Wednesday 3 April 2013

Characters and Moral Event Horizons


Some of you may be aware of the recent plagiarism suit brought against Mills and Boon author, Kate Walker in relation to her novel, The Proud Wife, which a wannabe writer (I'm deliberately not naming names here) claims Kate's novel was  plagiarised from the unknown writer's unpublished novel. I’m not going to go into all that here, but you can read about it on the Pink Heart blog and the case notes make very interesting reading on the subject of romantic tropes. There's also an interesting blog post here on 'original ideas' in fiction. There are certainly no original ideas in romantic fiction! But as a friend said to me the other day, new writers always think they've reinvented the wheel. I was the same when I was just starting out. You get on much better as a romance writer when you realise that the tropes are there, and all you can do is bring your own voice to them.

But what stood out for me about the case, and what led to this particular blog post, was that the heroine in the unpublished novel seemingly threw herself down the stairs deliberately to bring about a miscarriage. To be balanced about this, I don’t know if it was intended to address this in the story so that it wasn’t actually what happened.

But it did get me thinking about moral event horizons by characters.  A moral event horizon is what a character crosses when they commit certain acts.

To me a heroine who harmed her baby in such a way would not be at all sympathetic. I’m not talking about abortions here, as I do believe it’s every woman’s right to choose (though I would suggest that in romantic fiction an abortion would be a hard sell). What I’m talking about is a deliberate and violent act meant to bring about the end of the pregnancy because the heroine was peeved at the hero for ending their relationship. 

Of course some characters do cross the moral event horizon, especially if they’re meant to be the bad guys/girls. It can be as simple as kicking a puppy or as complicated as blowing up a building. But heroes and heroines are supposed to be above all that. I’ve often used the example of James Bond. We may not care if he kills bad guy Blofeld, but God forbid he should ever harm a hair on Blofeld’s cat’s head!

Really good television series can explore moral event horizons. 24, starring Keifer Sutherland, often posed questions of right and wrong, and grey and grey morality. Keifer, playing the hero, Jack Bauer, often behaved in ways that were distinctly un-heroic. He tortured people, and even shot one colleague because it would have caused the deaths of many more people if he had not done so. No matter what Jack did, we saw the reasons for it and we forgave him. Or if we didn’t forgive him, we understood the predicament he was in. But Jack wasn’t a romantic hero. In fact most of his lovers died or ended up in comas! I think this is another reason we forgave his transgressions, because he always had to pay a heavy price for what he did.

Heroes and heroines in romance novels have to be heroic at all times, and there are certain lines that they should never cross. When reading through entries for an open romance writing comp (as a fellow competitor, I should add, not as a judge!) I was put off by one hero who called the heroine a ‘whore’. To me there is nothing heroic about a man who verbally abuses a woman. Another story opened with the heroine being physically abused and myself and several others expressed a wish that a hero would come and save her, only to be told that this was the hero, who would turn out to be a 'nice guy' really. In my opinion, the fact of him physically abusing the heroine in the opening chapter put him beyond the realms of redemption.

I think the problem with heroes is that some people think that because a man is an alpha male, it means he has to be aggressive and perhaps angry at the world until the heroine comes along and saves him. That’s not how it works. Alpha males protect their mate and they protect others whom they love. They may have faults, but there are lines that they should not cross and in my opinion verbal and physical abuse is one of those lines.

Your hero and heroine are allowed to make mistakes, but they must be forgivable mistakes. A young woman throwing herself down the stairs in order to bring about a miscarriage is to be pitied perhaps, as she clearly has psychological problems, but that would be a different story altogether and perhaps not suited for the romance genre.

If she is the heroine of the story, she has to earn her happy ending, and she can’t do that by behaving in a way that brings harm to a helpless child. 
 

My latest ebook, LonesomeRanger (formerly published as Sunlit Secrets) is out this week, published by Pulse Romance, (which is run by our very own Kate Allan). In that both my hero and heroine make mistakes. My heroine, Connie, takes the role as schoolteacher in the town of Ocasa based on a lie. She lets them think she is her older sister, who has died en route to the town. Nate Truman, the hero, has a dark and troubled past. They both make mistakes, but I hope that in the novel I’ve given a damn good reason for those mistakes and that the reader can forgive them, because essentially both are good, noble people.

It’s a balancing act, I think and you have to be careful not to make the reader lose sympathy with the characters that you really want them to be cheering for.

In pocket novels, which are set in a more rose-tinted world, it is more important than ever that your hero and heroine don’t behave in a way that turns the reader against them.

What, for you, would be a moral event horizon in a hero and heroine? Do  you have any examples of heroes or heroines in romance books crossing that horizon? And if so, did they manage to redeem themselves?
(It isn't my intention to bring a witch hunt against the wannabe writer in the Harlequin case, hence me not naming her in this piece. So please keep any comments on that subject civil and polite).

23 comments:

  1. We had been wondering if the heroine in our WIP had crossed the moral event horizon, but compared to your examples her actions are fairly mild and harmless, if naive.
    Quite often when we are writing we come across similarities in books we are reading and think 'oh,dear, it's been done before', but everything has!

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  2. Yes, there is no reinventing of the wheel in romance, Patricia (ooh I feel another blog post coming on! Maybe one for my own blog! ) The best you can do is have your own unique voice.

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  3. The abortion issue is a very emotional one for me. But being totally detached, why would a woman commit an act like that in a country where you can go to a doctor and the deed done safe and legally? As a romance reader, it wouldn't make sense to me.

    I love pocket novels and the rose tinted world they portray. The truth is, we all know there's a dark side but really, who wants to go there any more than absolutely necessary.

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    1. Good point, Maria. And you're right, why do something that violent, when it can be done safely and legally? Of course we don't know what the outcome would be (she says hastily to avoid a law suit), but I did think it raised a good question of what was acceptable in a romantic heroine.

      I too like the rose tinted world of pocket novels. It is like putting on your favourite old jumper, isn't it? Comforting and warm.

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    2. Yes it is. That's why I love it....

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  4. "But being totally detached, why would a woman commit an act like that in a country where you can go to a doctor and the deed done safe and legally?"
    Except that no doctor, or any reasonable human being, would accept 'punishing the baby's father' as a balanced and reasonable reason for termination. This is well beyond the bounds of the romantic genre.

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    1. Yes, that's a good point, though presumably the heroine wouldn't be daft enough to admit that at the abortion clinic. Again that's a different story, isn't it, and as you say, way beyond the bounds of the romantic genre.

      Writing a romance really is a balancing act and sometimes you do have to put away the darker stories. In my upcoming novel I mentioned, as back story to explain the hero's motivations, a child being found dead in a cellar. I was asked by the editor to change it to the child being found alive as she (quite reasonably) felt that the child being found dead was too dark for the genre. And that was without either my hero or heroine being in any way responsible for what happened to the child.

      I think anything to do with harming children is a contentious issue in romance, even if they're on the periferal of the story.

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  5. I think the moral event horizon for me would be the heroine having two lovers. I'd find it hard to like such a greedy heroine - within pocket novels anyway. I could accept her 'liking' or having liked someone else and perhaps a bit of flirting. It could only end it tears!

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    1. Yes, I think any cheating in romance would be difficult to pull off. Not just the hero cheating on the heroine or vice versa, but them sleeping with each other whilst romantically involved someone else.

      It does happen in chick lit, and some chick flicks, but in romance I think the love affair has to be exclusive and it would be hard for me to sympathise with either a hero or heroine who cheated on either each other or on another partner with each other.

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  6. This is a really interesting topic, well explained, Sally. In an effort to make our characters complex and human we often lead them towards dodgy moral territory. But you're right, we writers have to know where to draw the line. As you sum up: Your hero and heroine are allowed to make mistakes, but they must be forgivable mistakes."

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    1. Yes, I think the mark of a good and complex character is how they deal with the choices facing them.

      One thing that always bugged me about Andie McDowall's character in Four Weddings and a Funeral is that she slept with Hugh Grant's character when she was engaged to another man, and she said she'd be faithful to that man when she married him. And I thought 'Why not start the moment you agreed to be his wife?' So I never really thought she was the right one for the hero.

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  7. Yes, really interesting, thanks Sally. I think as well that you can get away with more, later on in the book. The reader needs to learn to love your character and sympathise with them first, before they start doing questionable things. Even the throwing downstairs to bring on a miscarriage I could deal with if I'd been with the heroine through a lot of ups and downs (mostly downs) and had learned to respect her, and if the act itself was an act of sheer desperation.
    So it's not just what they do, it's their state of mind and how we feel about them when they do it!

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    1. That's a really good point, Womag. Certainly watching series like Game of Thrones and Spartacus I often find myself rooting for good people who do bad things. But it's the journey they take before they do the bad things that matters, and if we're giving some justification for what they've done, we can forgive them.

      I suppose Scarlett O'Hara is also a good example. She doesn't always behave well, but her courage in the face of adversity makes people root for her.

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  8. Good food-for-thought topic, Sally. We're writing sweet romances in the pocket novel genre and I, for one, am sick of all the bad news portrayed on television. Give me some entertainment in my reading and a happy ending, please.
    I would never countenance ANY form of verbal or physical abuse of my heroines by the hero. Such a character would never make it into one of my romances. I write SNAGs for a reason. As womagwriter said, our main characters need to be sympathetic and have issues that they help each other resolve through their love.

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    1. Hear hear. I am struck by how different it is when I write other genres, like in my family saga. One of my heroes doesn't do very good things at all, but he is redeemed. Whether he is in the eyes of the reader, I don't know. But he could never be in a pocket novel.

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  9. Good topic, Sally, and interesting examples.

    I was reminded of Jane Eyre where Mr Rochester (SPOILER ALERT)...

    ...nearly becomes a bigamist, and has to suffer before he has a happy ending.

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    1. Yes, he has a very Biblical punishment, didn't he? Losing an eye and a hand.

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  10. Thanks for the post, Sally. Regarding heroes I believe in one of Jilly Cooper's books the hero is responsible for a drink driving incident. I'm not sure if I've got my facts right but I'm pretty certain he was responsible for a car accident of some sort. Again a tricky subject, difficult to pull off.

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    1. Yes, it is indeed and it depends how it's handled. Yet everyone adored her Rupert Campbell Black (I think that's his name), and he was a really bad boy, wasn't he?

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  12. Hi Sally. I can think of more examples outside romantic fiction but one inside the romance genre is the 'hero' of One Day. Please note by the way there are SPOILERS here concerning One Day, Blood Diamond and Insomnia - I'd hate to enjoy anyone's watching/reading pleasure so beware before reading on....! Personally I found the hero of One Day unsympathetic because anyone who drinks to the extent that they don't respect their terminally ill mother is too crass to love. However, he gives up his drinking and makes commitments towards the end so redeems himself somewhat. There was an interesting moral edge to Leonardo di Caprio's 'hero' in Blood Diamond. He plays a ruthless diamond smuggler who knows his trade results in deaths, slavery and dismemberment of those forced into digging for diamonds. However, his character turns around during the story to become someone who can love and someone who helps one of the victims to achieve redemption. He's not a good man but he is a better man than many in an evil world. I love a good moral question and recently watched the film Insomnia again with Al Pacino and Hilary Swank. When Al in the last scene tells the rookie cop who so admires him, 'don't lose your way' it was an incredibly touching moment. He had gone bad and it was too late for him but the fact that she hero worshipped him and his words made her keep to the right path largely redeemed him in my eyes. It's a fabulous film. I think one of the keys to the internal conflict question is WHY people do things, their motivations and it's the same with moral issues. Cara

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    1. Cara, that also brings to mind Bruce Willis's character in 16 Blocks. He's a cop that's not exactly 'bad' himself, but he has turned a blind eye to a lot of bad things done by his co-workers. That one trip to the courthouse whilst he's supposed to be guarding a man who can blow the whole thing apart, sees him come face to face with what he has become and by the end you do care about him, despite his wrongdoing.

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