Today’s guest is our own RWASD member and author, Susan
Burns. She writes under the pen name of S.B.K. Burns. She’ll tell us how she
came up with her romantic heroes, but leads off with a replay of a behind the
scenes pitch from hell:
Confessions of a Fifty
Shades Junky by Susan Burns
[Please don’t forget to comment or at least thank our guest. At the bottom I'll insert a video of Dexter suggested by Susan: Inside the kill room. - Bob]
[Please don’t forget to comment or at least thank our guest. At the bottom I'll insert a video of Dexter suggested by Susan: Inside the kill room. - Bob]
“I have this really neat story,” I say, as a prelude to my pitch.
“Yes, but what motivates your hero? What category does he
fall into? What are his hopes and dreams? What does he stand to lose?” et
cetera . . . et cetera
For a pantser like me, who only needs to get an idea of my
entity’s attitude and voice—letting my characters speak through me when I
write—this interview seems worse than death.
I panic. My palms sweat. Was this editor asking me all sorts
of analytical things about a character that sprung into my mind fully formed? I
thought all I had to do was to complete my novel and wrap it up in a satisfying
way.
You might ask me what is so wrong with answering those
questions? Don’t we have to know our characters, plot them out in great detail,
before we write about them? Even if we don’t plot out our stories?
My answer is no. With two advanced degrees in engineering, I
was the only woman working with men for too many years to contemplate. The
heroes that spoke to me were already educated in that arena. [Oh I like Susan, says an ex-engineer. Finally somebody
understands me. - Bob]
Some women authors, the plotters, analyze what a man should
be, think, feel, and how he should love. I let mine react to the heroine and
life, revealing themselves as they go along.
And, as with my friends, I try not to impose expectations on
my characters. If I have something planned for them, I know they will surprise
me. I hope they will surprise me.
So pay attention, you editors and agents. Please don’t force
me to get analytical about something I love. I’m done being the geeky analytical
scientist. I’ve spent a lifetime doing that. That’s your job now.
So here are my confessions about E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. Yes, I have read all three books—three
times. And I think after the movie
moguls decided to quit Charlie Hunnam as Christian Grey for pointy-nosed Jamie,
I lost interest in the movement.
Here’s what drove me onward into, what some of you might
call insanity, reading all three books obsessively. It was the hero. I’ve only been obsessed with
one other hero, watching his Netflix TV episodes nonstop. He's Dexter, the
serial killer we all love and cherish, because . . .
What makes someone, me in particular, love this guy? The
same reason I loved and couldn’t get enough of Christian Grey. And no, for you out there who think it’s
because Christian is a bad boy. He isn’t. He’s just tormented.
The editor for my sci-fi romance series, coming out soon (Legends of The Goldens), said I needed
to give more angst to the hero in my second book, just like I did with the
first. And that’s what it’s all about—the suffering.
Our heroes, though it doesn’t seem very romantic at first,
need to be FLAWED, and by my obsession, I’ve got to say—very flawed.
Dexter, as a toddler covered in blood, watched his mother
chain-sawed to death.
Christian, as a toddler, watched his mother murdered and
then cried alone beside her dead body. Both heroes were taken into, some might
say, healthy, well-adjusted families. [Fascinating
insights & comparisons of the two men. – Bob]
How, we wonder, can a human being cope with such early trauma? And that’s the hook for me. How a child faced
with such insanity can pull himself up to become that romantic hero at the end
of his character arc.
He’s the innocent who fights the brutality of a
dysfunctional world he’s been thrust into. How could we not root for such a
character, hoping he’ll emerge sane with the ability to truly love another
person, and, of course, himself.
In the first four books I wrote, my heroes were wrapped up
in their looks and their superhuman powers. So into themselves, they thought
all they had to do was look good and women would fall at their feet. This was a
good place to start, but Saffron, the hero of Forbidden Playground, the first book in my Goldens Series, has a problem far worse than self-absorption. He’s
grown up with the heroine, she’s his best friend, and she abandons him. Too
late, he realizes, what all romance readers hope for, that he discovers he cannot
exist without the heroine. So, right
now, to please both my readers and my editor, I need to dig deep to find the
pain in the heroes of my second and third novels in the series. To escape those
painful beginnings, the hero must have the courage to remake himself—to die to
himself, only to emerge victorious.
Yes, on the surface Christian and Dexter appear to be bad
boys. They both are “mild-mannered
reporters” by day and monsters by night—kind of a Jekyll and Hyde (my, am I
analyzing my heroes? And I said I didn’t want to do that. But only for you,
dear reader.)
One thing the heroine wants in a hero is HONESTY. The
honesty comes in, not with the hero telling everyone of his plight, but by his
own recognition of who he is and what limitations are set for him (this can be
seen in third person, deep POV, where the hero narrates his own story through
internal dialogue and discrete thoughts).
“I F**k hard,” Christian says to Anastasia, his heroine,
almost upon their first meeting. But he gives her the FREEDOM to decide if she
can deal with his monster. She gets tied up (forgive the pun) with the
psychology of this stunted man-boy she so very much wants to love.
The men in my stories basically want the sex part, but I
weave in the psychological part as well. The sexual intimacy means—as the man
fills the woman, she fulfills the man. He now belongs someplace, to someone.
The emotional VOID, he’s been fighting against, gets filled. And the power of
this change in my hero is so very much greater, depending on how severe his
childhood trauma.
Inspired by Dexter and Christian, the hero in my WIP, Flat Spin, is an emotionally challenged
test pilot. He’s all analytical, loves to take risks. But is he up to the task
of risking it all on a lethally dangerous alien who could put him to sleep,
forever, with just the blink of her eyes?
To bring me, and my potential readers, to obsession, the
hero needs—a traumatic childhood experience (FLAWED), a conscious knowledge of
his maladjusted plight (HONESTY), be disciplined enough to give the heroine
FREEDOM of choice, and, at some point, a willingness to lose himself, to fill
his emotional VOID, to attain the ability to accept and love, first himself,
then others.
Dexter: Inside the kill room:
Dexter: Inside the kill room:
OMG, I've never seen this show. I'd be banished to a different TV (and room) if I watched this. For Susan fans follow her links below:
The Forbidden Playground Comic Teaser:
Amazon ebooks by S.B.K. Burns:
