The alternative male POV revisited
I’ve written about alternative ways of writing male
heroes in romances (or any fiction) by suggesting the writer of consider renaissance
men and creative types and the way they might act differently than what we are
used to seeing in a ‘normal’ alpha hero.
If you try this with your hero, try not to forget he's a guy. Make
sure to sprinkle in a little primitive spice here and there.
I’ll offer myself as an
example, because I’m an artist. When my daughters were 8 & 10 and watching
TV at night, I noticed a possum making its way slowly across the back fence. Being curious, I decided to find out how slow and how close I could get. I wanted to
interact, to know directly, to bond. I walked up to it. It stopped, turned, and hissed
at me showing off impressive rows of sharp dirty teeth and basically saying we're not going to bond. Oh yeah. Being an ex-engineer, I
calculated my reaction speed to it’s and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck before it moved a millimeter.
I gripped firmly so that it couldn’t whip around and bite me. It didn’t try to
fight much, because it couldn't. Then it played possum.
So now what do I do? I've got this creature in my grasp. I can only do so much studying and admiring it's oddness before I'd have to stop torturing it and let it go. Guess. Naturally, I walked to the sliding door and
asked the girls to come look closely at what I had. After they stopped screaming, practically walking backwards into the TV, they
told their mother on me. She directed me in a loud voice to let the creature go somewhere far
from the door and then wash my hand. Preferring to sleep in the house and
wondering why none of them wanted to come close to inspect the possum, I assumed
it might be a typically female reaction, just like the ones I got when chasing girls with frogs many years ago. Or they didn’t trust me to keep a firm
hold. I smiled as I watched the possum waddle off, unfazed and with no interest in hissing at me. Who's the man?
In the movie, RUBY SPARKS, 2012, the hero, a failure with women, a NY Times best seller at 19, finds himself in a five year dry spell. During that time he has no direct experience with women. He decides to write a story about his ideal woman with himself as the hero. His very own fantasy. His brother on reading the beginning of the manuscript says the hero (his brother) has no idea what a woman is like. The story sucks, ever hear that from a relative?
This story is about a creative type eventually trying to manipulate his universe, finding out if he'd get bit or not. In one scene in particular and others less so, this creative/renaissance man becomes very alpha and shows more than once 'fatal flaws.'
Here's the official trailer for Ruby Sparks, romantic comedy (2 minutes long).
No comments:
Post a Comment