually winds up leading others to a good outcome.
It doesn’t even matter if he’s all that good-looking. I’ve created characters like this who were hideously deformed and penniless. They still come off as heroic because they possess all these other qualities.
I did this with both Hangman from Rise of the Giants, whose face is covered in scars, and with Carter Holt from Firehouse Blues: Fallen Hero, whose face and body were hideously burned in a fire.
When we see a man acting like this, we automatically think of him as a good man. When he sacrifices himself for others, we see him as a hero.
We subconsciously equate the opposite of these qualities with evil.
An evil man is conniving, manipulative, selfish, has no integrity, and is usually too internally weak to conduct his affairs and relationships with any kind of honor and forthright determination.
We see this played out in all the great villains of history such as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, and others. They were insane, paranoid, insecure, and manipulative on a mass scale.
None of them was what we would call a warm, caring, cuddly family man. They had perverse ideas about how to conduct their personal relationships and they thought nothing of sacrificing others for their own gain.
The truth is that we could say all the same things about what makes a woman either an evil or a heroic figure. All the same qualities apply to women.
Heroic women are physically strong, mentally tough, determined, forthright, honest, and confident, but they’re also selfless, caring, and protective. They’re dedicated to family and they’ll do anything to take care of those they love.
We as human beings are subconsciously programmed to see someone as cold, toxic, and evil if they are strong, determined, and confident but they’re also selfish, hurtful, distant, and manipulative.
We could point to exactly the same behaviors as good or evil regardless of what gender the person is.
We hear a lot these days that suppressing emotions stunts men’s mental health and makes them toxic. We hear a lot about how society programs boys and men to believe that expressing emotion is less than masculine.
The reality is that men express emotion all the time. Ninety-nine and a half percent of the time, men express emotion appropriately.
Pointing at male expressions of emotion and saying they should do it differently is what twists and poisons a man’s mental health.
If a man says in a very calm, neutral tone, “It really made me mad when you flirted with that guy at the restaurant right in front of me,” that’s a perfectly appropriate expression of emotion.
The fact that he said it in a calm, rational, direct, composed tone doesn’t make it any less valid as an expression of emotion. It’s no less valid because he isn’t crying, yelling, or jumping up and down.
We would consider it just as toxic if the woman to whom he made this statement completely ignored, belittled, or dismissed his concerns because he wasn’t crying, yelling, or jumping up and down.
We would consider both the statement and the dismissal in exactly the same terms of appropriateness and toxicity if we reversed the genders of the people involved.
If a woman said this to a man with whom she was involved in an intimate relationship, we would consider it just as unacceptable if he completely dismissed or belittled her concerns because she didn’t say it emotively enough.
My number one rule for writing all kinds of fiction is: fall in love with the male lead.
In order to do this, I have to express the male lead’s emotions appropriately. That includes expressions of struggling to contain strong emotions and struggling to continue to function in spite of overwhelming circumstances that cause strong emotions.
This kind of portrayal of both men and women is what allows the reader to fully identify with the characters.
Men feel emotions at exactly the same strength that women feel them. Men struggle to cope with strong emotions exactly the same way women do.
Both men and women struggle between the desire to ask for help and the desire to appear strong enough not to need to ask for help.
None of these things are unique to either men or women.
A man expressing emotion doesn’t make him weak nor does portraying a male character as grappling with strong emotions detract from his ability to be a hero.
Exactly the same can be said for women and female characters.
How we depict these characters expressing emotion and how we depict them coping with their circumstances is what determines if the character will come across as heroic.
Two people can wind up in exactly the same situation and respond to it in opposite ways.
One person could run away from the problem and leave others to suffer as a result of the person’s inaction.
We will all automatically see this person as weak and selfish—and we’ll be correct in that judgement.
Another person faced with exactly the same challenge could choose to engage with the problem, risk it all, and end up sacrificing themselves to benefit others.
The second person is the one who will be seen as a hero.
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