What
drives men?
Before
I answer this question from the male POV, consider another question.
What
drives women?
What
. . . do I hear rumblings? You can’t put us in a box, Bob. Well the same thing
goes for guys. And writing romance is all the better for it.
In
most romances I have read the guy is either romantic or comes around to
appreciate romance. I’ve always found the ‘coming around’ arc hard to believe
because a boy’s teenage years are all about mapping out their hopes and dreams,
their lives. For a boy or man to not do this type of thinking would be
thoughtless or worse non-romantic. The non-romantics may look at life in a more
pragmatic way. They might decide what is right or wrong based on the situation
and how it benefits them. If they marry, it will be for many reasons, but not likely
love. Because to them love doesn’t exist, just survival. They’ll often divorce,
once the marriage no longer benefits them. Ego-centric thinking is so
monochromatic. Those who engage in it miss so much of what life has to offer.
Yes
a man could have an epithany, an enlightenment. I’m just suggesting that
something doesn’t come from nihilism. This writing blunder (a man who never
considers love or that love exists) is easily fixed with backstory, especially
in his teenage years.
Yes,
you can have your heroes be driven by success or competition, even when it
comes to competing for women (which shows passion). And many men are driven to
compete, to excel. But aren’t women like this too?
So
write your success driven hero with a heart, with dimension, with an inner
drive to find that someone special someday. Perhaps he had put if off for various
reasons until a special woman causes him to rearrange his priorities.
Jerry Maguire, 1996 is a fair representation of a driven man who has some backstory and backbone. Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger are driven by a deeper meaning in living their lives. They rsik it all. This drives the movie and makes the plot and their romance work.
Jerry Maguire, 1996 is a fair representation of a driven man who has some backstory and backbone. Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger are driven by a deeper meaning in living their lives. They rsik it all. This drives the movie and makes the plot and their romance work.
Bob, take it from me, a woman who in her younger years was very very very silly and immature and oh, so romantic. Men avoided me like the plague once their pragmatic selves saw how unstable I was. It took me years to realize how much more reasonable and clear was their vision than my romantic one. Hard to admit, but they saved me from many relationship mistakes with their clear thinking.
ReplyDeleteOf course I burned their effigies and thought them devils at the time, but in hind sight . . .
In my novels, heroes go from self-absorbed to self enlightened, realizing in many ways they need their significant other for their very survival.
I hope to share some of my male character arcs on this blog site soon.
S.B.K. Burns
Dear Susan,
ReplyDeleteYou've blown me away with your honesty. This is a rare gift to bare your soul. Something I think about but don't often act upon. The older and wiser I get the more I realize how valuable honesty is as a quality in a person. Imagine no filters, just saying what's on your mind without societal pressures to bottle it up.
Of course, in real life, not romances, many people fall short of hero heroine. This is one reason we read romances. We want it all, but for one reason or another can't. Often, knowing this, one can understand the actions of another. Can I say (a form of) love is simply knowing you and all my other friends?
Bob
Hi again Susan,
ReplyDeleteAt your earliest convenience let's have a Q&A about your novels/novellas on this blog and how they relate to the male POV. Are you game?
Bob